4 summer cookbooks to fuel your culinary imagination

The warm weather is nearly here, meaning it's time for backyard barbecues and summer entertaining. But what should you cook?

On the Coast food columnist Anya Levykh offers inspiration, in the form of this year's best Canadian cookbooks — sure to fuel your culinary imagination.

Seven Spoons by Tara O'Brady 

Based on O'Brady's popular Seven Spoons blog, this book offers up quite a few vegan and vegetarian dishes.

The recipes travel the world, and have interesting takes on classics, like baked eggs north Indian-style, or roasted peaches with glazed sesame oats.

The book utilizes local, seasonal ingredients and the recipes range from extremely easy to moderately difficult, so most home cooks would have no problem with this book.

The Deerholme Foraging Cookbook by Bill Jones

Jones is a renowned chef and owner of Deerholme Farm in the Cowichan Valley on Vancouver Island, where he offers classes and tours for those wanting to learn more about foraging and cooking wild ingredients like mushrooms, truffles and other edible plants.

The cookbook gives you a brief introduction to foraging and teaches you how to build and maintain a wild foods pantry. 

The SoBo Cookbook by Lisa Ahier

SoBo is a popular restaurant in Tofino, started by wife and husband team Lisa and Artie Ahier as a food truck back in 2003.

The recipes in the book are based on what they've served at the food truck and restaurant over the years, like their killer fish tacos with fresh fruit salsa, or their soy-marinated chicken thighs with housemade roti and root vegetable slaw.

The Boreal Feast by Michelle Genest

This book focuses on foods around the Arctic circle, including countries like Norway, Finland, Russia and Sweden, as well as Canada. The recipes focus on northern ingredients like spruce tips, coho salmon, birch syrup and cloudberries.

To hear the full interview with food columnist Anya Levykh, listen to the audio labelled Summer cookbooks.