The 10 most delicious things I made from cookbooks during the pandemic: Part I

At Cooks Without Borders, The Great Confinement has been a time for (among other things) deep dives into cookbooks — focusing mostly on volumes published within the last year, but also on cookbooks from a few years back that we hadn’t yet had a chance to explore.

The riches we’ve found in the pages of the best of them has been absolutely exhilarating, opening up entire new worlds to us.

Here are the first 5 of my 10 favorite dishes from the dozens of cookbook recipes I’ve tested and tasted over the last six months. What they have in common — besides their cravability factor — is that they are all really fun to cook.

Chicken Musakhan from Sami Tamimi’s ‘Falastin’

Traditionally during olive-oil pressing season to celebrate the freshly-pressed oil and served with pebble-textured taboon bread, the Palestinian dish known as Chicken Musakhan is now a year-round favorite in the Levant. “It’s a dish to eat with your hands and with your friends,” writes Sami Tamimi in Falastin,” served from one pot or plate, for everyone to then tear at some of the bread and spoon on the chicken and topping for themselves.” To make it, toss a whole quartered bird with plenty of cumin and sumac and other spices, then roast it and layer it on crisped pieces of torn pita with a lot of long-cooked, sumac-and-cumin-loaded sliced red onions, fried pine nuts and parsley. Spoon over with the roasting juices from the chicken, drizzle on more olive oil, dust with more sumac, and invite everyone to tear in. The dish is stunningly good.

Why we love cooking it: It’s liberating to use all those spices with such abandon.

We reviewed Falastin, which Tamimi wrote with Tara Wigley, in July.

Anjali Pathak’s Charred Baby Eggplants

These melty-soft baby eggplants with a coconutty, spicy filling come from Anjali Pathak’s 2015 book, The Indian Family Kitchen: Classic Dishes for a New Generation. Sizzled fresh curry leaves make it really special. We spotlighted this dish — finished with dabs of yogurt — in an an August story about eggplants.

Why we love cooking it: The topping is really fun to make, beginning with cooking the mustard seeds in oil till they jump out of the pan, and using the curry leaves (which freeze really well, so if you get your hands on some, buy extra).

Yangzhou Fried Rice from Fuchsia Dunlop’s ‘Every Grain of Rice’

Enticing, satisfying and fun to make, this Yangzhou Fried Rice from Dunlop’s superb 2012 book Every Grain of Rice: Simple Chinese Home Cooking is a dish is a highly craveable classic — one that I’d be happy to eat every week.

Why we love cooking it: Mastery! It’s an ideal recipe to use if you want to learn fried rice technique, as it’s the best (and least fussy) method we’ve found so far. After you try it once, there’s lots of room for ingredient improvisation. A seasoned wok is required.

Our review of the book is coming soon.

‘Jubilee’ Pickled Shrimp from Toni Tipton-Martin’s award-winning book

The pickled shrimp from Toni Tipton-Martin’s Jubilee: Recipes from Two Centuries of African American Cooking has been a point of joy for us several times during the pandemic, including last weekend, when a friend requested its presence at a socially distanced Labor Day picnic. It’s shown above before being pickled overnight. We reviewed the book in June 2020.

Why we love cooking it: The technique for pickling seafood in vinegar has its roots in Spanish escabeche. A recipe Tipton-Martin found in Savannah, Georgia inspired this one. Once you’ve made it once, you can play with the herbs and spices: This I upped the pickling spice a bit and added a bit more tarragon. Or even run with the basic escabeche idea and use what it’s taught us to pickled fin fish (snapper would be great) or scallops.

Rose, Cumin and Apricot Sablés from Camille Fourmont’s ‘La Buvette’

Crushed rosebuds and cumin bring a beautifully fragrant and savory aspect to Camille Fourmont’s spin on the classic French sablé cookie; dried apricots add a delightful chewy high note. Though Fourmont credits pastry superstar Pierre Hermé with having dreamt up the flavor combo, it is she who put them together in a sablé. Super buttery and tender, they are exquisite. We reviewed the book they’re from, La Buvette: Recipes and Wine Notes from Paris, in August.

Why we love cooking it: Playing with dried flower buds is a treat, and it’s always fun to slice and bake dough that’s been chilling in a log in the fridge.

RECIPE: Rose, Cumin and Apricot Sablés

RECIPE: ‘Jubilee’ Pickled Shrimp

RECIPE: Yangzhou Fried Rice

RECIPE: Anjali Pathak’s Charred Baby Eggplants

RECIPE: Chicken Musakhan

Cookbook review: 'Lucky Peach 101 Easy Asian Recipes' gets three gold wontons

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Shrimp-and-chive wontons bursting with gingery flavor. Fried rice that's even more delicious than what you get in most Chinese restaurants. A foolproof choose-your-veg master recipe for stir-fried greens with whole garlic. The moment (many months ago) I got my hands on Lucky Peach 101 Easy Asian Recipes by Peter Meehan and the editors of Lucky Peach, I felt it was a book meant for border-free cooks. As soon as I started putting its recipes to the test, I was certain of it. 

