Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, an erstwhile chef turned British food journalist turned gentleman farmer, is a man running himself ragged—nearly demented—in the pursuit of good meat. According to Fearnley-Whittingstall in his River Cottage Meat Book, meat ain’t good unless it lives good, dies good, and tastes good. The book is a fulminating diatribe on the specific evils of industrial meat, a stimulating treatise on butchering and preparing proper meat, and a mouthwatering succession of dishes to attempt once your conscience is at ease.

Fergus Henderson is the global daddy of glorifying off-cuts—hero to such successors as Martin Picard, Mario Batali, Chris Cosentino, and Tony Bourdain—and he returns with more recipes in Beyond Nose to Tail, his follow-up to Nose to Tail Eating: A Kind of British Cooking. For Henderson (Fearnley-Whittingstall would certainly agree), one way to respect an animal is using all of it, and just a little love is needed to turn pig tails, ears, brain and hearts into vittles succulent and triumphant. What’s most surprising is how well he succeeds.

Less political, perhaps, but no less pleasurable, is Simon Hopkinson’s Roast Chicken and Other Stories. It’s hard to decide what’s more appealing: the engaging recipes, the little essays that couch them, or the smells and taste of the final product.  Hopkinson picks his forty favorite ingredients—among them anchovy, cream, grouse, leeks, Parmesan, saffron, tomatoes and tripe—and conjures up recipes that start smelling good to me as soon as I start reading them. The recipes are super simple and often require only a trip to the pantry, or to one specialty store, to complete. “Good cooking, in the final analysis, depends on two things: common sense and good taste.” Hopkinson says on opening the book. Taste is subjective, but oeufs en meurette, anchovy and onion tarts, and dark, bitter chocolate pots sound good as gold to me.