Top Chef Fans Get Ready!

It's almost that time again: time for a new season of Top Chef, that is! Weed, August 19, season six begins in Sin City!

I am so excited. I love Top Chef, and there are some new and upcoming cookbooks that all Top Chef fans need to add to their collections.

First up, last season's Fabio has put out his own cookbook Cafe Firenze Cookbook hit shelves earlier this month. This is the first I've seen of it, so here's some info from Amazon:

Cafe Firenze Cookbook celebrates the best of Italian cuisine, coupling gourmet recipes by Top Chef Season 5 fan favorite Fabio Viviani with martini recipes by award-winning mixologist Jacopo Falleni. Viviani's recipes--the same that made him a top contender in the most popular cooking show currently on television--are healthy, easy to prepare, and incredibly tasty, and each one is paired with one of Falleni's fabulous and completely original drink recipes. Each chapter covers a different type of recipe (appetizers, pasta, fish, meat, and desserts), and each begins with Viviani's personal background with each type of food and contains anecdotes, history, garnish instructions, and tips for buying ingredients.

Friends since the age of twelve in Florence, Italy, Viviani and Falleni are business partners in their popular Ventura county restaurant, Cafe Firenze Restaurant and Martini Bar, which brings Tuscan dishes and Florentine flair to Southern California. This incredible book of their authentic recipes from their home country will delight all Fabio Viviani's followers and fans, as well as anyone interested in Italian cuisine. Includes beautiful four-color photography by Antonio Busiello, whose work has appeared everywhere from National Geographicto Animal Planet, and a foreword by William Shatner, one of Viviani's biggest fans.

There's also a new Top Chef cookbook coming next month. It's the Top Chef: The Quickfire Cookbook and features quickfire recipes from the first 5 seasons. Here's the info from Chronicle Books:

Top Chef: The Quickfire Cookbook -- The much-anticipated follow-up to the New York Times best-selling Top Chef: The Cookbook is here! Drawing from all 5 seasons of the show, Top Chef: The Quickfire Cookbook features 75 of the best recipes—from Spike's Pizza alla Greek to Stephanie's Bittersweet Chocolate Cake—culled from the Top Chef Quickfire Challenges. Everything the home chef needs to assemble an impressive meal and channel the energy of the Quickfire kitchen is collected here, including advice on hosting a Quickfire Cocktail Party and staging Quickfire Challenges at home. Best of all, this book is spilling over with sidebar material, including tips for home chefs, interviews with contestants, fabulous photos, and fun trivia related to the chefs, dishes, and ingredients that make Top Chef a favorite.

For more Top Chef fun, check out the official Bravo site for season 6. And, as an added bonus, Carla Hall (also from last season) shares some clean eating favorites with Clean Eating magazine (Sept/Oct ed).