Bon Appetit Fast Easy Fresh by Barbara Fairchild

I love this book. It's the companion volume to the new orange Bon Appetit book, and the recipes in here truly are fast, easy, and fresh. They're elegant enough for company, and yet simple enough for everyday eating. By far my favorite thing I made out of this was Red Beet Risotto with Mustard Greens and Goat Cheese. Good Lord it was delicious. And beautiful. I'm kicking myself for not taking a picture of it. Essentially, you make this blood-red colored beet risotto and then top it with uber bright green chopped greens and then goat cheese. The intensity between the white-red-green color combination is not one usually seen in my food, and it was seriously a thing of art. Oh yeah, and it was freaking delicious. The only other time I've had mustard greens and I hated them. They were way too bitter and too...sharp and mustardy. For some reason, when combined with the beets and creamy goat cheese, it becomes the perfect compliment and the thing that really elevates the dish.

Another huge success of a recipe was Spaghetti Ala Carbonara di Zucchine. Unlike most carbonaras, this one has no meat, but it does have the traditional egg-cheese combination. I swear, this is probably one of the easiest things I've ever made and it was mild enough that even the kids ate it!  Also made were Honey-Glazed Oven-Roasted Sweet Potato Wedges, Rosemary Lemon Pinto Beans, and Banana Cake With Sour Cream Frosting. 

Fast, Easy, Fresh is divided up by type of recipe: starters, soups, chicken, fish, breakfasts, etc. Great extra bonuses include a shopping guide that details how and when (seasonally) to shop for fruits, vegetables, meats and fish. It is a definite keeper!

Halfway point reflections and More Recipes From a Kitchen Garden

It's been a while since my last post. I have in fact been cooking. Just not keeping up with the writing portion of things. I suppose I should take a moment to reflect now that it's halfway through the year. My lofty ambitions at the beginning of the year had me thinking this was going to be a nice little one year project. Ha! At the rate I'm going it'll probably take me three years. Ah well, I can't say it hasn't been enjoyable cooking my way through my collection, although it is starting to prove a bit more challenging now that I'm running into more and more specialty cookbooks, which means I might be cooking nothing but cheese or lemons or ice cream for a week. 

My book for today is More Recipes From a Kitchen Garden by Renee Shepherd & Fran Raboff. Lamely, I don't have the prequel to this, Recipes From a Kitchen Garden, but I became enamored with these two when I was working at a plant nursery a number of years back. It's one of those perfect companion books for an avid cook-gardener, and includes recipes for more uncommon ingredients like lemon thyme and scented geraniums. I'm a total sucker for a cookbook like that considering I grow the stuff but haven't the foggiest notion of what to do with it.  I made a couple of soups out of this as I'm also a sucker for soup, and I must say I LOVED the Cauliflower-Brie Soup. Here's a not-very-appetizing picture for you, because, well, my photography skills pale in comparison to my cooking, writing, and gardening skills.

You basically make a cauliflower puree and add hunks of brie that go all melty into the soup. 

I like the organization of this book, as it's clearly done from a gardener's point of view. The recipes are arranged by type of vegetable and include common things like asparagus and potatoes, in addition to more uncommon like kohlrabi and celeraic. I like how it provides a good range so you can stick with something familiar and comfort-foody, or you can branch out and try something new. They also include a great chapter at the end for herbs and edible flowers, with both recipes and also tips on how to make use of some of these extras.

All told, I'll most likely be holding on to this book too as it makes itself a bit of an asset in a cook-gardener's household. It's not easy to track down recipes making use of lavender and viola petals, so why get rid of a good thing when you have it right in front of you? 

The New Crank's Recipe Book by Nadine Abensur

Crank's is apparently one of the UK's top vegetarian restaurants. They've produced a number of books, but I was lucky enough to receive this one after a family member's foray to London. I've never eaten at a Crank's, nor have I ever perused any of their other books. This one was kind of hit or miss for me. For starters, it's a very tightly glued paperback...one of those ones where if you open it too wide, the spine starts to crack and the pages fall out. I hate that! Especially in a cookbook when you know, you kind of have to prop the thing open a lot. However, it does include a few nice color pictures in the middle, which is a huge plus. 

