Cookbooks We Love: In 'Treasures of the Mexican Table,’ Pati Jinich shares recipes soaked in local character

By Leslie Brenner

Treasures of the Mexican Table: Classic Recipes, Local Secrets BY PATI JINICH; PHOTOGRAPHS BY ANGIE MOSIER, 2021, HOUGHTON MIFFLIN HARCOURT, $35.

Backgrounder

This is the third book from Pati Jinich (pronounced “HEEN-ich”), host of the long-running, award-winning PBS series ‘Pati’s Mexican Table.” In the show, the Mexico City native travels around the country discovering and bringing to viewers its delicious foodways. (Its 10th season features the state of Jalisco.) Her excellent debut cookbook, Pati’s Mexican Table, published in 2013, focused on the basics of Mexican cooking. Three years later, she published Mexican Today, offering personal favorites aimed at busy cooks with families.

Why we love this one

Like a latter-day Diana Kennedy, Jinich traveled widely and deeply for Treasures of the Mexican Table, turning up outstanding, delicious, sometimes classic and often less well known dishes in people’s homes, in restaurants, in markets and on the street. If you love the anthropological and culinary richness of Kennedy’s classics The Cuisines of Mexico and Mexican Regional Cooking, but wish those volumes included visuals, this is the book for you. The food is enticingly photographed by Angie Mosier, Jinich has a winning personality and her writing is exceedingly relatable, warm and engaging.

Vuelva a la Vida is a coastal dish that’s like a cross between ceviche and a seafood coctél.

The book is indeed filled with treasures; I stuck Post-It notes on no fewer than 25 recipes as must-tries, and loved the ones I cooked.

For Instance, Vuelve a la Vida

If you’ve ever traveled on Mexico’s Pacific or Gulf coasts, you’ve probably bumped into the cool and revivifying seafood dish called Vuelve a la Vida, which means “return to life.” Tangy, bright and lively, it’s like a cross between ceviche — as it includes fish “cooked” in lime juice — and a Mexican-style seafood coctél. If you’re attracted to cocteles but sometimes find them too ketchupy, take Jinich’s Vuelve a la Vida for a spin: It does include a good dose of the red stuff, but it’s balanced with lime juice, smoothed out with olive oil infused with garlic and árbol chile and punched up with oregano.

Different versions of the dish use varying types of seafood. Jinich’s recipe calls for shrimp, lump crabmeat and firm-fleshed white fish (I used red snapper from the Gulf), but her “Cook’s Note” suggests playing around with the fin fish, and subbing cooked squid or octopus, raw oysters, clams or scallops. Thinking about the dish now is making me crave it; I can’t wait to try it again with some squid and maybe oysters in the mix.

Belly-Button Soup

Jinich learned to make Sopa de Ombligo, a pinto-bean and masa dumpling soup, from Maria Elena Machado in the tiny Sinaloa mountain town of Jinetes de Machado. Ombligo means belly-button; the word attaches itself to the soup because its dumplings each have a navel-like dimple pressed into it. It’s warming, rich and wonderful — and those dumplings are a great way to feature masa harina made from heirloom corn.

For the puréed base, you can either start with dried pintos or use canned beans. Both ways yielded great results, so don’t beat yourself up if you want to take the shortcut.

A sumptuous mole called Atápakua de Pollo con Hongos

From the indigenous Purépecha people of Michoacán, Atápakua de Pollo con Hongos has a similar color palette as Sopa de Ombligo, but completely different flavors. Not familiar with atápakua? Larousse Cocina Mexico defines it as a dish with a “very spicy sauce made with masa and guajillos or green chiles, tomato, cilantro or mint and some type of meat or vegetable” (my translation). Jinich includes both cilantro and mint, and uses charred tomatillos — which give the dish a delightful, unexpected brightness. She translates it as “Chicken Mole with Mushrooms,” and provides an excellent side-bar page about what makes a mole a mole — it’s a preparation with a mashed or ground sauce combining a number of ingredients including at least one type of chile, and characterized by “multidimensional layering of flavors.”

For this one, masa harina is stirred in, adding sumptuous body. (Naturally I used the marvelous heirloom masa harina from Masienda.) It’s very saucy, so take Jinich’s suggestion of serving it with warm corn tortillas and rice.

You’ve gotta try this

Jinich’s Pastel de Almendra y Chocolate — a flourless (and gluten-free) chocolate almond cake — may be the easiest chocolate cake in the universe. Mix eggs and condensed sweetened milk, add melted butter and chocolate, dump in dry ingredients, mix again and bake. The resulting dessert is moist, chocolatey, rich and delicious, so good I’m going to be sure to have chocolate and almond meal always on hand so I can whip one up at will.

Jinich’s original recipe calls for combining everything in the jar of blender or in the bowl of a food processor, but neither my blender nor my full-sized Cuisinart were large enough to accommodate the batter. (A large blender jar, such as that of a Vitamix, probably would be.) For that reason, I changed the method; our adaptation uses a hand-mixer instead. Which brings me to . . .

A caveat

Treasures would have benefited from more rigorous recipe testing and editing. Because the recipes are sometimes hinky or not as clear as they might be, the book is probably better suited to more experienced and confident cooks who can adjust on the fly. Eyeballing the Vuelve a la Vida recipe, I could see that three pounds of seafood might be a lot for a dish that’s meant to serve 6 to 8 as an appetizer or 4 to 6 as a light main course. I halved the ingredient amounts to test the recipe, and found the adjustment to be perfect — the recipe as printed yielded twice as much as needed. (Our adapted version uses 1 1/2 pounds of seafood total, which is ample for 6 to 8 appetizer portions. Meanwhile, over-purchasing crabmeat isn’t what anyone wants to be doing these days, as the price has skyrocketed.) The first time I made the Sopa de Ombligo, the dumplings completely dissolved into the soup — it turned out the recipe called for too much water added to the masa harina (our adapted recipe adjusts it).

Still wanna make

Sopa de Esquites con Queso (Corn Soup with Quest Fresco); Cecina (Adobo Pork); Tasajo (grilled air-dried beef); and Mole Verde con Puerco y Frijol Blanco from Oaxaca; Chicken Pozole with Pinto Beans and Carne Asada from Sonora; Sincronizadas con Rajas y Chorizo from Coahuila; Chiles Rellenos de Atún (pickled poblanos stuffed with tuna) and lamb barbacoa from central Mexico; Frijol con Puerco Yucateca and Pámpano en Salsa Verde from the Yucatán; Birria (braised goat or lamb) from Jalisco. And a dessert I won’t be able to resist making for long: Helado de Leche Quemada — Burnt Milk Ice Cream, also from Oaxaca, from the weaving village Teotitlán del Valle.

Editing and testing concerns notwithstanding, this is a book I highly recommend: Bursting with delectable inspiration, it beautifully expresses the incredible richness of a Mexican cooking. It’s one I’m sure I’ll be referring to for years to come.

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Celebrate Chinese New Year with luscious red-braised pork belly (and greens!) from Betty Liu's 'My Shanghai'

By Leslie Brenner

In her beautiful 2020 book, My Shanghai, Betty Liu has a lovely page about Lunar New Year. In Chinese households on New Year’s Eve, she explains, “guests are welcomed with cups of tea and fresh fruit,” and then there’s a parade of foods that in one way or another symbolize prosperity: whole fish, egg dumplings, tatsoi and sticky rice cakes among them.

Tuesday, February 1 marks the start of the Year of the Tiger, and in Chinese and the other Asian cultures that celebrate the holiday (including Vietnamese, Korean, Tibetan and Mongolian communities), the celebrations last about 15 days — from the new moon to the full moon.

