LAURIE’S LIBRARY November 2023
MILK STREET: SIMPLE by The James Beard Award-winning team at Milk Street delivers 200 easy, clever recipes you can just cook: the world’s greatest culinary ideas, distilled to their essence and simplified for weeknight meals. Milk Street has spent years learning from cooks all around the world and applying those lessons to weeknight cooking here at home. This book takes the best of those great culinary ideas and pares them back to their most basic, essential elements. The result is a set of recipes that are genius in their simplicity. Each of these 200 recipes works with just a handful of ingredients and short active cooking time; these dishes are done when you need them, or hands-off so you can let them cook while you do something else. The keys are high-impact ingredients, transformative techniques, powerful flavor combinations, and layers of texture. Milk Street Simple recipes help turn a straightforward bowl of pasta or a head of roasted cauliflower into a delightful meal, with no fuss and recipes that are endlessly flexible. Favorites include: carrot-lime soup with cilantro; pistachio-orange bulgur salad with mint; ziti with sweet peppers, bacon, and paprika; stir-fried black pepper beef; broiled ginger and yogurt shrimp; and meatball traybake with spicy tomato sauce.
GATHERINGS: Casual-Fancy Meals to Share from the expert cooks of America’s Test Kitchen demonstrate how they entertain at home, with 140 recipes from simple to showstopping and airtight planning strategies. It’s time to get excited about entertaining again. The cooks of America’s Test Kitchen are shaking up the notion of what a dinner party is all about, stepping away from the test kitchen to reveal their favorite ways to entertain friends and family and sharing an all-new collection of personal recipes. After all, professional cooks want to chill out when hosting at home, just like everyone else. Each menu maker guides you through their game plan for success, including make-ahead-choices and even when to skip a dish to streamline things. Favorite recipes include: from Dan Souza’s My Maine Even: gin camps, roasted oysters on the half shell with Dijon créme fraiche; Maine-style lobster rolls, house salad; and lime possets with raspberries. YUM!
MIND OVER BATTER: 75 Recipes for Baking as Therapy by Jack Hazan MA, LMHC, a New York City–based psychotherapist and the founder of Modern Therapy Group. He’s also the Chief Baking Officer of JackBakes, whose breads are carried in over 500 physical and online retailers. The book is a self-care cookbook for using baking as therapy, with 75 simple, therapeutic recipes. Inspired by the Syrian and Middle Eastern baked goods he grew up with, along with his take on classic American desserts, recipes are organized into themed chapters based on common life moments and needs. Throughout each chapter are invaluable exercises and “quick sessions” that connect baking processes to the evidence-based therapy tools Jack Hazan uses in his practice every day. Favorite recipes include summer fruit crumble; lime chiffon cake; red velvet cookies with cream cheese glaze; and Middle Eastern rice pudding.
NO MEAT REQUIRED: The Cultural History and Culinary Future of Plant-Based Eating by noted food writer Alicia Kennedy. The vegan diet used to be associated only with eccentric hippies and tofu-loving activists who shop at co-ops and live on compounds. We’ve come a long way since then. Now, fine-dining restaurants like Eleven Madison Park cater to chic upscale clientele with a plant-based menu, and Impossible Whoppers are available at Burger King. But can plant-based food keep its historical anti-capitalist energies if it goes mainstream? And does it need to? In No Meat Required, author Alicia Kennedy chronicles the fascinating history of plant-based eating in the United States, from the early experiments in tempeh production undertaken by the Farm commune in the 70s to the vegan punk cafes and anarchist zines of the 90s to the chefs and food writers seeking to decolonize vegetarian food today. Many people become vegans because they are concerned about the role capitalist food systems play in climate change, inequality, white supremacy, and environmental and cultural degradation. But a world where Walmart sells frozen vegan pizzas and non-dairy pints of ice cream are available at gas stations–raises distinct questions about the meanings and goals of plant-based eating. The author Alicia Kennedy — a vegetarian, former vegan, and once-proprietor of a vegan bakery — understands how to present this history with sympathy, knowledge, and humor. No Meat Required brings much-needed depth and context to our understanding of vegan and vegetarian cuisine, and makes a passionate argument for retaining its radical heart.
ROAST FIGS, SUGAR SNOW: Food to Warm the Soul from critically acclaimed, multi-award-winning author, Diana Henry, a new edition of the hidden gem at the heart of her cookbook repertoire. An irresistible collection of cold-weather recipes that celebrate the unique pleasures of autumn and winter, featuring seven new recipes and a foreword by Nigel Slater. Diana Henry’s classic cookbook, Roast Figs, Sugar Snow, is now revisited, revised, and refreshed nearly 20 years after its first publication, with a new foreword by Nigel Slater and seven new recipes. Full of comforting delights from cold-weather climates, it features recipes gathered from Diana’s travels to Scandinavia, the French and Italian Alps, Scotland, Ireland, and New England. This is irresistible food you’ll cook over and over again. Choose Alpine dishes of melted cheese; autumnal pies and substantial winter salads; pastries from Viennese coffee houses; festive snow biscuits and — closer to home — Diana’s definitive recipe for warming Irish stew. Of course, there is also a recipe for Sugar-on-Snow as well. These recipes will bring warmth to your heart as well as your home. And Diana’s evocative writing about both place and food make this a book well worth reading, as well as cooking from.
A YEAR IN THE KITCHEN: Seasonal Recipes for Everyday Pleasure by Blanche Vaughan, food writer and chef who worked at the River Cafe, Moro and St. John, is the first cookbook from Condé Nast’s premier UK lifestyle magazine, House & Garden, with contributions from an array of well-known chefs and a wealth of gorgeous, aspirational imagery. The author says: “These are the recipes I cook at home, dishes that I turn to throughout the year because they answer a craving for a particular thing to eat at a particular time. The recipes evolved from ideas for what to cook and what I chose to include in the food pages of House & Garden each month: a reflection of our appetites, the food growing then, the weather, how we are living and eating each season.” Favorite recipes include: leek, potato and taleggio galette; asparagus, feta, and dill; Moroccan carrot salad; chicken marinated in pomegranate molasses, yogurt, and spices; and ricotta cake.