A Table Full of Love: Recipes to Comfort, Seduce, Celebrate & Everything Else in Between

Recipes are organized not by ingredient or by season, but “by mood and by sentiment” in this rewarding exploration of love and the meals that sustain it. The opening chapter, focused on caregiving, risks cliché by starting out with the healing power of chicken soup, but is saved by McAlpine’s (A Table for Friends) earnest prose and clever cooking techniques (one must strain the soup’s broth four times). Carb-filled comfort foods appear—mashed potatoes, mac and cheese, risotto—but each is elevated. The risotto, for example, is seeded with saffron and lemon zest, and mashed potatoes are gussied up with preserved lemon. Pivoting to romance, McAlpine offers a couple of cocktails to set the mood then whips up a variety of shareable dishes for two, among them pork tenderloin with peaches and fennel, and buttery mackerel with roasted rhubarb. Hot and heavy desserts, like Toblerone fondue, pour on the chocolate. A section on cooking for, and with, children features fast “everyday jeans” cooking and plenty of pasta, as befitting the author’s Venice upbringing. For those whose love language involves giving presents, a bounty of food gifts runs the gamut from strawberry and vodka preserves to rose and cinnamon shortbread. And the concluding chapter, entitled “Cocoon,” puts the emphasis on self-love with a sampling of single-serving salads and a simple salmon en papillote. Love means never having to say you’re hungry in this soul-nourishing collection. (Feb.)