“Fine Cooking Comfort Food: 200 Delicious Recipes for Soul-Warming Meals” (Taunton Press, $19.95) isn’t fancy. It doesn’t have loads of extras scattered throughout the book, although you will find tips for things like cleaning and storing Swiss chard or making the perfect mashed potatoes.

This is the kind of book you lazily skim through, pausing on things that make your mouth water like mashed sweet potatoes with mango chutney, or things you’d just like to try, like an Italian souffle called a cauliflower sformato.

The book contains lots of comfort casseroles and one-pot meals, and selections run the gamut from classic chicken pot pie to slow cooker osso buco and Brazilian chicken and shrimp stew. With spring parsnips now available, the parsnip risotto with pancetta and sage would be a good choice.

The breakfast and brunch items alone will make you want to run to the kitchen. Warm maple and cinnamon bread pudding? Baked cheddar grits with bacon? Remind me to pull this book out next winter, when frost is on the window pane and hibernation is the only plan for the day.


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