11 Cookbooks to Buy on Amazon Prime Day

Happy Amazon Prime Day, aka the day you will join Prime for a trial membership to get major deals on all the stuff you absolutely 100 percent definitely need because it is on sale! And the sale is one day only! Are you hyped?! Today is the day to drop $700 on a Segway miniPRO (a 46 percent savings), $80 on a hammock (so relaxing), $15 on a game about exploding kittens (sure), and get a good deal on any and all Amazon-made electronics.

Amidst all the junk, there are some real finds for cookbook lovers. Amazon Prime Day looks especially appealing for shoppers looking to round out their California-inspired collection, with books on sale from the Tartine empire in San Francisco and from essential Los Angeles restaurants like Gjelina and Huckleberry. You want to cook lovely plates of vegetables and bake beautiful breads and pastries, so without further ado, the best Prime Day deals for cookbook lovers:

Plenty: Vibrant Vegetable Recipes from London's Ottolenghi by Yotam Ottolenghi

This best-selling cookbook catapulted London chef Yotam Ottolenghi's rise to fame in the U.S. In this book, Ottolenghi focuses only on vegetarian recipes, all with the "unfussy, vegetable-heavy dishes, popping with herbs and color" Ottolenghi is known for. The book is beautifully photographed by Jonathan Lovekin, Ottolenghi's preferred collaborator. Ottolenghi told Eater: "We don't work with a food stylist. It's just the two of us. We just put the food on the plate. I have a very strong vision and Jonathan understands it and affects it in his way. For me, the food needs to look very natural. People have very different understandings of the word 'natural,' but for me it means dealt with as little as possible. It needs to feel completely as it is when it's cooked at home."

Gjelina: Cooking from Venice, California by Travis Lett

"This scene — communal, rustic, aesthetically pleasing, vegetable-heavy dining — is happening everywhere, but its definitive interpretation, maybe its originator, plays out daily at Gjelina, a small restaurant in Los Angeles's Venice neighborhood," writes Eater's Meghan McCarron in her review of Gjelina. Chronicling the vegetable-heavy recipes from one of the most essential Los Angeles restaurants today, Gjelina is surprisingly devoid of scenes from its much-hyped front of house, a bustling dining room full of beautiful people eating gorgeous food. Instead, "this book is not the story of Gjelina from the diner's perspective; rather, it's a portrait of the restaurant as seen by its cooks," McCarron writes. And with that perspective comes true restaurant cooking. "About that seemingly humble food: re-creating it at home requires a lot of free time and a lot of hard work. Vegetable-driven small plates might have readers (and publishers) seeing shades of Ottolenghi, but Gjelina is first and foremost a restaurant cookbook."

Curious George Makes Pancakes by Margaret Rey

Technically not a cookbook, but definitely adorable. What will this little monkey get into next?

Tartine by Chad Robertson and Elizabeth Prueitt

The first cookbook from San Francisco carb temple Tartine celebrates its 10th anniversary next month. In it, Tartine's Chad Robertson and Elizabeth Prueitt created a bible of desserts and pastry — including recipes for Tartine's famous croissants, plus lemon bars, pecan maple pie, banana cream pie, plenty of Bavarian-style cakes, brioche bread pudding, and much more. To note: This is not necessarily a beginner's baking tome, but anyone wishing to level up would do well to learn from Robertson and Prueitt.

Tartine Bread by Chad Robertson

The bread-focused follow-up to Tartine's first cookbook, this cookbook inspired an internet following, with bread lovers reaching out to Robertson to get technical advice to up their at-home bread game. Along with its pastries, Tartine is also famous for its bread, so consider this cookbook an essential in that field.

Tartine Book No. 3: Modern Ancient Classic Whole by Chad Robertson

In her first look at Tartine Book No. 3 for Eater, Paula Forbes writes, "the amount of information in the book is almost overwhelming. This is doctoral level bread nerdery: If making regular old refined-flour breads is not enough for you, Robertson has recipes for everything from sprouted purple barley loaves to buckwheat-nori crispbreads to sprouted emmer bread flavored with maple and beer. There's even a pastry section in which Robertson offers recipes for rye gougeres, spelt puff pastry dough, and a buckwheat, bergamot, and blood orange chiffon layer cake... For the ultimate bread dork, there's really nothing else out there that digs this deeply into the topic."

Bar Tartine by Courtney Burns and Nick Balla

Named one of Eater's most essential cookbooks of 2014, this "stunner of a book explains two halves of Bar Tartine's kitchen: the first half shows you how to make the fermentations and powders and spices and pickles that make up the San Francisco restaurant's pantry, while the second is comprised of recipes that use these items," writes Forbes. "The food itself has a lighter, Japanese-influenced take on Eastern European flavors that often places vegetables front and center. If you're looking for a restaurant book you'll actually take into the kitchen, this is the one."

Paula Forbes/Eater

Huckleberry: Stories, Secrets, and Recipes From Our Kitchen by Zoe Nathan

"It's a book from a home baker-turned-professional baker who rediscovered the joys of baking in her home kitchen after she started a family," writes Daniela Galarza in her preview of the book for Eater. To that end, there's a veracity to the book that is often missing from baking-focused titled. "Zoe Nathan doesn't cut perfect circles of parchment to line her cake pans. She doesn't meticulously crimp the edge of every pie shell, and she sure as hell doesn't throw out the slightly misshapen biscuit that slid over to the edge of the pan. 'I didn't want another bakery book with girls in cute aprons who look really attractive,' [says Nathan]. I wanted people to understand that we get burnt just as much as anyone else in the kitchen and we work hard and we get paid just as little. I wanted it to be real. I think there's this fairy dust image of bakeries and women and being the hostess — and it's not me and it's kind of shitty and I wanted to make a book that was the real deal.'"

Bonus! Here a few "lightning deal" books, Prime members-only flash sales. If you want these titles, better hurry:

My Kitchen Year: 136 Recipes That Saved My Life by Ruth Reichl
Down to $15.43 from $21.92 for Prime members till 2:20 p.m. EST

Modernist Cuisine at Home by Nathan Myhrvold and Maxime Billet
Down to $78.75 from $105 for Prime members till 2:54 p.m. EST

More Mexican Everyday: Simple, Seasonal, Celebratory by Rick Bayless
Down to $18.64 from $23.44 for Prime members till 4:44 p.m. EST

Make the Perfect Ice Cream at Home