For anyone who has ever bemoaned the state of the chain restaurant chimichanga, behold, salvation. Marcela Valladolid’s “Fresh Mexico” offers a modern cuisine bursting with vegetables, queso fresco and a half-dozen different types of chilies. Valladolid is judicious in her demands, and individual recipes require relatively few ingredients, shun complicated techniques and promise bold flavors with anchos and chipotles, lime, tomatillos, cilantro, rosemary and oregano.

By: Barbara Passino
  Publisher: The Gerald & Marc Hoberman Collection Ltd.
  Price: $40 Pages: 288 Recipes worth trying: Chocolate-Chocolate Pancakes, Page 209; Chocolate Banana Strudel, Page 120

The title of the book is “101 Things To Do With Meatballs.“ So you can imagine my disappointment. I’m imagining the suggestions will be along the lines of “leave them out for a week and use as golf balls,“ or “press them in place around windows as putty,“ or “paint them white and give them to friends as novelty ping-pong balls that don’t bounce.“

Bob Greene is famous in some circles as the man who helps Oprah lose weight—when she’s losing weight. He has ridden this celebrity to 10 books, including cookbooks. But Greene is not, as it turns out, a chef. He is an exercise physiologist. The recipes in his latest work, “The Best Life Diet Cookbook,“ taste as if they were created by an exercise physiologist. Even though they were created by an actual chef, Sidra Forman (mentioned once in the acknowledgements and never again), they still taste all physiologisty.

Sasquatch Books
  Price: $35 Pages: 366 Recipe worth trying:
Wine-dark beef stew with horseradish potato purée, Page 142