If winter cuisine is about comfort food, spring is about minimalism – simple, quick preparations that allow the season’s fresh ingredients to shine through. A new crop of cookbooks offers a wealth of recipes that show off spring’s bounty to its best advantage.

“Uncooked,” by Lyndsay and Patrick Mikanowski (Flammarion, 174 pages, $45), may present the starkest take on the minimalist theme: All of its recipes are for completely raw dishes. Thankfully, this doesn’t mean pages of those time-consuming, uncooked “bread” recipes often contained in cookbooks dedicated to the “raw-food revolution,” in which foods can only be heated to a certain temperature; these recipes showcase raw fresh fruits, vegetables, and more ambitiously, uncooked (but in some cases cured) fish, meat, and poultry. These dishes often contain surprising and unusual flavor combinations, as in “tomato and watermelon salad,” “fruit sandwich with tuna,” and “soy rolled in langoustine carpaccio with soy and passion-fruit milk,” but the enticing color pictures accompanying the recipes are enough to convince most skeptics. Many of the book’s recipes call for ingredients that those who don’t live next door to a farmer’s market may find hard to track down, however: Items like Borage flower, purslane leaves, shiso leaves, bottarga, marsh samphire, Green Zebra tomatoes, and beet sprouts may be unfamiliar and unavailable to many home cooks, and the book’s authors rarely list acceptable substitutes. Furthermore, kitchen tools such as a mandoline and a vegetable mill are necessary for many of the recipes, which require vegetables to be shaved or sliced into razor-thin strips. And not every home cook will be willing to experiment with home-cured duck, raw egg yolk, and uncooked veal carpaccio. But those who do try some of the book’s innovative preparations are likely to be happily surprised by the results.

“The Instant Cook” (Fourth Estate, 192 pages, $34.95), by Donna May, who has been dubbed Australia’s Martha Stewart, features cooked, not raw, food, but focuses on dishes that are quick, straightforward, and simple to prepare – perfect for spring meals. Many of the dishes contain Asian flavors and accents, as in “prawn, lemongrass, and coconut soup,” “sesame chicken salad,” “lime and coconut chicken rice,” and “Thai lime and lemongrass chicken,” illustrating ways in which Asian ingredients can quickly add zest to basic meals. At the end of each chapter, Ms. May presents shortcuts, offering time-saving tips and techniques.

“It’s About Time: Great Recipes for Everyday Life” (Steerforth Press, 240 pages, $35), the first cookbook by Michael Schlow, the executive chef of the popular Boston restaurants Radius, Via Matta, and Great Bay, focuses on the question of time in cooking, and divides his recipes according to the amount of time the cook wants to spend over the stove, the time of year, or the occasion in question. As one would expect from a Boston chef, many of the standouts include fresh fish and seafood, such as “roasted halibut with asparagus and morels,” “Maine crab tart with cucumber, cilantro, and broken cumin vinaigrette,” and “New England shellfish salad with spicy gazpacho water.” Busy home cooks will want to turn straight to the chapter titled “Time To Eat and Now: Dishes That Can Be on the Table in 30 Minutes or Less.”