Some Interesting Cookbooks
Over the past few covid months, huddled at home, unsure about what the next year will bring, avoiding the outside for fear of contracting or spreading the plague, I have found myself with a lot more time than I usually have to cook. With restaurants either closed or risky to go into, a tasty meal at home is one of the most comforting pleasures to take in this scary world, I find. When we’re not ordering pick up from one of our local favorites once or twice a week, I’m putting something tasty together in the kitchen (or at least, trying to).
Furloughed from my job, while my partner is even busier than normal working from home, having some delicious dinner ready for her as she finishes up has been the silver lining to this time of anxiety. While I have cooked for her throughout our relationship, rarely have I had this much time to devote to something more elaborate than tacos or macaroni and cheese. Not since I lived alone and could, on a whim, decide to cook something weird at 8:30 pm with no concern about how spicy I make it have I had so much room to try out new things, at least.
To be honest, though, I’m not really a natural in the kitchen, so I’ve been relying on cookbooks to get me by. I’m not one for throwing things together improvisationally, I’m pretty much a step by step, exactly by the rules set out in the recipe cook. However, as I’ve been doing a lot of baking, sauteeing, and boiling in recent months, I may just be getting the hang of it. Having some good, easy to follow, and interesting sources checked out from the library has been a great help!
A quick note on subjectivity in “hobby” reviews
Like roleplaying game supplements, I find rating and reviewing cookbooks to be a little subjective. What works for one person may not work for another, after all. Perhaps one person can take a mediocre recipe and make it their own, a beloved favorite, whereas another person just can’t seem to make a dish that should theoretically be easy work out for them. The writing and usability of any given cookbook certainly make a difference, though.
I find the library is a great resource to try out various cookbooks, to see if they work for you. Here are a few that strike a nice balance between usability and readability.
I forget the exact reason I requested Alison Roman’s two books back in December, the aptly named Dining In: Highly Cookable Recipes, and the just-published Nothing Fancy: Unfussy Food for Having People Over. Was it a library suggestion, or the fact that the author, Alison Roman, was one of the invites to the Loft’s Worldplay 2020 event? In any case, even for the ebooks, there was quite a waitlist but I got in early and managed to snap up enough screenshots on my phone to try out some of the stuff that looked interesting over the last months. Little librarian tip for ya! This was before the recent controversy that has befallen Roman, due to her own bad takes and culturally appropriative attitudes, so maybe it was good that I didn’t actually put down money yet?
That being said, I do have to report that her work hasn’t really steered me wrong yet, her earlier book Dining In in particular, and I’ve found quite a few recipes that have become favorites. What better idea for a quarantine time than dining in? Roman definitely writes in a distinctive, personable voice adding a lot of humorous asides and a large portion of her personality, which made the book nice to read if you don’t find her voice too irritating. Along with lovely photographs and enticing descriptions, I found a lot of inspiration for dinners and ideas or entertaining (once we are allowed such extravagances again).
I cook vegetarian only, and in both Dining In and Nothing Fancy, while not vegetarian specifically, there are a ton of non-meat recipes that looked great. Not the best choice to look into if you are a vegan, though. Roman finds a way to work some cheese or butter into just about everything here. I’m definitely not complaining! All in all, I did find Dining In to be the slightly more useful book for an ovo-lacto vegetarian (my partner) or a pescetarian (Me), but both of these books are engagingly written with a lot of fun ideas to them, and plenty of helpful hints and useful asides to punch up your culinary skills. I feel like she does a great job listing out and describing all of the needed steps of the recipe. I even had good luck with Roman’s pie crust recipe, which I’ve been known to screw up in the past.
I would say our favorites so far have been Roman’s brown butter-buttermilk milk cake from Dining In and the hard roasted spiced cauliflower from Nothing Fancy. The former became known to us as the “quarantine comfort cake” due to the numerous times my wife requested I make it over the last several months.
Perhaps one doesn’t need an entire cookbook devoted to such a simple food item as grilled cheese, but for someone like me, who feels lost without clear, step by step instructions, a resource such as Grilled Cheese and Beer, stuffed with innovative and tasty ideas for all kinds of bespoke grilled cheese sandwiches, any instruction is welcome. Grilled cheese and beer sounds like a pretty perfect combination when it comes to comfort food, just what we need these days, right? With a little basic primer on both cheese and beer, the book quickly jumps into a variety of interesting ideas for sandwiches, arranged from very basic to the most complicated, difficult to pull off types.