But it gets even better: When I took the first bite of Meehan's crisp-skinned, honey-colored, incredibly succulent and flavorful Chinese lacquered roast chicken, I was completely over the moon. This recipe, this book are life-changing. 

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Asian cooking can be daunting to Western cooks – including pretty experienced ones. But jump into 101 Easy Asian Recipes and start cooking, even pretty casually, and you'll quickly feel you're getting the hang of stir-frying, wonton making and more. Meehan keeps the instructions clear and simple, and the recipes are appealing and uncluttered. As promised, they are easy. 

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Chineasy Cucumber Salad from Lucky Peach 101 Easy Asian Recipes

His "Chineasy" cucumber salad – with a lovely touch of sesame and crushed peanuts – is a case in point. It came together in a flash, and it was so nice I gobbled it up all by myself, though it was certainly big enough for two. Sound good? Here's the recipe:

Meehan tends to do without explanations of whether a recipe is Indonesian or Chinese or Korean, or from a specific region of Thailand or Japan, going instead with a looser fusion-y feel. Somehow, the dishes I've been most attracted to feel pretty Chinese. 

Not that all are perfect as printed; among the seven recipes I tested, I had to make some tweaks here and there, which are reflected in the adapted versions you'll find here at Cooks Without Borders. After nearly ruining a pan when making the lacquered roast chicken, for instance, I added an instruction to line the baking sheet with foil. Small detail, though, when the technique – simply combining soy sauce and honey and painting it onto the bird a couple days in advance, then roasting without even flipping it over – is so miraculously good. 

A recipe for stir-fried asparagus worked beautifully, though it yielded twice as much sauce needed for one bunch of asparagus. Easy fix: I doubled the veg. (As you can see, it's still plenty saucy!)

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In any case, there's so much inside that's so great that I highly recommend the book to anyone who's even vaguely interested. From its pages, you'll learn to master fried rice. (Here's the recipe:)

And pick up the basic stir-fry technique for Chinese greens. 

Lucky Peach's master recipe for greens with whole garlic is meant for pea greens, spinach or bok choy. I used baby bok choy with excellent results (can't wait to get my hands on some pea greens!).

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You can even amaze your friends with shrimp-and-chive wontons. Wow – these turned out so great, I couldn't believe I made them. And I can't wait to riff on the filling, which was gingery and spot-on.

OK, if we want to split hairs, there was a editing error that might have derailed a less-than-confident cook: The recipe called for square wonton wrappers, but the step-by-step illustration showed how to work with round ones, a completely different routine. (Our adapted recipe shows you how to use the square ones the recipe calls for.) Also, the wontons seemed like they really needed to be served with sauce on them or in a soup, rather than just sent out naked on a serving platter with the dipping sauce, as the book suggests. 

I poured some dipping sauce on each serving, which struck me as a little nicer. Um, yeah – pretty great. Check it out:

In a future post, I'll tweak the dumplings, fine-tuning the dipping sauce as well, until they're, you know, off-the-charts crazy-good. 

There's still much more I want to explore in 101 Easy Asian Recipes. A recipe for okonomiyaki – the Japanese cabbage-and-seafood pancake that's on its way to cult status. Thai-style lettuce cups that look delicious. Lion's head meatballs, that Shanghainese favorite. Oyokodon, a homey, Japanese comfort dish of custardy eggs and chicken. And many more.

Of the 101 recipes, there are only two desserts. One is egg custard tarts. The other is oranges. Yes, oranges. "The deal with dessert in the scheme of easy Asian cooking," writes Meehan, "is that you are NOT MAKING IT, not in the 'easy' French way of throwing together a last-minute clafoutis. You are serving fruit. Cut-up fruit if you've got the time."

You see, he's serious about the easy thing. And he has an irresistible breezy writing style that makes the book fun to work with. 

What can I say? Check out the recipes here and the stories about them at Cooks Without Borders. Make one or two that sound appealing. If you love them as much as I did, you'll want to gift yourself with the book faster than you can say dashimaki tamago. 

Fried rice SMACKDOWN! Lucky Peach vs. Mission Chinese Food - Round Two (Mission Chinese Food)

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After gorging myself on the superb Chinese Sausage Fried Rice from Lucky Peach 101 Easy Asian Recipes, I rolled up my sleeves the very next evening, put on my apron and pulled out the wok. Time for round two of the smackdown! 

First I made rice – Danny Bowien rejects using day-old rice as an old wive's tale. "How could old rice be better?!" he writes. "Come on. Use fresh warm rice, not a hard puck of cold rice." His recipe calls for 3 cups of rice, "from about 1 1/2 cups raw." Well, 1 1/2 cups raw yielded more than 5 cups; 1 1/4 cups yields more than 3 cups. Just to let you know in case you don't want to waste rice.

Then the prep: I sliced Chinese sausage, iceberg lettuce and scallions (no need to separate the whites and greens on this one), scrambled eggs and chopped cilantro. No need to mince garlic or ginger for this one, which is a plus.  

The salt cod had already been fried (though I neglected to give it a whirr in the food processor – no matter, the pieces were pretty small) and the mackerel confit drained.