One of my culinary adventurist dreams is to be invited, one day, to celebrate Lunar New Year’s Eve in the home of a Chinese or Chinese-American family. Alas, this year it will be but a dream once again. Given that we’re back to keeping to ourselves at home for dining lately, I think we’ll mark the occasion of Lunar New Year’s Eve by cooking something from Liu’s book — which I’ve only scratched the surface of.

So far, so great. The dish pictured above — Shanghai-style red-braised pork belly — has no specific symbolic connection to the holiday (that I know of!), but it is included in one of the Chinese New Years menus at The Woks of Life, one of my favorite cooking websites. And given that the holiday lasts a couple weeks, the wintry dish, which simmers for at least three hours (filling your kitchen with gorgeous aromas!) should be perfect for one of those dinners.

Watch Makers, Shakers & Mavens: Woks of Life co-founder Sarah Leung talks about Chinese and Chinese-American cooking with Leslie Brenner

In her headnote, Liu calls the dish“perhaps my favorite recipe in this entire book,” mentioning that it’s the dish that best represents Shanghai cuisine, so I had to try it as soon as I got my hands on the book last winter, just after it was published. It’s a winner — rich, tender, deeply flavorful and very soulful. I love that it’s her mom’s recipe.

One you get all the meat browned and braising, the dish simmers for at least three hours, which means if you work at home, you might even be able to manage it on a work day.

What to serve with the red-braised pork?

Certainly the dish could be part of a big feast, but it’s so rich and satisfying that it’s also wonderful with just white rice (its traditional accompaniment), and a simple stir-fried green, such as baby bok choy.

As a student of Chinese cooking, I’m always interested to see how Chinese cookbook authors and other cooks I admire approach a basic Chinese greens stir-fry — a versatile dish I can’t get enough of at home, and one that’s a fixture on Chinese tables.

I love Fuchsia Dunlop’s recipe for Baby Bok Choy with Shiitakes, from Every Grain of Rice. But with the red-braised pork belly, I wanted something even more basic, without the umami-richness of shiitakes. Happily, I found it in My Shanghai.

Liu’s recipe for a Basic Winter Greens Stir-Fry calls for baby bok choy, but regular bok choy, choy sum or Chinese water spinach take to it well, too. Best of all, there’s a valuable cooking lesson in Liu’s recipe, so this is a great greens recipe to try if, like me, you consider yourself a student of the genre.

Flavor of a thousand tangerines

And finally, here’s a dessert that’s not traditional, but works brilliantly following the braise: tangerine sorbet.

Tangerines are very much associated with the holiday. They’re at peak season now (the ones I’m getting have incredible flavor) and this recipe — adapted from David Lebovitz’s The Perfect Scoop, captures and somehow amplifies all that gorgeous flavor. It’s an amazing (and easily achieveable!) mood-lifter at a moment that more than a few of us might need one.

RECIPE: Betty Liu’s Mom’s Shanghai Red-Braised Pork Belly

RECIPE: Basic Winter Greens Stir-Fry

RECIPE: Tangerine Sorbet

More about Lunar New Year traditions

• There’s a wealth of great info about Chinese New Year traditions at The Woks of Life, including menus.

• Award-winning cookbook author (and friend of Cooks Without Borders) Andrea Nguyen has a delicious post about Vietnamese Lunar New Year (Tet) at her splendid blog, Viet World Kitchen. There you’ll find some cool info about people born in the Year of the Tiger and, of course, a passel of enticing recipes.

More recipes and delicious ways to celebrate

Turnip Cake — a dim-sum favorite, can be even better made at home.

Cooks Without Borders Chinese and Chinese-American recipes page has plenty of other delicious dishes you might explore during the new year festivities. Glorious Lacquered Roast Duck or Chinese Lacquered Roast Chicken would be great centerpieces – both require some advance prep, but the effort involved is shockingly minimal. Lo Bak Go — the daikon cakes you find in dim-sum restaurants (where they often call them turnip cakes), can be even better when made at home; our recipe comes from The Woks of Life. Yangzhou Fried Rice would be awesome, as would Silken Tofu with Soy Sauce. Check that page — I think you’ll find lots you’ll want to try.

And these couple of weeks would be a great opportunity to dive into Chinese culture by cooking through an excellent book. Betty Liu, Fuchsia Dunlop and Eileen Fein-Lo are all great teachers as they write, and books by any of them are great places to start. And there are many more! Liu’s book has the bonus of gorgeous photos of Shanghai, so it feels like a getaway, as well.

RECIPE: Glorious Lacquered Roast Duck

RECIPE: The Woks of Life Turnip Cake

RECIPE: Yangzhou Fried Rice

RECIPE: Silken Tofu with Soy Sauce

ALL COOKS WITHOUT BORDERS CHINESE AND CHINESE-AMERICAN RECIPES

READ: Cookbooks We Love —Exploring Chinese Cooking? ‘Every Grain of Rice’ is the first book you should buy

READ: Cookbooks We Love — Shanghai and its Jiangnan region shine in ‘Land of Fish and Rice’

READ: Chinese-American culinary culture finds delicious, multi-generational expression at The Woks of Life

WATCH: Makers, Shakers & Movers with The Woks of Life’s Sarah Leung

WATCH: Makers, Shakers & Movers — Vietnamese Cooking and Food Culture with Andrea Nguyen and An-My Lê

The season’s most exciting new cookbook titles will thrill the adventurous cooks on your holiday gift list

By Leslie Brenner

A highly anticipated magnum opus on pasta from one of New York’s most respected chefs! An inspired and inspiring exploration of Black foodways curated by the chef-in-residence of San Francisco’s Museum of the African Diaspora! A gorgeous culinary tour of Vietnam and beyond, filled with the recipes of the author’s grandmother! Cookbook fans on your holiday gift list this year are in for such incredible treats.

These are the new books I’m most excited to start cooking from — and reading — this season.

The eight titles described below have been published in the last four months.

Find all our cookbook reviews here, including 9 reviewed so far this year (with recipes!).

Support independent booksellers, authors and Cooks Without Borders — all at the same time — by purchasing your cookbook gifts this year through our shop at Bookshop. (Once you log in through our shop, any purchase you make there will earn us a commission.) Or, if it’s more convenient, purchase through our Amazon links, which also may earn us a (much smaller) commission.

Black Food

The inaugural volume from Bryant Terry’s new imprint at Ten Speed Press, 4 Color Books, will enthrall anyone interested in Black foodways. Terry edited and curated the collection, which includes photographs, collages, essays, poetry and (of course) recipes. “Without being overly prescriptive,” he writes in the intro, “I asked brilliant colleagues to offer dishes that embody their approach to cooking and draw on history and memory while looking forward.” Overall, the idea is to “promote a concept of food that embraces courage, commitment and self-discovery, and ultimately moves each of us to a better place.”

It’s a gorgeous, fascinating and beautiful book, with a trove of exciting stuff to explore.

Can’t wait to cook: Betty Vandy’s Potato Leaves with Eggplant and Butter Beans; BJ Dennis’ Okra & Shrimp Purloo; Adrian Lipscombe’s Collards with Pot Likker, Cornbread Dumplings & Green Tomato Chowchow; Nina Compton’s Lentil, Okra & Coconut Stew; Hawa Hassan’s Somali Lamb Stew; Sarah Kirnon’s Bajan Fish Cakes; Jenné Claiborne’s Nana’s Sweet Potato Pie; Edna Lewis’ Fresh Peach Cobbler with Nutmeg Sauce.

Black Food: Stories, Art & Recipes from Across the African Disapora, edited by Bryant Terry, 2021, 4 Color Books, $40.

