Category Archives: Books
Inspiration in Ink: The Kitchn Cookbook
If you are a home cook, you can easily find a treasure trove of quality recipes and other cooking information on the internet. For some, it raises the question of whether cookbooks have outlived their usefulness. The question is doubly perplexing when authors of popular websites and blogs publish cookbooks that repurpose some of the material already available (for free) on-line.
As a bona fide cookbook addict who enjoys sitting unplugged to peruse the pages of a book, I haven’t bought into this general argument. Enjoying cookbooks doesn’t take away from my enjoyment of browsing websites, and The Kitchn website is top-notch with bountiful new content published daily. I am a faithful follower and can easily get absorbed in reading the posts for hours. So, I was curious to see how the authors (and editors of the website), Sara Kate GIllingham and Faith Durand, translated this long-running website to print in The Kitchn Cookbook, released in October 2014.
The Kitchn Cookbook would more aptly be named The Kitchn “guidebook” or “handbook”. While the book includes recipes, they cover less than half of its pages. Cooking is at the core of the book’s theme, motivating you to enjoy cooking at home. but it offers so much more.
The key message presented is encouragement to transform your kitchen into a place where you enjoy spending time and cooking. Creating a comfortable environment does not require an expensive renovation or remodeling job. It is presented as an achievable project for anyone, homeowner or renter, novice or experienced cook, by focusing on beauty and function in your kitchen.
The first part of the book provides practical ideas to help you set up your kitchen to enjoy spending time there and to put you in the mood to cook while you’re there. There is no one definition for a perfect kitchen. Your perfect kitchen is unique to you. In fact, what makes your kitchen perfect for you today tends to evolve over time, so the authors encourage you to embrace the continuous process.
Highlights from the first part of the book include a daily cleaning plan for a constantly clean kitchen, recommendations for environmentally friendly cleaning products along with some DIY recipes, and photo shoots in ten different home kitchens for inspiration.
The second part of the book shifts its focus to cooking. The same thread about personalization now extends from where you cook to what you cook. The book encourages you to cook wholesome homemade food as you define it at home more often.
Before jumping into recipes, there’s a chapter on stocking the pantry and planning meals. The properly stocked pantry depends on what you enjoy cooking, but guidelines are suggested with ideas of staples to keep on hand so you can cook spontaneously even when you don’t have much fresh food in the house. With all the potential landmines about which foods are nutritionally or politically correct to eat, I appreciated the reminder that, when making buying decisions, only you can prioritize and choose the compromises and tradeoffs that are right for you.
There is also chapter that presents a mini cooking school with 50 essential skills for cooking at home. Even an experienced cook can get a quick refresher course and maybe learn something new. For example, did you know you can caramelize onions in the slow cooker overnight?
Finally, the recipes start, not quite halfway through the book. About a hundred recipes are included. Some are reader favorites from the website, but there are some new ones as well. All seem accessible for any level of cooking expertise. I found many appealing flavor and ingredient combinations plus new techniques that I’m inspired to try. Top contenders for my “make this soon” list include (by section):
Morning
- Kale and Gruyere Breakfast Strata with Smoky Tomato Sauce
- Sweet Potato and Caramelized Onion Hash with Baked Eggs
Small Bites
- Roasted Chickpeas with Dukkah
- Three Tuscan Crostini
Drinks
- Pure Mexican Margaritas
- Sparkling Peach Sangria
Main Dishes
- Roasted Chicken Thighs and Squash over Polenta
- Slow Cooker Carnitas
- Baked Brown Rice, Lentils and Cauliflower with Cucumber Yogurt Sauce
Sides & Salads
- Fennel and Radicchio Salad with Farro and Pecans
- Roasted Brussels Sprouts, Cauliflower, and Radishes with Garlic Aioli
Desserts
- Meyer Lemon Bars
- Jam Hand Pies
The final chapter in the book, called “Gathering”, pulls everything together. Sharing meals is a form of sacred offering to people we care about. It’s something we should do often and not stress over. Becoming comfortable in your kitchen is the first step to enjoying yourself. The chapter shares advice for hosting worry-free gatherings and simple tips for decorating the table.
Taken as a whole, this book intends to boost the confidence of the home cook by always emphasizing that there is no right way to set up your kitchen, no right way to cook and no right foods to buy. It is all very personal. The book wants to help people feel comfortable cooking at home on a daily basis. This comes from setting up your kitchen, choosing kitchen tools, and stocking your pantry to work for you to cook what you like to cook. Even the most experienced cook can benefit from these reminders.