Then I made what Bowien calls a rice stack: The rice goes in a bowl with the fried salt cod on top of it and the sausage on top of that. "You want the ingredients to hit the wok in reverse order," he explains, "sausage, fish, rice  – and the stack facilitates this."

Then, in a bowl big enough to toss the whole dish after the rice cooks, I combined the lettuce, cilantro and scallions. 

Then it was showtime! Blazing heat went under the wok and a few "heathy glugs" of oil went in. When it was nearly smoking, I pulled the wok off heat and scrambled the egg together with the mackerel very quickly, just 10 seconds or so and dumping them on a plate. Back on the heat went the wok with a little more oil and in went the rice stack. Bowien's description of how to fry it is clear and easy to follow: "Gently break up the stack and use the spatula to press the rice against the bottom and sides of the hot wok. Wait 10 seconds, then flip and stir the rice. Flatten and press again, and wait 10 seconds. Flip and flatten a last time." 

At that point you season the rice with salt, sugar and fish sauce, give it a stir, add the eggs and mackerel, stir again. Then scoop everything out of the wok and into the big bowl, where it gets tossed with the lettuce, cilantro and scallions. 

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Masterpiece finished! 

For the second evening in a row, I was bowled over: This was stupendous.

Honestly, I can hardly believe that a civilian (me!) can make fried rice this good. The previous night, my friend Carol, a self-described rice fanantic who happens to be Italian, had come over to share the Lucky Peach rice with me. But now, with Thierry away in France, I found myself alone with an entire batch of Mission Chinese Food Salt Cod Fried Rice. I'm embarrassed to tell you how much of it I ate all by myself.

OK, Let's just say most of it. Here is the recipe:

So, how do the two fried rices stack up?

Judging the smackdown

Deliciousness: The Mission Chinese Food Salt Cod Fried Rice was more luscious than the Lucky Peach Chinese Sausage Fried Rice, with bits of crunchy fish adding textural interest and serious umami; the Lucky Peach rice was a little drier, more like the classic good-bad Chinese food pork fried rice (PFR) I so fondly remember from childhood (down to the frozen peas), but with Chinese sausage in place of barbecue pork. Both had plenty of fluffy, moist egg. Of course the Mission Chinese entry involved Chinese sausage too, and even more of it; that one was more chock-a-block full of stuff – a bit more egg, plus the two kinds of fish. Both were truly delicious; both were perfectly seasoned. Minced garlic and ginger brought tasty dimension to the Lucky Peach rice, but I didn't miss them in the Mission Chinese Food rice, with all that fish-umami happening, plus the cilantro. The Mission Chinese Food fried rice was maybe just a little more strikingly fabulous. But I would happily eat a giant bowl of either one any day of the week. 

Mission Chinese Food Salt Cod Fried Rice Deliciousness: 10/10

Lucky Peach Chinese Sausage Fried Rice Deliciousness: 9/10

Ease of preparation: No question, the Lucky Peach recipe was much simpler to prepare. Other than cooking the rice in advance, everything was prepped and cooked in about 20 minutes. The Mission Chinese Food recipe was extremely involved, thanks to soaking/water changing then frying and food processing the salt cod, and making the mackerel confit. While I loved eating the mackerel confit on its own (and will definitely make it again), it got a little lost in the rice. Did it add much to the whole? Hard to say. Neither recipe needed significant tweaking (the only issue in either was how much raw rice yields 3 cups cooked in the Mission Chinese recipe, which is really minor); both were clearly explained and very easy to follow – even with the hot wok going. 

Mission Chinese Food Salt Cod Fried Rice Ease of Preparation: 6/10

Lucky Peach Chinese Sausage Fried Rice Ease of Preparation: 9/10

All-around awesomeness and wow factor: Both rate very highly. A steaming bowl of hot fried rice with fluffy egg and chewy, smoky Chinese sausage, excellent texture and flavor that you made yourself in your very own wok is terribly exciting and fabulous.

When Wylie came home for spring break and Thierry returned from France a couple days later, it was the first thing I made them. More on that later. After Wylie goes back to school, I'm thinking a batch of the Lucky Peach rice would be an absolutely dreamy thing to eat when Thierry and I are hunkered down in front of the TV to binge watch House of Cards or election returns. Will I ever make the Mission Chinese Food recipe again? Perhaps. But only if guests who really geek out over Chinese cooking come over. (Sherry and Fred: You are wanted in Dallas!) Otherwise, the Lucky Peach's simplicity-in-preparation quotient makes up for its slight fabulousness deficit in relation to the Mission Chinese Food recipe, creating – ladies and gentlemen – an all-around awesomeness dead heat.

Mission Chinese Food Salt Cod Fried Rice Awesomeness and Wow Factor: 9/10

Lucky Peach Chinese Sausage Fried Rice Awesomeness and Wow Factor: 9/10

Well, after all that, you might think I've had enough fried rice for the time being. You'd be wrong. Now I am consumed with creating the perfect fried rice recipe: one the marries maximum awesomeness and deliciousness with the minimum of effort and time. Interested? Be sure to check back soon!