Pasta: The Spirit and Craft of Italy’s Greatest Food, with Recipes

From James Beard Award-winning New York chef Missy Robbins (Lilia, Misi), this is the book all the Italo-phile chefs can’t wait to get their hands on. I’m afraid once I dive in, I’ll be sunk — pasta is my weakness, and the book’s pages are so mesmerizing, I can feel a fresh obsession coming on. How lovely to have such an inspiring guide!

Mouth is watering for: Mortadella and Ricotta-Filled Balanzoni with Brown Butter and Sage); Corzetti with Herbs and Pine Nuts; Pappardelle with Braised Rabbit Ragù; Stricchetti with Smashed Peas and Prosciutto, and so much more.

Pasta by Missy Robbins and Talia TBaiocchi; food photography by Kelly Puleio, location photography by Stephen Alessi, illustrations by Nick Hensley, 2021, Ten Speed Press, $40.

Treasures of the Mexican Table

Mexico City-born Pati Jinich traveled all throughout her native country’s 32 states to collect the recipes in this collection, subtitled “Classic Recipes, Local Secrets.” The PBS star worked on Treasures of the Mexican Table for more than a dozen years, and anyone who loves cooking Mexican food will want to give the work a permanent spot on their shelf, alongside the seminal volumes by Diana Kennedy and Enrique Olvera & Co. With enticing photos by Angie Moser, Treasures is an important, approachable and relatable trove of recipes that adds up to a rich and delicious panorama of contemporary Mexican cooking.

High on my list to cook: Potato and Poblano Sopes; Pinto Bean Soup with Masa Dumplings; Corn Soup with Queso Fresco; Vuelve a la Vida; Pescado Zarandeado; Pámpano en Salsa Verde; Chicken Mole with Mushrooms; Mole Poblano con Pollo; Tasajo; Cecina; Barbacoa de Borrego; Burnt Milk Ice Cream.

Treasures of the Mexican Table: Classic Recipes, Local Secrets, by Pati Jinich, photographs by Angie Mosier, 2021, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $35.

Middle Eastern Sweets

The elegant new book from Salma Hage — with enticing photographs by Liz and Max Haarala Hamilton — follows the success of Hage’s The Lebanese Kitchen, The Middle Eastern Vegetarian Cookbook and The Mezze Cookbook. Because I adore the Lebanese cookies known as ma’moul, the cover speaks loudly to me: I own a ma’moul mold (similar to the one at the bottom of the photo, meant for walnut-filled cookies), and I haven’t yet had the occasion to try my hand at them. I’m thinking Hage will be exactly the right teacher.

Also eager to make: Syrian Sesame & Pistachio Biscuits (Barazek); Pistachio Katmer; Moroccan Snack Cake (M’hanncha); Kunafa; Persian Marzipan Sweets (Toot); Orange & Pistachio Turkish Delight; Tahini & Pistachio Halva; Cardamom Ice Cream; Persian Saffron & Rose Water Ice Cream (Bastani); Lebanese Tea Loaf; Sweet Tahini Swirls.

Middle Eastern Sweets: Desserts, Pastries, Creams & Treats by Salma Hage, Photographs by Liz and Max Haarala Hamilton, illustrations by Marwan Kaabour, 2021, Phaidon, $35.

Tasting Vietnam

I love recipe collections that set the cuisine they cover in immersive context, and that’s the idea of this engaging family-memoir-meets-cookbook from Anne-Solenne Hatte. The book collects the recipes of Hatte’s maternal grandmother, Bà Ngoại, who grew up in the rice paddies near Hanoi, married a man who was President Ngo Đinh Diệm’s right-hand man, and lived her long life on three continents. Originally published in French in 2019 as La Cuisine de Bà, the book is part of a Rizzoli series for which Alain Ducasse is Collection Director.

Hungry to try: Bánh Bèo (Steamed Rice and Shrimp Cakes); Thịt Heo Kho (Caramelized Pork Belly with Eggs); Canh Rau Cải (Mustard Greens Soup); Đồ Chua (Pickled Eggplant, Carrots, Turnips and Mustard Greens); Bán Xèo; Nộm Hoa Chuối (Banana Blossom Salad with Passion Fruit).

Tasting Vietnam: Flavors and Memories from my Grandmother’s Kitchen by Anne-Solenne Hatte, from the recipe collections of Bà Ngoại, 2021, Rizzoli, $37.50.

Liguria: The Cookbook

Author Laurel Evans, a native Texan, moved to Italy more than fifteen years ago with her then-boyfriend, now-husband, Emilio Scoti, and promptly fell in love with his native Liguria — and everything about it. Based in Milan, with Emilio’s seaside hometown Moneglia as a summer getaway and winter refuge, Evans immersed herself in the region’s cooking. Scoti’s mother and his two aunts (“le nonne”) were Evans’ kitchen mentors. All the while, she blogged in Italian about American cooking, and published a couple of cookbooks along the way, with Scoti serving as photographer. The marvelous photos in this book are his.

Recipes flagged with Post-Its: Salvia Fritta (Fried Sage Leaves); Corzetti (Ligurian Stamped Pasta — note to self: order wooden stamp!); Pesto Traditionale (yes, Genoa, birthplace of pesto, is in Liguria); Trenette al Pesto con Fagiolini e Patate; Minestrone alla Genovese; Branzino alla Ligure; Ripieni di Verdura; Fiori di Zucca Ripieni.

Liguria: the cookbook: Recipes from the italian riviera by laurel evans, photographs by Emilio Scoti, 2021, Rizzoli, $45.

Flavors of the Sun

If you’ve ever lived in Brooklyn — or visited Brooklynites who love to cook or eat — you know all about Sahadi’s. The wonderful, sprawling emporium of olives, hummus, dried fruits, nuts, spices and every Mediterranean/Levantine ingredient or prepared food you could ever want, has been there on Atlantic Avenue since time immemorial. Written by Christine Sahadi Whelan — a fourth-generation co-owner — this bright and cheerful book includes recipes for the prepared foods that are Sahadi’s best-sellers, as well as others Whelan developed to please the palates of her young adult children, “who like almost everything better with a jolt of za’atar or harissa.”

Want to make: Turmeric-Pickled Cauliflower; Pomegranate-Roasted Beets with Goat Cheese; Whipped Feta Spread; Antipasto Salad; Za’atar-Roasted Vegetables; Fiery Berbere Shrimp; Red Lentil Soup; Spicy Escarole and Beans; Berbere-Spiced Chicken Thighs; Mohammara.

Flavors of the sun: The Sahadi’s guide to Understanding, Buying, and Using Middle Eastern Ingredients by Christine Sahadi Whelan, 2021, Chronicle Books, $35.

The Italian Bakery

From the authors of The Silver Spoon — the influential, encyclopedic Italian cookbook — this comprehensive guide to Italian desserts (baked and otherwise) includes 50 basic recipes that form the building blocks of Italian pastry and sweets and 90 other recipes besides. Accompanying the building blocks are step-by-step photos. Serious bakers and anyone who loves Italian dolci will want this in their collection.

Let me at ‘em: “Zeppole” — Italian Donuts; Poppy Seed and Cardamom Cake; Citrus and Saffron Semifreddo; Frozen Sabayon with Limoncello; Chocolate Frangipane Tart with Spiced Pears; Tartlets with Pine Nuts and Chocolate Cream; Peanut, Caramel and Chocolate Squares.

THE ITALIAN BAKER by the silver spoon 2021, Phaidon, $49.95.

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Cookbooks We Love: James Oseland's new 'World Food' title celebrates the iconic dishes of Paris

By Leslie Brenner

World Food: Paris by James Oseland with Jenna Leigh Evans; photographs by James Roper, 2021, Ten Speed Press, $26.

Backgrounder

This is the second installment of World Food, in which James Oseland covers the heritage recipes of great food cities around the globe. The series is inspired by Time-Life’s beloved “Foods of the World” cookbooks published in the 1970s. (World Food: Mexico City was published last year.) Oseland is the former long-time editor in chief of Saveur magazine.