Now back to the question of book vs. website. This specific website has been on-line for nearly a decade. That’s a lot of content. I think the writing of this book provided an opportunity for the authors to compile, curate, and distill the best of the site’s material with the addition of new observations and reflections for a cohesive narrative that provides inspiration any time. Ideas and tips from readers and staff of the website are scattered throughout the book, bringing in voices from TheKitchn community to add to the authors’. As I mentioned before, I’m already a fan of TheKitchen website. After reading the book where their positive, encouraging philosophy is clearly spelled out, I now understand what has subconsciously kept me coming back for more.
A Plateful of Happiness Rating: 4 plates (out of 5)
Disclosure: I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review. The opinions expressed are my own.
Inspiration in Ink: A Kitchen in France
For an armchair traveler like me, Mimi Thorisson’s A Kitchen in France: A Year of Cooking in My Farmhouse transported me to another place. The book as a whole, Mimi’s recipes together with the photographs taken by the author’s husband Oddur Thorisson, offers a glimpse into their world of family, friends, dogs, food, home, and the French countryside in Médoc.
Médoc is a wine-producing district in the Bordeaux region in Southwestern France on a peninsula between the Atlantic Ocean and the Gironde estuary, just north of the city of Bordeaux. Thorisson describes it as the “anti-Provence”, considered off the beaten track even from the French.
For those not familiar with Mimi Thorisson, she writes the blog Manger, where she shares her version of French home cooking and her family’s life in rural France. No country bumpkin, she and her family chose to relocate to this region from Paris. In April 2013, Saveur magazine named this gem the Best Regional Food Blog.
Mimi Thorisson’s approach to cooking is to savor what’s in season and to transform the best ingredients in simple ways. The book is organized by season, starting from the rebirth associated with Spring and working its way through Summer and Autumn before reaching Winter with its instinct for comfort and nesting. Each season opens with an essay sharing thoughts about food treasures she values at that time of year, whether grown in her garden, purchased at the market, or foraged near her home. Her story continues to unfold through the headnotes accompanying each recipe, sharing the provenance of the recipes from her kitchen.
Thorisson has a deep connection to France. Though she grew up in Hong Kong, she spent summers in France with her grandmother and great-aunt where she learned to cook and appreciate seasonal local ingredients.
The recipes in this book cover a broad range of French home cooking, from everyday fare such as simple roasted potatoes to special occasion dishes such as bouillabaise. Many of the main course recipes won’t be easily accessible to the typical American home cook because they call for unfamiliar meats that will require a trip to the butcher. For those with an intrepid palate and access to specialized ingredients like poussin, guinea hen, squab, quail, snails, beef cheeks, sweetbread, and oxtail, uncomplicated recipes to prepare them are on offer. That said, this book has something for everyone. There are plenty of other recipes for starters, side dishes, and desserts that are similarly uncomplicated and use seasonal ingredients that should be readily available to any home cook.
At the end of the book, there is an unexpected group of recipes to celebrate Chinese New Year. These recipes are not out of place in this French cookbook because they reflect the author’s heritage (her father is Chinese) and just as she honors and celebrates the culinary heritage of her French mother’s family, she gives equal respect to her father’s Chinese roots as she passes down the traditions of the Chinese New Year celebration.
By season, these are the recipes I’m tempted to try first:
Spring
- My Aunt Francine’s Fava Bean Soup
- Onion Tart
- Roast Chicken with Crème Fraîche and Herbs
- Roast Lamb Shoulder with Garlic Cream Sauce
Summer
- Tomato Tart
- Tuna Rillettes
- Almond Mussels
- Peach and Cherry Papillotes
Autumn
- Potatoes à la Lyonnaise
- Butternut Gratin
- Apple Tart with Orange Flower Water
- Galette Pérougienne
Winter
- Winter Vegetable Cocotte
- Garlic Soup
- Roasted Sausages with Red Wine and Fennel
- Kouign Amann
This book can be equally at home in the kitchen or on the coffee table. As a cookbook, it is a compilation of recipes, but the gorgeous photos provide a temporary visit to the Thorisson home in the Médoc without leaving your couch.
A Plateful of Happiness Rating: 4 plates (out of 5)
Disclosure: I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review. The opinions expressed are my own.
A Plateful of Happiness 