I received a press copy of the 25th anniversary edition of the Silver Palate Cookbook a few weeks ago, and promptly filed it with The Reality Diet: Fight Fat With Fiber in the corner of my desk reserved for less-than-compelling food titles. I mean, I thought it was a cookbook for senior citizens. Understandable, right?

Well, there I go, revealing my ignorance. Apparently the Silver Palate was a small high-end food store opened in Manhatten in the 1977, and the subsequent cookbook is credited with going a long way toward demystifying gourmet cuisine for the home cook. I’d never heard of it before (I’m from Oregon—we were a Moosewood fam), but both Salon and the New York Times have just run pieces on how influential it was:

From the Salon piece:

…this was a book of recipes that allowed harried middle-class families to wean themselves from the Shake ‘N Bake pouch and eat more like wealthy people. This kind of food — the noodle salads and cold soups and skewered shrimp — was more urbane and elegant than what we’d been eating in suburban Philadelphia… [Julee] Rosso and [Sheila] Lukins had begun to take labor-intensive methods and high-quality ingredients consumed by fancier people than we and translate them from the original “unattainable” into the modern “practical.”

While the recipes themselves are on the kitschy side (Flank Steak Mosiac, anyone?), it is fun to think about how exciting Pork and Fruit Ragout or Asparagus Strudel might've been to a home cook accustomed to Betty Crocker. It doesn't strike me as the type of cookbook I would ever use regularly, but paging through it reveals loads of recipes that might come in handy the next time I'm called upon to impersonate a grown-up at a dinner party ("Oh, the autumn duck salad with green beans? Just a little something I whipped up...").

While I did not give The Silver Palate Cookbook the respect it deserved, the arrival of Stephane Renaud's Pork and Sons was cause for a minor food nerd-out. Published by Phaidon, Pork and Sons is covered in pink plaid vinyl, illustrated with whimsical line drawings of pigs, and full of pork dishs so lasciviously photographed that they make me a little uncomfortable. The book won the 2005 French Gourmand cookbook award, and has only recently been available in translation in the US. Renaud covers every imaginable use of the pig, from snout to trotter, as well as providing a scrapbook-style introduction to the people who work at his family farm and the behind-the-scenes of pig farming. Amazon's got it listed at about $26 right now, which is a freaking steal: Not only is it basically a pork lover's Bible, but its a charming read, and pretty enough to double as a coffee table book (Honestly, it makes me nervous having such a gorgeous cookbook anywhere near my kitchen).