The timing of this volume is particularly noteworthy, as interest in this style of French cooking — decidedly un-modern and informal, with a focus on iconic bistro dishes — is on the rise, both in France, where Hachette published a mammoth 1,000-plus-page cookbook from well known chef Jean-François Piège last December, and stateside, where restaurants like Bicyclette in Los Angeles and Frenchette in New York are hotter than ever. (Watch these pages, as more stories are on the way!) For those seeking entrée into the genre — or in the mood for a vicarious trip to Paris — Oseland’s book is a great place to start.

Why we love it

The slim, smallish, beautifully photographed volume conveys the current food mood of the City of Light. Flipping through its pages transports us — into the bistros, the kitchens of the city’s best home cooks, the marchés, the boulangeries. The Time-Life influence is expressed in approach and voice, making it feel familiar and nostalgic, while we delight in discovering dishes we know or have heard of (and suddenly crave) and others less familiar but no less enticing.

Some of the most successful recipes are the simplest, such as Carottes Râpées — the grated carrot salad that’s ubiquitous not just in Paris, but all over France. Here it gets an upgrade: Instead of grating the carrots (which most home cooks would do), these are cut into fine julienne. It’s labor-intensive, to be sure, but it results in a more elegant version of the homey dish, dressed with a lemony vinaigrette. Bonus: The carrots miraculously stay fresh and crunchy even after a couple days in the fridge. Not up for julienning? Go ahead — grate ‘em. (My permission, not Oseland’s.)

The Tartare Aller-Retour a l’Echalote shown above — Veal Burgers with Shallots — comes together in short order on a busy weeknight. Oseland’s headnote tells us that a tartare turned into a cooked patty is called tartare aller-retour — news to me, and how delightful, as aller-retour means “round trip.” The recipe serves two, so it was perfect for Thierry and me, but you could double or triple it for four or six.

I’m not supplying the recipe here just yet, as we’d have liked it even better with a little sauce made by deglazing the pan, so I’ll adapt it that way and revisit. (I’m ideologically opposed to browning meat and leaving the browned bits in the pan, when it’s so easy to turn up the heat, pour in a splash of wine and deglaze the pan for a voilà la sauce moment.)

You gotta try this

On the other hand, Oseland’s Gratin Dauphinois needs no enhancement. If you’re looking for a foolproof potato gratin, this one will take you heartwarmingly through through the season of indulgences. Entertaining soon? Plan your holiday meal around this beauty.

Easy to see why it made the cover of the book, with that gorgeous browned and crisp, beautifully textured top. Inside it’s creamy and luscious.

There’s no cheese involved (if it’s a cheesy gratin you’re after, this ain’t it), and Oseland departs from Gratin Dauphinois tradition in several ways: He has us use new potatoes or waxy potatoes rather than starchy ones, cut thicker than the usual thin-as-a-coin slices, and he boils them in milk and water first rather than baking them raw. I suddenly feel a Gratin Dauphinois story taking shape in my head, so do stay tuned on our French channel. (Or sign up for our free newsletter, if you haven’t already, so you don’t miss it.)

Small quibble

This book will probably be more useful to experienced cooks than neophytes, as the recipes sometimes need adjustments that should have been picked up in testing or editing. If, for instance, we were to layer the Hachis Parmentier (France’s answer to shepherd’s pie) in the 13 by 9 inch baking dish called for, that would have made quite the shallow dish, probably not more than half an inch deep. Suspecting that a pound of ground beef and a pound of potatoes would be more comfy in a much smaller pan, I used a 9-inch square, and even so, mine was barely deep enough to cover the tines of a fork. Fortunately, I knew better than to think that amount of meat and potatoes would serve 4 to 6 people; more like 3. But I was thrilled to be reminded of the French home-cooking classic, and Oseland’s, based on one by home cook Diane Reungsorn, gets the flavor just right.

Hurray for Almond Tuiles!

Oseland’s recipe for Almond Tuiles is right up my alley — its simple batter comes together in no time flat, with staple ingredients I always have on hand. (I keep a bag of sliced almonds in the freezer.) No electric appliances are required; just a whisk. You form the cookies by dropping spoonfuls onto a parchment- or silicone-mat-lined baking sheet (no, you cannot use waxed paper to make cookies, as the book suggests — the wax will likely melt!), then using the back of a spoon to spread them into thin circles.

Tested exactly as written, the tuiles — which are supposed to be very thin and crisp — were almost right, but soft in the middle, and leaving three inches between cookies on the baking sheet made it impossible to bake more than five or six on each sheet. That’s appropriate if you’re making classic tuiles you want to shape into cones (the classic roof tile shape for which they’re named) or cylinders, and don’t want them coming out of the oven too many at a time. But that’s not the idea here, so why not go for lots of fabulous crisp cookies in a snap?

Using Oseland’s excellent batter, I reduced the amount for each cookie and ask you to spread them thinner than he does — as thin as possible. Baking time drops by two minutes, and I halved the amounts of ingredients (except the almonds, which I upped) to keep a similar yield, and not keep you in the kitchen baking batch after batch.

Because they’re much thinner, they come out beautifully crisp throughout, absolutely delightful.

Still Wanna Make

A bunch of things! Country-Style Pork Terrine, for starters (if we can summon the nerve to buy that much fat). Quick-Cured Sardine Fillets (once I can find fresh sardines). Herb-Poached Fish with Beurre Blanc Sauce (this looks so luxurious!). Blanquette de Veau. North African Lamb and Vegetable Tagine. Crème Brûlée (need to replace Wylie’s broken blowtorch for that).

OK, your turn: What do you want to make?

RECIPE: Carottes Râpées

RECIPE: Gratin Dauphinois

RECIPE: Almond Tuiles

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Cookbooks We Love: Dorie Greenspan makes us all better bakers with 'Baking with Dorie'

By Leslie Brenner

Baking with Dorie: Sweet, Salty & Simple by Dorie Greenspan, Photography by Mark Weinberg, 2021, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $35

Backgrounder: With a career spanning three decades (her debut volume, Sweet Times: Special Desserts for Every Occasion was published in 1991), Greenspan is one of the most accomplished and trusted cookbook authors working in America today. She has won five James Beard Awards, and twice earned the International Association of Culinary Professional’s prestigious Cookbook of the Year award. She writes a column for The New York Times, whose editors chirp that “you can never go wrong with Dorie.”

Baking is her thing — it’s the subject of 8 of her 14 titles; she’s also a Francophile, and a great savory cook, too. She co-wrote one of my favorite French cookbooks, Daniel Boulud’s Café Boulud Cookbook (1999), and solo-wrote another fave, the monumental Around My French Table, with more than 300 recipes. (That was one of the two IACP Cookbook of the Year titles.) In 1998 she co-wrote a book with superstar Paris pastry chef Pierre Hermé (Desserts by Pierre Hermé), then in 2001 published a solo title, Chocolate Desserts by Pierre Hermé, which she followed with Paris Sweets: Great Desserts from the City’s Best Pastry Shops (2002). So yep, she knows her way around a vacherin. And this book is a stand-out.

[Read “Dorie Greenspan knocks it out of the kitchen with books about baking and French cooking.’]