The photos made each sandwich look pretty delicious and the authors’ love of a good punny sandwich name (crediting inspiration from Bob’s Burgers) makes each page fun, even if a particular sandwich wasn’t to my exact taste. With more than sixty sandwich options, of which about a third are vegetarian, there are several options for non-meat eaters. The beer suggestions are a little lackluster though, in my opinion, with the pairing for each often relying on puns as well, with none of the options being that unique. A lot of Bud Lights and Coors Banquets in addition to the bigger craft brews like Sam Adams and Stone Brewing, it feels like more information and variety could have been included for the beer pairings.
It isn’t often I find a cookbook that is as entertaining to read as it is inspiring in it’s cooking advice, but A Super Upsetting Cookbook About Sandwiches by chef Tyler Kord is one to check out. Kord, owner of the No 7 Sub shops in New York (that I’ll definitely need to visit if I ever get the chance) writes in an engaging voice and offers useful cooking advice as well. From its tongue in cheek foreword by Emma Straub to Kord’s sandwich theory and practices, the book is infused with humor and good tips.
As with the book discussed previously, sandwiches may seem a simple enough concept not to really need a whole book devoted to them, but Kord really pushes the envelope on this comfort food without making things too complicated. In particular, I loved that he includes recipes for making just about every ingredient in the sandwich aside from the bread yourself. I also appreciated the variety of tastes catered to, and, in spite of plenty of tempting roast beef, chicken, sausage, meatloaf, and seafood sandwiches, vegetarian and even vegan recipes are not neglected either and look just as tasty. The photos look delicious and the names of the sandwiches are just great, too.
As someone who enjoys cooking but perhaps finds myself a bit too unwilling to deviate from the recipe, I find the guidance and flexibility here might help me mix things up a bit. The Patty Melt!, made with Kord’s basic veggie burgers reminded me of the SWisconsin melts I used to crave at Culvers, and I made some really nice homemade steak sauce for the Gold Hat breakfast burger. I’m definitely looking to try out some more recipes!
Like A Very Upsetting Cookbout About Sandwiches, The Adventures of Fat Rice: Recipes from the Chicago Restaurant Inspired by Macau is the result of a prominent restaurant, in this case, Chicago’s eponymous restaurant Fat Rice focusing on the fusion cuisine of the city of Macau, pulling together influences from Chinese traditions as well as those of Portugal and its various colonies from India to Africa. Put together by the Fat Rice chefs Abraham Conlon, Adrienne Lo, and Hugh Amano and illustrated by cartoonist Sarah Becan, this is a cookbook that is really interesting enough to read on its own even if you aren’t planning to try out its delicious-looking recipes. Describing the fascinating history of the cuisine of Macau, tracking down the most obscure influences and dish origins, and describing the unique culture of this city, I really enjoyed reading it in this time when a trip anywhere seems a distant dream.
In addition to this interesting background information, The Adventures of Fat Rice clearly and enticingly lays out everything you need to do to cook any of their dishes right down to each sauce or pickle, including the “Arroz Gordo” of the namesake, kind of a fusion between a paella and fried rice. I haven’t tried any of the dishes here yet, this is definitely one that would reward more advanced cooking skills, but the authors add a lot of great instruction, from various methods of chopping vegetables to Becan’s detailed diagrams of the cooking processes. I’m hoping to try out the brinjal sambal (spicy sweet and sour eggplant) soon. I also hope that Fat Rice rides out this period and I can try out the restaurant next time I’m in Chicago.
Mostly Plants: 101 Delicious Flexitarian Recipes from the Pollan Family is, true to its name, a cookbook focusing on, but not exclusive to, plants. Compiled by the family of famed food writer and scientist Michael Pollan of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, this one feels like the most traditional of the cookbooks I looked at for this entry, packed full of useful, if not groundbreaking advice on healthy cooking and including dishes geared toward vegetarian, vegan, and gluten-free diets in addition to the broader flexitarian style. While not written quite as entertainingly, I felt, as the others, the recipes here had some really good stuff, written in a pretty user-friendly way. It also has a really broad selection, from soups and salads to pasta to dessert. I’ve had a lot of success with what I’ve tried so far, in particular the three greens spanakopita casserole and the amped-up vegetable nachos (I even fried up my own tortilla chips!). Who would have thought kale would have worked so well with nachos? This is the one I think I’m most likely to opt to purchase my own personal copy, I think.
