Other roast chicken recipes that led me beyond the generally stunning covers of my vast piles of glossy cookbooks include braised quail with leeks, dates and cider from Garden and Gun magazine’s SOUTHERNER’S COOKBOOK: Recipes, Wisdom, and Stories (Harper Wave, $37.50), by David DiBenedetto with Phillip Rhodes and the magazine’s editors. I made the recipe with poussin (no quail to be had) and cooked them in the oven with the lid off — I find the magic of the open braise irresistible. As Magnus Nilsson points out, explaining the method for his classic pot-roasted chicken in THE NORDIC COOKBOOK (Phaidon, $49.95), why braise in a pot on the stove with the lid on? Isn’t it better “to just roast the bird in the oven without the lid to get some crispness on the skin?” Always.

Methods aside, Nilsson’s roast chicken is among the least notable of the recipes in this epic tome, which somehow manages to include what seems to be the whole of traditional and modern cooking from Finland to Greenland. I’m dreaming of his stew of shaved reindeer meat and the puffin stuffed with cake. (Alas, testing these recipes posed certain legal and logistical challenges.)

Crispy poultry skin can be found in abundance on the green tandoori chicken (it’s not a whole bird) from Justin Warner’s THE LAWS OF COOKING AND HOW TO BREAK THEM (Flatiron, $35). He urges you to marinate the chicken pieces for up to two days (if you have the time) and then cook them under the broiler, finishing everything off with a sauce made from the boiled and reduced marinade; it’s an efficient use of ingredients — once thoroughly boiled, a marinade can make a terrific sauce. The recipes in Warner’s book fall under what he calls the “11 laws,” like the law of “peanut butter and jelly” (fat complements sweet) or the law of “coffee, cream and sugar” (bitter complements fat and sweet). I find these categories of limited use, but I do admire his playful attitude and his recipes’ ease of execution. Depending on your tolerance for cuteness, you’ll either hate or appreciate the highlighted kitchen tips and tricks on nearly every page.

If you honestly don’t want to have your meal on the table quickly, most of the recipes in the new chef-driven cookbook from the indomitable Yotam Ottolenghi will keep you in the kitchen all day. Unlike his previous, wildly popular books, NOPI (Ten Speed, $40), written with Ramael Scully and Tara Wigley, is, Ottolenghi stresses, “a restaurant cookbook: it features restaurant food.” The recipes are inherently complex. The twice-cooked baby chicken with chili sauce and kaffir lime leaf salt stays true to the restaurant-food promise. Brave it if you will. I can attest to its flavor and method — a bird poached, brined in its own stock and juices overnight, roasted and then crisped under the broiler. Not unlike the majority of the recipes in the book, it calls for 20 ingredients (some call for 30), but I can’t say they’re not inspired. If you’re seeking something simple to cook from “Nopi,” try the raw brussels sprout nests with oyster mushrooms and quail eggs, the cardamom and clove rice or the whole roasted celery root.

After longingly gazing at the challenging recipes in “Nopi” that you probably don’t have time to cook, turn for relief to the autocrat of simplicity. Seeking more chicken, flipping page after page, I found it easy to fall into dizzy indecision over the options in the aptly titled MARK BITTMAN’S KITCHEN MATRIX (Pam Krauss/Crown, $35). Pass by the chicken breasts nine ways (I refuse to cook breasts) or paillard 10 ways (an inferior cut made worse by pounding). No. Eliminating a braised and roasted chicken nearly identical to Nilsson’s, I settled on chicken parts 12 ways, including Chinese, Greek, Japanese, tandoori and French style, with clams (!), mushrooms and peas, and lime chimichurri (that’s not even all 12 if you’re counting). Be warned: The dizzying array of chicken pictures brought on a less than pleasant flashback to a laminated Denny’s menu teeming with hyper-pigmented glossy photos of increasingly frightening options. Pulling myself together, I settled on lime chimichurri grilled thighs while speculating that cooking and eating quinoa 10 ways might be just punishment for buying chicken at Popeyes. Design flaws aside, Bittman’s book is as practical and sensible as his Thanksgiving leftovers 20 ways. Just don’t stare at one page for too long.

Solid as Bittman’s lime chimichurri sauce is, the chicken harra masala (coriander and mint chicken) in Kumar and Suba Mahadevan’s FROM INDIA: Over 100 Recipes to Celebrate Food, Family and Tradition (Thunder Bay, $29.95) is far more lively, if a bit more challenging. An abundance of green chiles and enough mint for juleps on Derby day make this what I’d call a dinner-party-worthy recipe. For a quick meal, I couldn’t have been happier with the akoori (curried scrambled eggs), and the vellai porrial (cauliflower and coconut) altered my approach to cauliflower in the best possible way. Before you begin cooking, stock up on curry leaves, gingili, asafetida and amchur, among other Tamil pantry staples.