Apricot and Pistachio Olive-Oil Cake from ‘Baking with Dorie’

Why We Love it: First, because Dorie has so many delicious and original ideas — all based on sound technique and spinning off tradition. (Pardon the informality; it’s hard for me to keep referring to her as Greenspan, as I’ve known her for 30 years.) She holds our hands, understands our fears and guides us to delicious success. Second, because the book is largely inspired by Dorie’s travels, which makes it feel very Cooks Without Borders. And third because Dorie provides lots of room to play, and plenty of choices, as with the Apricot and Pistachio Olive-Oil Cake shown above. You can flavor this beauty with saffron or tea leaves, salted or unsalted nuts and orange or tangerine zest. Dorie provides directions for both stand mixer and hand mixer. I used a hand mixer, and went the saffron, unsalted nuts and orange zest route. Glazed with apricot jam (which also gets slathered between the layers), it’s insanely delicious.

The Breakdown: Dorie assigns hearts to her favorites in every chapter, starting with Breakfast (Brioche Sticky Buns! Chocolate Babka!) — but Cheddar-Scallion Scones and Breakfast-in-Rome Lemon Cake sound just as wonderful. Cakes come next, with a “How-To” intro filled with invaluable tips, followed by Cookes, a Dorie forte.

A “Two Perfect Little Pastries” chapter focuses on cream puffs and meringues, offering lots of fabulous ways to use them. It was here I found the recipe that alone makes the book worth its cover price — Gouda Gougères.

Dorie Greenspan’s Gouda Gougères, from ‘Baking with Dorie’

I’ve made thousands of gougères in my lifetime, and this recipe — which has you beating in the eggs with a mixer rather than the traditional wooden spoon — is by far the best of any I’ve tried. Enriched with aged Gouda (instead of traditional Gruyère), these cheese puffs are flavored with ground cumin, and whole cumin seeds go on top, along with flakes of sea salt. The texture is absolutely perfect and the flavor out-of-this-world. Dorie suggests making them up to the point just before you bake them, then freezing the raw puffs on a baking sheet and storing them in an airtight container. That way you have them ready to be baked at a moment’s notice. The fact that I have a batch frozen and ready for the sheet pan makes me almost weepingly happy.

Interested in a classic gougère? Dorie supplies her recipe for that, too (along with her invention pâte-a-choux cheese sticks) after the Gouda treats.

A chapter on Pies, Tarts, Cobblers and Crisps comes next, followed by “Salty Side Up: Satisfying Suppers, Sides and More.” Leave it to Dorie to end a book of sweets with something savory.

World Peace Cookies 2.0 from ‘Baking with Dorie’ by Dorie Greenspan. It was inspired by a chocolate sablé recipe given to the author by Pierre Hermé.

You Gotta Try This: I’m a sucker for a sablé, the buttery, slice-and-bake French cookie with a famously sandy texture, so I couldn’t resist the sweet Dorie calls World Peace Cookies 2.0. To tell the truth, I was a wee bit worried I wouldn’t love them, as they’re dolled up with freeze-dried raspberries, cacao nibs, bittersweet chocolate pieces and piment d’Espelette. I was so wrong — they’re incredible, with flavors that dance beautifully with the chocolate and a texture somewhere between a classic sablé and a brownie. I baked up half a batch, and the log I have in my freezer (which you leave out 15 minutes, then slice and bake) has improved my outlook on life about as much as the frozen gougères have. (I feel rich!)

Go ahead and make a batch and tell me if you don’t love ’em.

Tiny Quibble: I was really excited to find Dorie’s rethought version of Tarte Tatin — the classic French baked-in-a-cast-iron-skillet caramel apple tart. It’s a tart that has always intimidated me, perhaps because I’m not a confident caramel-maker. In the book’s introduction, Dorie calls her heart-notated innovation — which involves using a springform pan rather than a skillet — foolproof. Waah-waah; it made a fool of me. Probably it’s my own fault — I think I failed to take the caramel dark enough.

My pallid Tarte Tatin — a failure of caramel-making-skills, probably

The tart unmolded nicely, but where was the caramel? It all disappeared into the apples rather than enrobing them in burnished goodness. I saved it (ish) by making a Caramel-Cognac sauce from Chez Panisse Desserts and pouring it over the whole thing. Not terribly Tatin-esque, but passable topped with a dollop of crème fraîche.

No matter, I would still purchase Baking with Dorie a hundred times over, and will certainly give it as a gift to cooks and bakers I love. There are so many things in it I still want to make, and the Gouda Gougères, Apricot and Pistachio Cake and World Peace Cookies 2.0 that will forever figure in my repertoire.

Still Wanna Make: Lemon Meringue Layer Cake; Copenhagen Rye Cookies with Chocolate, Spice and Seeds; Pistachio-Matcha Financiers; Chocolate Eclairs; Mulled-Butter Apple Pie (more my speed and skill level?!); My Favorite Pumpkin Pie (that one will be soon!); Parisian Custard Tart; Candied Almond Tart; Asparagus-Lemon Quiche. And still more besides!

I hope you enjoy this book as much as I do.

Buy Baking with Dorie from Bookshop

Buy Baking with Dorie from Amazon

RECIPE: Apricot and Pistachio Olive-Oil Cake

RECIPE: Dorie Greenspan’s Gouda Gougères

RECIPE: World Peace Cookies 2.0

Kate Leahy's 'Wine Style' is a delicious solo debut from a seasoned (and fascinating) cookbook pro

By Leslie Brenner

Wine Style: Discover the wines you will love through 50 simple recipes, by Kate Leahy, Photographs by Erin Scott, 2021, Ten Speed Press, $22.

Her name may not ring a bell — yet, anyway — but Kate Leahy is one of the most interesting cookbook authors around.

Leading up to the publication last week of her first solo cookbook, Wine Style, her publishing career had been one of collaboration; she’d been a co-author, working with chefs, restaurateurs and others on 10 wide-ranging titles over the past 13 years. Her first effort — A16 Food + Wine — won the IACP Cookbook of the Year award and the Julia Child First Book award following its publication in 2008. A16 is a captivating romp through the wines and foods of Southern Italy as expressed in Nate Appleman and Shelley Lindgren’s beloved San Fransisco restaurant of the same name.

If you could spend some time with that first book, along with Leahy’s most recent ones — Burma Superstar (2017), Lavash (2019) and La Buvette (which we reviewed last year when it was published) — you might sense a delightful sensibility running through all — Leahy’s it would seem, as she’s the common denominator. Those books all have an underlying intelligence, grace in the writing and overarching deliciousness. Each expresses a passion for deeply exploring culinary cultures, including the people who uphold the traditions, the places from which the traditions spring.

Leahy is at once an expressive, talented writer and an outstanding, accomplished cook with a great palate — an unusual combination. Dig into her background a bit and you begin to understand: She began her career as a cook, and worked on the line at James Beard Award-winning restaurants including A16 (aha!), Terra in the Napa Valley and Radius in Boston. Later, she went to journalism school — at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.

Author Kate Leahy / Photograph by John Lee

Her projects beautifully and compellingly capture worlds, whether it’s Armenia and its diaspora (Lavash); the cult of laphet — edible fermented Assam tea leaves as practiced in the border regions around Myanmar, China and Thailand (Burma Superstar); or a cave à manger (a wine bar where you can eat) in Paris’ branché 11th Arrondissement (La Buvette). If you want to get an idea of the sensibility at work, check out 1000 Meals, the video series Leahy produces with John Lee, a wonderful photographer and videographer who’s Leahy’s frequent collaborator.

‘Wine Style’ Marinated Mushrooms

Because there’s such depth and expansiveness in Leahy’s work, I was eager to dive into Wine Style, her first book as a solo author.

Quickly and irrevocably, I was hooked. Wine Style is chock full of smart, enticing recipes that not only pair well with your favorite reds, whites, and oranges, but are easy and delicious enough that they’re sure to become perennial favorites — dishes you’ll constantly be tossing together when friends are unexpectedly stopping by, when you’re heading to a picnic, hosting book club, or even on harried weeknights when you want an effortless yet satisfying dinner.

