Chicago chefs have been quite the literary bunch this year.

Forget the blogs. We're talking books and book deals, people (some more of a done deal than others).

Grant Achatz's memoir is due out in March. Phillip Foss is shopping his around. Former Aja chef Joshua Linton reportedly has penned a cookbook. Mana Food Bar chef Jill Barron told me last month she's got an idea for a veggie cookbook stewing.

The latest (and firmly in the done deal camp): Paul "Mr. Preserves" Virant of Vie in Western Springs, who is in the throes of recipe testing for a book on canning.

"It's as if the Ball Blue Book was overhauled by a chef with a penchant for making aigre doux and unexpected variations on sauerkraut," writes Virant's co-author Kate Leahy on her blog, A Modern Meal Maker.

The book, to be published by Ten Speed Press, will take a two-pronged approach: how to make preserves, and then how to incorporate said preserves into meals.

Virant offered his expertise and recipes for our story last year on rustling up some canning courage, pulling out a tattered notebook full of recipes during writer Jennifer Olvera's time in his kitchen. The cookbook will include recipes from that notebook, says Leahy.

The book is slated for a spring/summer 2012 release.