10 Books that Make Small Space Summer Cooking Possible

Apartment Gardening, by Amy Pennington
Summer flavors mean lots of fresh vegetables and fruits—but getting really fresh stuff in the city can be a chore. Unless you cut out the middle man and just grow your own. Pennington offers a practical guide to growing your own crops in whatever open space you have at your disposal, from windowboxes in your kitchen to community garden spaces or more creative outdoor space, like growing corn in a parking strip. If you want to have something to work with when you get your indoor grilling station set up, Pennington will get you there in fine style.

The Edible Balcony, by Alex Mitchell
People think that to have a functioning garden that can actually put food on your plate you need a ton of open space, but Mitchell shows you otherwise. All you need is some kind of outdoor space—even the smallest balcony can be transformed into a thriving garden providing fresh ingredients for your cooking. Mitchell sets you up with all the knowledge and techniques you need to fill your scrap of fresh air—whether a balcony, terrace, fire escape, or roof garden—with delicious options for creative cooking in a small home.

Fresh Food from Small Spaces: The Square-Inch Gardener’s Guide to Year-Round Growing, Fermenting, and Sprouting, by R.J. Ruppenthal
What do you do if your small urban space doesn’t offer much outdoor space? Or space at all? Ruppenthal is a self-taught gardener who offers a wealth of knowledge about how to grow food in literally every scrap of space in your home, under any conditions. This sustainable, eco-friendly approach means your entire apartment, no matter how small, can be transformed into a productive gardening space that will give you the raw materials you need for great summer meals—and winter meals, too, for that matter. With serious, easy-to-follow information regarding light, watering, containers, and soil, this book answers all the questions you might have.
Basics

George Foreman’s Indoor Grilling Made Easy, by George Foreman, with Kathryn Kellinger
Start with the champion of indoor grilling: George Foreman has sold tens of millions of his eponymous indoor grilling appliance, and with this book offers over 100 recipes designed to get the most out of it—grilling up a storm without once going outside. If you want to get grill flavor without setting off the fire alarms, this book is your go-to choice. Not only does it detail plenty of simple meals that can be grilled indoors, but it also offers a ton of great advice on indoor grilling in general, which is also helpful for small-space cooking.

125 Best Indoor Grill Recipes, by Ilana Simon
Once you’ve got an indoor grill or a small fire escape grill set up and ready to go, you’ll need ideas. Simon’s collection is specifically designed for indoor grilling, with each recipe tweaked to get the full outdoor grill experience even if you’re working in your small urban cooking space instead of sweating over a gas-powered behemoth in a big backyard. The amazing thing about this recipe book isn’t that it’s designed for indoor grilling, but that the dishes are so diverse and complex, ranging from fried chicken (yes!) to souvlaki with tzaziki sauce—all done indoors.

Indoor! Grilling, by Steven Raichlen
Whether you’re working on a Foreman grill, a stovetop, or even a fireplace, cooking writer and host Raichlen offers up a ton of recipes that get the most out of your indoor grilling station. Raichlen offers plenty of outside-the-box ideas, including things like fireplace rotisserie chicken and desserts involving grilled fruits and sauces, all made (and enjoyed, of course) indoors. With nearly 300 recipes, you won’t need to look too hard to find something that you can make right now, today, without ever leaving the house.
Inspiration

7×7 Cooking: The Art of Cooking in a Small Kitchen, by Hope Korenstein
Small space living is the standard in many urban areas, and that means your kitchen might seem like an afterthought, with a tiny scrap of countertop, an oven that seems better suited to be extra shoe storage than a usable cooking device, and a distinct lack of a dishwasher. Korenstein offers up a step-by-step guide to making that tiny kitchen into a humming dynamo of culinary greatness. Organized by course and category, Korenstein predicates every recipe on the assumption that you can’t open your fridge and your oven at the same time, and shows you that no matter how small your space, your cooking can be grand.

Julie and Julia, by Julie Powell
For inspiration, look no further than Julie Powell, who famously resolved to cook every recipe in Julia Child’s classic cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking. 524 recipes in the classic French style is daunting enough, but the fact that she undertook this in a tiny apartment kitchen is all the more amazing. Anyone who looks over their own small urban cooking space and thinks they’re doomed to a summer of pizza and Chinese take out should read this and get inspired.

66 Square Feet: A Delicious Life, by Marie Viljoen
Viljoen isn’t just offering recipes and guidelines, she’s offering real-life experience making meals using the ingredients she finds in New York City—but mainly the ones she grows on her 66 square-foot terrace in Brooklyn. If you think cooking fresh and summery is going to see you going back and forth to a million stores hunting down ingredients, think again: Viljoen is plucking food right from her own terrace and whipping it up into amazing meals—and this book proves you can, too.

The Little Paris Kitchen, by Rachel Khoo
French cooking was once the standard for fine dining around the world, and remains an intimidating prospect for many people—especially people who don’t have a huge space to work in. Khoo, a cooking celebrity living the cook’s dream, breaks down classic French recipes into simple, straightforward instructions designed to mimic the approach of actual French folks who cooked these dishes not in sparkling restaurant kitchens but their own more humble spaces. If you’ve got a kitchen that looks like it was designed for dolls, this book will show you that cooking complex, amazing French-style food is 100% within your grasp.
What small space cookbooks have helped you make the most out of apartment living?