Mosquito Supper Club: Cajun Recipes from a Disappearing Bayou -- lots of recipes are expensive if you can't get cheap shrimp/oysters but none are very difficult and many are amazing and the photos/essays on life in rural south louisiana are great. Twelve Recipes by Cal Peternell is my favorite beginner cookbook.

my recent go-to is Milk Street’s Cook What You Have for practical, everyday stuff! and America’s Test Kitchen for technical reading.

For cook books I’d try Where Cooking Begins, Salt Fat, Acid, Heat, the Gourmet Cookbook and the New Gourmet Cookbook, and Essentials of Italian Cooking. Chess books I like include My 60 Most Memorable Games (Fisher), the Amateur’s Mind, Discovering Chess Openings by Emms, and Dvoretsky’s Endgame Manual.

here, i'll just tell you something i've recently cooked: chop one onion and put it in a large stock pot with a small amount of avocado oil to brown once onions are browned, place 12 bratwursts in the pot and turn stove up to high pour 3 PBR tallboys over the brats shake a liberal amount of chili powder, paprika, garlic powder, and MSG into the pot stir around for 15 minutes remove the brats and place them on the grill enjoy

I’ve been really into Ottolenghi recently - Simple is great, but I’d also highly recommend OTK Shelf Love and Extra Good Things. Happy to suggest specific recipes if anyone’s interested as well :) I also picked up Jerusalem recently, haven’t used it much yet but it looks really good.

I've not read it, but some friends of mine have recommended "Salt Fat Acid Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking". It focuses more on teaching fundamentals than just listing recipes. I've heard "Food Lab" recommended for the same reason as well

Not exactly a cookbook but MFK Fisher's food writing is a must

food lab is good for basics. lately i’ve been enjoying cooking for two from ATK w my gf but my current is food of sichuan by dunlop

My mum used to have a cookbook called "taste it beirut", I don't know if you like Lebanese/Syrian/Palestinian cuisine, but if you do, it's perfect. The only chess book I've ever read is "Masters of the chessboard" by Reti and I thought it was pretty good, admittedly I'm speaking as a complete outsider since I've never really played chess.