I found some of the recipes a little unaccessible. I'm not sure if it's because something was lost in translastion...it can be a bit like reading a Jamie Oliver book...heavy on the British vernacular, but minus his heavy slang. If you can get past that, i.e. translate it, then you'll find the recipes easier to manage. I believe my favorites of those I made, were Red Onion Soup with Toasted Cheese Floats, and Couscous with Roasted Vegetables. If you're a vegetarian and looking for a close proximity to the traditional French Onion Soup, the Red Onion Soup is a wonderful stand-in. It has a very full flavor and you'll never miss the beef broth. The couscous was delicious mainly due to the roasted, caramelized vegetables. Between the chopping and separate preparation of couscous there are a number of steps to this recipe, but none of it is difficult and the end result is very appetizing and healthy. 

I did have one pretty big bomb...Spinach Risotto Pie. Thought it sounded great...I love spinach, pie, and risotto, but basically it was just...dried out risotto smacked into a pie plate and then baked. Big waste of rice. 

Although some of these recipes are a bit complicated, and I don't yet feel I can trust them implicitly (meaning try cooking them before you try cooking them for guests), I think I'll keep this book around to explore a bit more. 

Everyday Italian by Giada de Laurentiis

Does Giada ever make anything that doesn't sound/taste/look delicious? I didn't think so. This is her debut book and one I've had on my shelf for quite a while now. Heck, I've had it for so long, I was able to bring it with me when she did a signing when her third book came out. In fact, here we are. I am not the one in the yellow sweater. 

Anyway, I love Giada's food. Everyday Italian is a great starter book if you're interested in Italian food with a California flair. Most of the ingredients are very easy to find if you're on the west coast, and all the recipes tend to incorporate fresh, light flavors. Practically everything she does incorporates something I love (and sometimes, all of it): garlic, lemon, fresh basil, pasta. I mean really, how can you go wrong with that? 

Out of Everyday Italian, one of the highlights I made was Creamy Polenta with Gorgonzola Cheese. This makes for a fantastic comfort food and is a good one to try if you're leery but curious about either polenta making or blue cheese. Gorgonzola is very mild and a good starter blue, and her technique for making polenta will almost assure you will not have yellow paste stuck to your pan, as is wont to happen with some recipes. 

She also includes some great deserts, which if you haven't been able to tell by now, are sadly not something I frequently cook. But I'd be willing to be we'd all enjoy Grilled Peaches with Mascarpone Cream and Rice Pudding with Vanilla, Orange, and Rum.  Who wouldn't?

Chocolate and Zucchini by Clotilde Dusoulier

I originally discovered this book through it's namesake's website chocolateandzucchini.com. I absolutely adore everything about this book from it's cute glossy paperback size to the pretty end papers inside. It's chock full of colorful, mouthwatering pictures, and the recipes are to die for. I mean it. They run the range from familiar (olive tapenade) to weirdly innovative (zucchini crumble with figs and mozzarella. don't laugh. It is divine. I kid you not). Every recipe you make out of this book is liable to become a signature recipe. And yes, there is indeed a recipe for chocolate and zucchini cake. This doesn't strike me as all that strange seeing as how zucchini bread is typically sweet and delicious, and very similar to banana bread. So why not? 

The one recipe I loved the most has to be Hazelnut Thyme Matchsticks. Wow they were a lot of work...you make a dough, you knead it,  you divide it, chill it, roll it out and cut it into eensy weensie teeny weeny sticks, and then finally bake them. But holy cow are they ever worth it. Each one melts into a tiny, nutty, buttery, thymey explosion in your mouth. Mmm. Now I want some more. 

How To Cook Everything by Mark Bittman

Disclaimer: I've been working out of the older edition (yellow) and I know there is a newly revised one (red) that's now on the shelves. So all my comments will have to refer to the older copy and someone will have to let me know how the new one measures up. 