The first recipe I tried, a ridiculously simple dish of garlicky marinated mushrooms that cooks in a snap, was so good I made it twice more in a matter of days.

RECIPE: ‘Wine Style’ Marinated Mushrooms

What to drink with that? Leahy suggests an earthy red — a Nebbiolo from Alto Piemonte or a mellow, traditional Rioja. Right she is; a Cune Rioja Crianza I’ve been been picking up for less than $15 was perfect.

Pretension is not part of Wine Style’s picture. “Most of the wines I seek out fall into the ‘charming and affordable’ camp,” Leahy writes in her introduction, “the kind of wines that make people smile without taking over the conversation.” These are the wines she and her friends bring when they gather every month for “Porch Time” — laid-back potluck dinners pulled together from unfussy recipes, often to be served room-temp (or backyard temp, as the case may be; none of them actually have porches).

And it’s in the spirit of Porch Time that she has created and pulled together the recipes that make up the book.

Types of wine (“wine styles”) serve as the organizing principle for those recipes: There are chapters on bubbles, whites (“crisp” or “rich”), orange wines, rosés, on through reds characteized as “picnic,” “reasonably serious” or “big” and finishing with sweet wines.

Leahy suggests pairings without getting hung up on them. The brief opening chapter, Wine Basics, is one of the best things I’ve read for beginners, or for food people who want to learn more about wine. I love that she focuses on texture and acidity — a welcome departure from the puffed-up lists of aromas that have infected wine writing for decades. Leahy provides an excellent section on natural wines, explaining the low-intervention winemaking philosophy (using sourdough as an analogy) and how it’s expressed in the glass.

Kate Leahy’s Harissa Deviled Eggs, from ‘Wine Style’

And so, for Harissa Deviled Eggs — an idea I couldn’t resist — eggs’ propensity to coat the tongue propensity has Leahy reaching for scrubbing bubbles. Bingo! Prosecco was just the thing. And again, super simple; you don’t even really need a recipe if you can remember a third-cup of mayo, a tablespoon of harissa, a splash of lemon juice and half a dozen eggs. OK, here’s the recipe anyway:

RECIPE: Harissa Deviled Eggs

Another winning pairing: Poached salmon set on a charmingly disheveled fennel-celery salad, with caper mayo — sipped with Provençal rosé. I love the play of the fennel and celery, so similar in texture and different in flavor; I’d never thought of putting them together before, and it totally worked. Next time I’ll try it with Leahy’s other pairing idea: unoaked Chardonnay.

RECIPE: Poached Salmon with Fennel-Celery Salad and Caper Mayo

Freestyling with the recipes

I haven’t always managed to conjure Leahy’s suggested pairings; sometimes a dish sounded good, and I just went for it, wine or no.

Roasted edamame spoke to me: It’s something you can whip out on demand if you keep bags of it in the freezer and own a jar of furikake, the nori-and-sesame seasoning mix. Slightly defrost a bag of frozen shelled edamame, toss with olive oil and soy sauce, roast for 20 or 30 minutes, then toss with the furikake. For this, I pulled out a bottle of sake (which I had on hand) rather than orange wine (which I didn’t). Really good. (It’s also fabulous made with edamame still in their pods.)

Recently I was in Massachussetts visiting Cooks Without Borders’ design director, Juliet Jacobson, who put together Wine Style’s Beet and Potato Salad with Tarragon — another winner. We both loved the unlikely combo of the tarragon with dill pickles, though maybe if a reprint is ever in the works Leahy might consider adding a weight measurement for the pickles; “2 large or 3 small dill pickles” led to confusion. Were the pickles in our jar large? Medium? Who’s to say? We probably guessed wrong, as we wished it were a wee bit more pickle-y.

Juliet had also made Leahy’s Chocolate Olive Cake — which we’ll both be making again (and soon!). Made with almond flour, it gets moistness and fruitiness from the inclusion of prunes — and the combo of nuts and dried fruit certainly sounds fabulous with the Banyuls rouge or port Leahy suggests.

Wine or no wine, all those recipes are keepers — and Erin Scott’s engaging photos capture the dishes deliciously.

And there’s so much else that entices. Green Olive Tapenade and Baked Feta with Olives and Lemon both sound fabulous to smear on crusty bread. Ginger Chicken Salad, inspired by the Burmese salads Leahy fell in love with writing Burmese Superstar, looks enticing, as does oil-packed Tuna with Potatoes, Olives and Lemons. Leahy calls A Really Good Pasta Salad “handy for lunch, picnics, and dinners on hot nights.” It’s a match, she writes, for richer orange wines, “though no one would complain if you poured them a glass of lightly chilled Gamay instead.” Baked Peaches with Coconut and Sliced Almonds, which sounds terrific on its own or with its suggested Moscato d’Asti or dry or demi-sec Prosecco.

Italian Sausages with Roasted Cauliflower and Greens, from ‘Wine Style’ by Kate Leahy

Because autumn will be here before we know it, I thought I’d leave you with a recipe I’ll certainly be making again as the weather cools: Italian Sausages with Roasted Cauliflower and Greens. Made on a sheet pan, it’s just the kind of effortless yet delicious one-dish dinner I’m always looking for. Red onion and capers roasted with the cauliflower and sausages, along with a squeeze of lemon at the end, give it just the right zing.

And the wine? Leahy assures us there’s no short of reds that go with it, “but those with sunny dispositions, like Argentine Malbec or the Grenache, Syrah and Mourvèdre blends of the southern Rhône Valley, have a juicy quality that matches well with the sweetness of the caramelized cauliflower and sausages.” Indeed they do! And those sunny dispositions are always welcome — any time of year.

Wine Style: Discover the wines you will love through 50 simple recipes, by Kate Leahy, Photographs by Erin Scott, 2021, Ten Speed Press, $22.

RECIPE: Italian Sausages with Roasted Cauliflower and Greens

RECIPE: Poached Salmon with Fennel-Celery Salad and Caper Mayo

RECIPE: Harissa Deviled Eggs

RECIPE: ‘Wine Style’ Marinated Mushrooms

Cookbooks We Love: David Lebovitz's 'The Perfect Scoop' is the only ice cream book you'll ever need

Our photo of ‘The Perfect Scoop’ shows the 2007 first-edition paperback, but our review refers to the 2018 updated and revised edition.

By Leslie Brenner

The Perfect Scoop: 200 Recipes for Ice Creams, Sorbets, Gelatos, Granitas and Sweet Accompaniments (revised and updated), by David Lebovitz, photographs by Ed Anderson, 2018, Ten Speed Press, $24.99

Backgrounder: Paris-based former Chez Panisse pastry chef David Lebovitz has a wonderful blog and website (which you should be following if you love sweets or French cooking); we always refer to his section on Paris restaurants when we find ourselves in the City of Lights. He is the author of many excellent books, including Drinking French, Ready for Dessert, My Sweet Life in Paris and others (he has published nine in total), and The Perfect Scoop is our favorite of them all. Originally published in 2007, Lebovitz revised and updated it in 2018, adding a dozen new recipes, and it is that edition that’s the basis of this review and the recipes we’ve adapted.

Why We Love it: Lebovitz is the undisputed king of ice cream, and we’ve been making his frozen desserts since way back when the book was first published. The recipes always work perfectly as written, but they’re eminently riffable, and even provide such a strong foundation that if you’re a confident cook, you can probably start creating your own recipes. Besides chapters on the frozen desserts themselves, there are also chapters on Sauces and Toppings (Classic Hot Fudge, Cajeta, Candied Red Beans), Mix-Ins (Butter Pecans, Peppermint Patties) and “Vessels” (Ice Cream Cones, Crêpes, Profiteroles, Brownies).

