Some people read novels at bedtime. I read cookbooks. The last 30 minutes before I fall asleep is spent mmm-ing over glossy photos of glistening barbecued ribs and luxurious chocolate tarts. I read through recipes, roll the sound of unfamiliar ingredients around on my tongue, and fantasize about one day having time to really cook.

By day, I plop frozen dumplings into boiling water. But as I drift off at night, I see myself making jiaozi from scratch, spatchcocking chickens, and stirring crème anglaise. Reading about food is a pleasure unto itself—even if that pleasure is never consummated in the kitchen.

With the heft of an atlas, Beyond the Great Wall: Recipes and Travels in the Other China (Random House, $70) isn’t comfortable bedtime reading, but it’s worth the laptop weight. The book is written by Hot Sour Salty Sweet authors Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid, who have travelled extensively in China. The title refers to the outlying regions of the country—Tibet, Xinjiang, Qinghai, and Inner Mongolia—home to many who are not ethnically Han Chinese.

Groups such as the Mongols, Miao, and Dong have their own distinct cultures and food traditions that fall outside the Beijing-Shanghai culinary spotlight. As the authors note, the book is not only about food “but also cultural survival and the preservation of food and culture in smaller societies faced with the impact of a giant at the doorstep”.

Rich with excellent photos and bite-sized travelogues, Beyond the Great Wall walks with nomads through rugged, windswept plains and follows hill-tribe people into mountain markets. Recipes consist mostly of peasant fare such as Kazakh sprout-and-cabbage salad and hand-rolled noodles. 

Although simple ingredients with time-consuming preparations may not inspire you to replicate these dishes, reading about them in a cultural context connects you to a fascinating world.

Beijing, of course, is the city of the moment, and that’s where Serve the People: A Stir-Fried Journey Through China (Harcourt, $26.95) starts off. Chinese American author Jen Lin-Liu lives there and wants to learn to cook well enough to throw a decent dinner party. So she enrolls herself in a local cooking school and dives into culture shock, taking on peers who cheat on exams and a national love-in with MSG.

Written like a novel, the book is funny and engaging, with insights into contemporary life in Beijing. Lin-Liu goes on to work at a noodle stall and do an internship at a high-end Shanghai restaurant. The people she meets along the way put a personal face on Chinese history and culture. Many sections are punctuated by recipes, so after we read about Lin-Liu’s struggle to turn out satisfactory deep-fried shrimp, we can (theoretically) have a go at it ourselves.

For bedtime reading that’s liable to give you nightmares, delve into Taras Grescoe’s Bottomfeeder: How to Eat Ethically in a World of Vanishing Seafood (HarperCollins, $29.95). Grescoe paints a grim picture of the world’s depleted oceans, unsustainable fishing practices, and the health risks of eating certain fish. He travels to India, England, Halifax, and B.C. investigating who lands our fish and how.

Grescoe makes a compelling case for us all to stop eating at the top of the ocean’s food chain—to stop consuming big fish like bluefin tuna, for example, which is not only endangered but is also high in mercury—and become “bottomfeeders”. That means eating fish such as sardines, which is better for the environment and for our health. He says we needn’t cut out fish entirely, just “get informed and eat sensibly”.

The problem, Grescoe writes, is that unethical marketing, inadequate labelling laws, and uninformed wait staff and salespeople make it difficult for consumers to make those smart choices. Then there’s “fish fraud”, in which restaurants pass off one type of fish for another—such as cheaper, unsustainable monkfish tail for lobster tail.

But Grescoe emphasizes that in the end, every bit of awareness counts: “if we can give the oceans even a bit of a break, there is hope for the future.”

There’s no fish—and nothing too serious—in Summer Gatherings: Casual Food to Enjoy With Family and Friends (William Morrow, $19.25). Part of Rick Rodgers’s series of seasonal cookbooks, Summer Gatherings is a breezy, easy read.

Recipes take their inspiration from seasonal produce; if you don’t know what to do with squash blossoms, for example, this is the place to turn. Text is short, colourful, and well laid-out. Offerings include an heirloom tomato and cheese tart; a watermelon, tomato, and mint salad; and corn hotcakes with blackberry syrup. Best of all, the recipes are unfussy and straightforward, usually requiring only 15 to 30 minutes prep time.

That’s something I’ll bend a page back for before I fall asleep. In fact, Summer Gatherings might actually see the light of day.