Garlic, Olive Oil + Everything Mediterranean: Simple Recipes for the Home Cook

With her debut cookbook, Lia, whose digital platform Daen’s Kitchen is wildly popular, stays true to her culinary roots by championing traditional Mediterranean dishes with a dash of Australia thrown in for good measure. Focusing on six simple ingredients—olive oil, garlic, butter, bread, crumbs, and eggs—the recipes range from building-block items (garlic confit, basil oil, mom’s famous bread crumbs) to full dishes, such as onion and goat cheese galette and pesto Genovese with ricotta gnocchi. The cookbook’s recipe formatting is especially praiseworthy, with warm and personable headnotes and an easy-to-read layout that encourages new cooks to follow along with Lia, who frequently includes helpful tips and “used in” notes, which indicates what other dishes in the cookbook employ that recipe. Generously sprinkled throughout are bits of Lia’s own hard-earned kitchen wisdom, such as creating an extra-creamy egg salad by separating hard-boiled egg yolks from the whites and then mixing them into mayonnaise.