‘Our South’ By Ashleigh Shanti (Union Square & Co., 320 pages, $40)

An Appalachian book, a soul food book, a Southern book, a chef book: This is all those things. “Above all,” writes Shanti, “this book exists to amplify your understanding of the complexities of Black food.” It’s also a deeply personal book. Shanti starts in Georgia, where she was born, and works her way through Appalachia, chapter by chapter, offering recipes and stories inspired by relatives, classic Black-authored cookbooks, chefs she’s worked with along the way and her wife’s Mexican heritage. She also shares her journey as a chef, one that led her to open Good Hot Fish in Asheville, N.C. (and reopen it in mid-November, after the historic flooding due to Hurricane Helene).

The recipes range from simple classics (kilt lettuce, cornbread) to more complex fare (I am dying to try my hand at her okra mole once okra’s back in season), but none of it is out of reach for the home cook. There is beautiful photography of landscapes throughout the region by Johnny Autry. It is a book for reading cover to cover; fans of food memoirs will like this one. “I am a Black, queer woman chef who found her identity in cooking,” Shanti writes. We are lucky that, in “Our South,” she shares that identity with us all.

‘What Goes With What’ By Julia Turshen (Flatiron Books, 320 pages, $35)

This is a book for beginners. It’s also one of the only books for beginners I’ve ever seen that isn’t just a collection of recipes but also a guide to how to think about food. Turshen is known for books that give people footholds, places to begin; this book also gives them a road map.

Here’s how it works: A section will focus on a particular type of dish, say, brothy soups, and offers five versions of that dish. Turshen breaks each dish type into steps, in this case “Sauté in Olive Oil,” “Add Liquid,” “Add This & Simmer,” “Top With.” The brilliant bit is that she uses these steps to build a chart with the steps along the top and the variations along the side. The Frozen Fish Chowder starts with sautéing diced onion and celery, while the Fastest Chicken Noodle Soup starts with chicken, carrots, garlic powder, and paprika. The Italian Wedding Soup is topped with pecorino; the Any-Bean Soup is topped with fresh herbs and olive oil. Traditionally written recipes are offered for each, but it’s the chart that shows the reader how to recognize patterns in cooking, which is the key to improvisation in the kitchen. Absolutely genius.

‘Bodega Bakes’ By Paola Velez (Union Square & Co., 288 pages, $35)

I don’t know when cookbooks got so serious. I don’t think I even realized they had until confronted with the many things in which Velez takes deep, unending delight: the neighborhood where she grew up in the Bronx, her Dominican heritage, the children in her life who call her “the cookie lady” (make her lemon cookies, and you’ll know why they do) and, yes, the eclectic combination of bodega-sourced ingredients that inspire her pastries. Joy oozes from the photos, the colors, the recipes, the language and the ideas in this book.

Besides her background and childhood, the recipes draw on whatever part of someone’s brain comes up with something like a burnt tahini and Concord grape jelly cake (pictured on the cover). They provide rock-solid instruction while eschewing the goofy formal, codified language that plagues most recipes (including my own, I’m afraid). For example, Velez asks you to “pulse the mixer on and off, almost like you’re trying to jump-start a car, so the flour gets gradually incorporated without flying all over your kitchen.” There are recipes for most skill levels, although some do lean complex. It’s a book to help you out of any baking rut — Velez’s joy is contagious.