I have somewhat mixed feelings on this book.  I'm likely to keep this one on my shelves for some time, but while it really does include instructions for how to cook (almost) everything, I don't feel like the recipes themselves were all that noteworthy. There was also one glaring omission that I found rather annoying. Broiled steak. Isn't that something most people eat? Bittman extensively covers how to grill a steak, but really doesn't broach the subject of cooking one in the oven. So you know, if it's raining or freezing out and you don't really feel like going outside to cook yourself a hot meal, you'll have to find another book. I'm sad to say, I had to call my mother for instructions on how to broil a steak. Bittman failed me. I certainly hope they've fixed this in the new edition. 

I have somewhat mixed feelings on the recipes I did cook. They were: Minestrone, Brown Rice with Lentils and Apricots, Corn Stuffed Peppers with Spicy Tomato Sauce, and Quick and Easy Waffles. For all you sticklers, yes I did make a fifth recipe, but I can't remember which one and can't be bothered to flip through 808 pages of recipes to find the missing link. Technically, all of the recipes were successful, but with the exception of the Minestrone soup, none of them are ones I'll be craving to make again any time soon. The waffles were fine, but simply that...just fine. Same for the stuffed peppers. The rice and lentils were a total fiasco. Bittman instructs to cook the lentils and brown rice in the same, uncovered pot for 30-45 minutes. Well, mine ended up cooking for close to an hour and a half that way, and I had to add about 2 cups more liquid than called for in the recipe. Highly inconvenient if you were planning on serving dinner at a set time. Again, the end product tasted just fine, but it wasn't something I'd be dying to make again. 

All in all, I don't know that the recipes from this book are going to be ones I go back to again and again, but the book does hold solid instructions on how to prepare and cook many foods successfully (with the sole exception of brown rice). It's great to use as a jumping off point....he gives you just enough to go on to spark your own creativity. In that sense, I think it's a valuable tool...say you go to the farmer's market and find some kind of fantastic deal on a beautiful vegetable. Well, come home and look it up in How To Cook Everything. More than likely, you'll see some sort of recipe for your find, and usually the ingredients are loose enough that you could easily substitute whatever you have on hand and voila, you have a new creation. 

Martha Stewart Living The New Classics

Much like The Original Classics, I think this book is virtually bombproof. I had a little dinner party last night and everything I made (six recipes actually) came out of this book. What I made:

Lemon-Parsley Gougeres

Baked Buttermilk Chicken

Sauteed Peas and Scallions

Individual Portobello Mushroom Gratins

Sour Cream-Thyme Rolls

Papaya Sorbet

I was most excited to try making gougeres, ever since reading one of Ruth Reichel's memoirs. In it, she spends an entire chapter espousing the wonderfulness that are gougeres, and ever since then, I've been dying to try them (both eating and cooking). Essentially, they're like tiny little eggy pastry puffs and they absolutely melt in your mouth. They're so light you can down a dozen without even noticing. Oops. Did I admit that? They were so so so much easier to make than I was expecting, and are definitely something that were a hit, and that could easily be made for a quick appetizer after a workday. 

The thing I love about this book is it makes me want to abandon my cookbook project and just keep making things out of it. Everything is/sounds that good. I think the most exciting chapter is Side Dishes. Usually sides and vegetable dishes don't really whip me into a tizzy, but each one sounds so good I can taste it. The peas and mushrooms that I made both came out of this section. Some others I can't wait to try: Fricassee of Wild Mushrooms, Maple-Glazed Parsnips and Carrots, Cauliflower, Prosciutto and Goat Cheese Gratin, Jerusalem Artichoke and Chestnut Gratin...you get the idea. Seriously, these will get you excited about eating your veggies. 

The one thing I wasn't excited about was the Papaya Sorbet. But that could be due to the fact that the first papaya I cracked into smelled of cheese and tasted like...well, like cheesey cardboard. Needless to say, I threw it out, went back to the store, and purchased some new ones. Those ones didn't smell of cheese and tasted like...well like just straight cardboard. The end result sorbet was actually pretty good and sweet, but I think if I were to make it again, I'd just use mangoes. Cause you know, they taste good and not at all like cheese or cardboard. Verdict: recipe successful, but I don't like papayas. Blech.

I really wanted to hate everything that came out of Martha Stewart, but it's just not possible with this book. The recipes are way too reliable, taste delicious, and are successful every time, even when I don't know what I'm doing (as was the case with the gougeres).