We’ve made or tasted probably at least a dozen frozen desserts in the book, which besides ice cream, also includes gelatos, sorbets, sherbets and sorbettos, frozen yogurts, ices, granitas and ice pops. Recently, we made up a batch of Lebovitz’s Watermelon Sorbetto, pouring into ice-pop molds and turning it into not-too-sweet watermelon paletas (so good!). His Lavender-Honey Ice Cream is one of our favorites ever; Peach Ice Cream is a Philadelphia-style (no eggs) classic you’ll love all summer long; Cinnamon Ice Cream is classic as well. At Christmastime, Egg Nog Ice Cream is killer, and any time of year, Lemon Sorbet is a terrific version of classic lemon Italian ice. (You’ll have to buy the book to get those recipes, but believe me, you won’t be sorry.)

Gianduja Gelato with Straciatella from ‘The Perfect Scoop’

Recently we fell in love with (and wrote about) the Gianduja (hazelnut-chocolate) Gelato swirled with the Stracciatella (Italian-style chocolate chips) found in the Mix-Ins chapter.

Matcha Ice Cream from ‘The Perfect Scoop’

Lovers of Japanese sweets will adore Lebovitz’s green tea ice cream. Made with matcha and rich with egg yolks, it is quite simply the best we’ve ever tasted.

You’ll have to save for the winter, when mandarins (also known as tangerines) are in season and at their most flavorful, to fully appreciate Lebovitz’s Tangerine Sorbet. But do keep it in mind — with an incredible purity of flavor, it’s one of our all-time favorite winter desserts.

Nectarine Sorbet from ‘The Perfect Scoop’

You’ve Gotta Try This: In Southwest France, where I’ve spent a lot of time over the last three decades, my French in-laws have a delightful custom of slicing a ripe peach into their red wine glasses at the end of dinner. The peaches get macerated, turning them into a glorious, light dessert, so fab with the red wine. A few years ago, I tried to develop a peach ice cream recipe that would replicate those flavors, but never succeeded. Lo and behold Lebovitz’s recipe for Nectarine Sorbet, which he suggests scooping into wine glasses and letting everyone pour in red wine to their taste. Dare I say it’s even better than the real thing!? The sorbet on its own is pretty magnificent — and easy to make, especially as nectarines don’t require peeling.

Nectarine Sorbet is marvelous in a glass of red wine.

Still Wanna Make: Oh, man — where do I start?! Chartreuse Ice Cream is high on the list (will do that soon!), and so are Toasted Almond & Candied Cherry; Aztec Chocolate; Toasted Coconut; Dried-Apricot-Pistachio; and Prune-Armagnac (all ice creams). Among the dairy-free recipes, I feel a batch of Pineapple Sorbet coming on soon. And doesn’t Cucumber-Gin Sorbet sound like fun?

I’m guessing you’re half-way out of your seat and ready to churn; make sure your ice-cream-maker insert is in the freezer.

If You Don’t Yet Have an Ice-cream Maker: Do spring for one — it’s well worth it if you love ice creams and sorbets as much as we do. Our 15+ year-old Cuisinart finally died a month ago, and I bought a new one with a larger capacity — the Cuisinart ICE-70. It’s not inexpensive, at about $139 (at the moment), but I appreciate that it can churn up to 1 1/2 quarts of ice cream. (Note that it is not the 2 quarts its specs suggest; a full review is coming soon!) The New York Times Wirecutter highly recommends the much less pricey Cuisinart ICE-21 (my purchase was also based on a positive Wirecutter review, among others), but at three-quarters capacity, I believe that would cause overflow problems with many recipes, including some of Lebovitz’s.

RECIPE: Gianduja Gelato with Stracciatella

RECIPE: ‘The Perfect Scoop’ Matcha Ice Cream

RECIPE: ‘The Perfect Scoop’ Tangerine Sorbet

RECIPE: Nectarine Sorbet

Cookbooks We Love: ‘Tu Casa Mi Casa,’ from Enrique Olvera and co., is the Mexican cooking primer you need

By Leslie Brenner

TU CASA MI CASA: MEXICAN RECIPES FOR THE HOME COOK, BY Enrique Olvera, Luis Arellano, Gonzalo Goût and Daniela Soto-Innes, Photographs by Araceli Paz, 2019, Phaidon, $39.95.

Backgrounder

Anyone who’s a fan of contemporary Mexican cooking knows that Enrique Olvera is its most famous chef, with restaurants including Pujol, Ticuchi and Eno (Mexico City), Criollo (Oaxaca), Cosme and ATLA (New York City), Damian (Los Angeles), Manta (Cabo San Lucas) and others. He’s also widely considered to be one of the most outstanding chefs in the world. A counterbalance to his gorgeous 2015 coffee-table chef book, Mexico from the Inside Out (also published by Phaidon), this flexibound book is aimed toward home cooks. Olvera’s coauthors are involved in some of his highest profile restaurants. Luis Arellano was the opening chef at Criollo , and has served as creative director at the flagship, Pujol. Gonzolo Goût, who specializes in researching Mexican food cultures and worked on both books, was opening general manager of Cosme, and is Olvera’s partner at Ticuchi. Daniela Soto-Innes is chef-partner of Cosme and ATLA.

Why we love it

Tu Casa Mi Casa is delightfully approachable and useful, filled with easy, often quickly made recipes that even beginning cooks can make any night of the week. Cooking from it, you have the impression this is how the world’s most accomplished and talented Mexican chefs would put together laid-back dinners at home; it charmingly conveys how people in Mexico really cook and eat at home.

I found three such recipes I love in a chapter called “Weekday Meals.”

I’d been looking for ages for a worthwhile version of tinga de pollo (chicken tinga), usually put off by how seemingly too simple the recipes were. Tu Casa’s headnote explains why: “The first recipe any Mexican will cook as soon as they move out of their parents’ home and live on their own is chicken tinga.”

Made from ingredients you can get at any supermarket, Tu Casa’s version is delicious.

To achieve it, poach a chicken breast in salted water with white onion and garlic, shred the meat, add it to sautéed sliced onion and garlic, along with chipotle chiles chopped to a paste, lots of roughly chopped plum tomatoes and some of the chicken’s poaching liquid, then cook about 10 minutes, till the tomatoes break down. That’s it.

We had it both ways suggested in the headnote: The first night we loved it served on rice with tortillas; Next day for lunch, I cooked down the leftover tinga a bit to thicken it, then used it make chicken tinga tostadas. To make them, I layered corn tortillas dried for an hour in a low (200 degree F.) oven with shredded lettuce, the tinga, crumbled queso fresco, a drizzle of crema and a spoonful of Raw Salsa Verde. I’ll make these again and again.

Chicken tinga tostada with queso fresco, crema and raw salsa verde — what a lunch!

Another weekday recipe — fish fillets wrapped in banana leaves with citrus and herbs then baked — was equally simple, but impressive enough for a dinner party.

Banana-Leaf Fish from ‘Tu Casa Mi Casa’ by Enrique Olvera, Luis Arellano, Gonzalo Goût and Daniela Soto-Innes.

In making the dish, you learn how to make a banana leaf square pliable enough to fold (hold it over an open flame a few seconds till it blushes emerald green), and how to fold it around the fish, herbs and citrus tamal-style. (We give you the step-by-step in our adaptation of the recipe.)

I also enjoyed a simple dish of Calabacitas a la Mexicana — Mexican-style summer squash — that vegans will love.

Its headnote explains that the dish is “one of the most classic expressions” of the mexicana style, which it defines:

“A la Mexicana — a preparation with tomatoes (red), onions (white) and serrano chiles (green) — gets its name from the colors of our flag.”

For more experienced cooks and those who want to dive deeper into the cuisine, Tu Casa Mi Casa is super strong on technique — explaining how to judge when masa is the right consistency for tortillas or tamales; how to season and maintain a clay comal; how to press and cook a tortilla or tlayuda, fold a tetela and shape a tlacoyo. It runs down how to cook beans and explains how make requesón (fresh cheese). It lays out the different types of salsas, gives basic recipes and explains how to use them and riff on them.

The salsa verde, which I used on the chicken tinga tostada, is so simple you don’t need a formal recipe: Put 5 large tomatillos (husked, washed, quartered), a quarter of a large white onion, 1 or 2 seeded serrano chiles, a charred then peeled garlic clove, and half cup of chopped cilantro in a blender or food processor with salt to taste and blitz.

‘Tu Casa Mi Casa’ aguachile, with halibut swapped out for the hamachi

Still wanna make

I loved an aguachile with charred corn and avocado, but couldn’t get the hamachi the recipe called for so used halibut, will try that again with hamachi. High on my list of dishes to try: Cream of Squash Blossom Soup (Sopa de Flor de Calabaza); Cactus Salad (Ensalada de Nopal); Seafood Cocktail (Vuelve a la Vida); Raw Fluke with Salsa Macha; Broccoli Tamales; Chiles Rellenos (those beautiful ones shown on the cover); Barbacoa; Sweet Corn Tamales; Mexican Chocolate Ice Pops (Paletas Heladas de Chocolate); Cashew Horchata. That’s a lot of still-wanna-makes!

One tiny wish, if there’s ever a new edition

Buried on the very last page, in a tiny “recipe note,” is one that says “All chiles should be destemmed, seeded and deveined unless otherwise specified.” Would be much more useful to have that up front.

And I very much hope there is a new edition because it was first published in the spring of 2019, only months before Masienda began selling masa harina made from heirloom corn. Now that this fabulous masa harina is easy to purchase, I’d love to see how the authors — who played an important role in the founding of Masienda — would incorporate the ingredient.

In any case, I can’t recommend this book more highly. It belongs on the bookshelf of anyone interested in Mexican cooking, whether a dabbling beginner or an experienced chef.

BUY Tu Casa Mi Casa at Bookshop

BUY Tu Casa Mi Casa at Amazon

RECIPE: Tu Casa Mi Casa Chicken Tinga

RECIPE: Banana-Leaf Fish (Empapelado de Pescado)

RECIPE: Calabacitas a la Mexicana (Mexican-Style Squash)

Cookbook Review: Roxana Jullapat's 'Mother Grains' has all the makings of a new classic

By Leslie Brenner

Mother Grains: Recipes for the Grain Revolution, by Roxana Jullapat; photography by Kristin Teig, 2021, W. W. Norton & Company, $40.

As we begin to break through to the liberation side of The Great Confinement, finding the silver linings of what we’re leaving behind feels like a sunny way to try to make sense of the world and what we’ve been through.

One of those silver linings is that as a society, we seem more able to take some control of our food choices, and we are moving on from long-held assumptions about the foods available to us. Sourdough obsession illustrates that in microcosm. People couldn’t get great bread. They dove in, devoted themselves to the science and feeding of sourdough, to the baking of bread, and figured it out. It has been transformative for many.

Related to that phenomenon is a new interest in grains: where they come from (geographically and historically), who farms them, how they’re milled and how supporting, purchasing, baking or cooking with and eating them can improve lives all around and in many ways.

I’m not a frequent bread baker, but when I do make my occasional no-knead, Dutch-oven number, it is always whole grain. During pandemic I became hooked on the heritage flours offered by a local(ish) miller, Barton Springs Mill. Outside of baking, I also became obsessed with the heirloom corn sold by Masienda, the Los Angeles-based purveyor that sources its dried corn (and masa harina made from it) from small-scale farms in Mexico. That has been life-changing for me, as I no longer have to settle for tortillas made from commodity corn and bread made from commodity flour. The flavors and textures I’m enjoying are so much better — as is the way I feel about supporting the farmers and millers who make it all possible.

Both Barton Springs Mill and Masienda are part of a larger “grain revolution” — which is the subject of Roxana Jullapat’s outstanding new cookbook, Mother Grains.

Spelt Blueberry Muffins with streusel topping, from Roxana Jullapat’s ‘Mother Grains.’

Jullapat, the renowned baker and co-owner of Friends & Family in Los Angeles, became inspired by the grain farmers and small mills whose products she worked with back when she and her husband, chef Daniel Mattern, had a restaurant called Cooks County (it opened in 2011). “I began using whole grains in our breads and pastries and, for the first time, paid attention to how these new ingredients could transform the way I baked,” she writes in the introduction.

Born in Orange County, CA to immigrant parents — a Thai mother and Costa Rican father — Jullapat lost her mother when she was just two years old; her father moved the family to Costa Rica and remarried. She grew up there, then studied journalism in college, contemplated grad school after getting her degree, but wound up returning to California and attending the Southern California School of Culinary Arts. There she met Mattern, and they both wound up working at Campanile, Nancy Silverton and Mark Peel’s celebrated restaurant. Jullapat went on to serve as pastry chef at two other wonderful restaurants — Lucques and A.O.C. (Mattern was chef de cuisine at A.O.C.)

After she and Mattern closed Cooks County in 2015, Jullapat took two years to experiment with heirloom grains from all over the United States and around the world — and to travel. “I went to Bhutan,” she writes, “where I tasted Himalayan crepes thin and thick and sampled earthy Bhutanese red rice. Then I headed to Turkey, where whole ancient wheat berries are common in savory dishes . . . . Back in Costa Rica, I discovered heirloom blue corn grown organically in the northern region of Nicoya.” Between trips, she visited Southern California farms that were leading the local grain movement.

The book offers a wealth of knowledge about the eight ancient “mother grains” that inspired the title: barley; buckwheat; corn; oats; rice; rye; sorghum and wheat. Did you know that rye is a newer grain — only 2,000 or 3,000 years old — and that it originated in Anatolia, near modern-day Turkey? That it thrives in cold, damp climates, which is why it’s ubiquitous in Scandinavia, Russia and Eastern Europe? Or that buckwheat is a pseudograin, like quinoa, which means it comes not from a grass but from a leafy, flowering bush?

Did you know that flour — especially whole-grain flour — is perishable, and that purchasing from artisan mills or local distributors is a great way to ensure freshness?

Spelt, I learned from the book, is probably the best-known “ancient” wheat, the one Jullapat considers a “gateway” for bakers starting to explore ancient grains. (Other ancient wheats are einkorn, emmer, also known as farro, khorasan wheat and durum.)

Want to discover spelt’s charms? Treat yourself to Jullapat’s Spelt Blueberry Muffins. I did, and they turned out to be far-and-away the best blueberry muffins I’ve ever tasted.

In fact, Jullapat’s recipes are generally spectacular — which is why I think her book deserves to become a classic. I’ve marked dozens of pages of recipes I want to try, and nearly all of the seven I’ve made so far have been exceptional.

The Macadamia Brown Butter Blondies that Jullapat has baked “every day since opening Friends & Family opened in 2017” are a case in point. Brown butter and barley flour give them a wonderful depth, but don’t worry — they’re rich and decadent enough to charm all comers, including kids.

Macadamia Brown Butter Blondies, from ‘Mother Grains’ by Roxana Jullapat. Jullapat writes that she has baked them ‘every day since opening Friends & Family in 2017.’

They’re baked in a round cake pan, “ensuring that each piece has a chewy, toasted exterior and a soft center.” Jullapat points out that because they’re so easy to make, they keep for a few days and they travel well, “they’re an ideal homemade gift you can ship to friends and family all over the country.”

Not all the recipes are sweet. In fact one of my favorites is a savory: Buckwheat Blini with Dungeness Crab Salad.

Blini, as you may or may not know, are leavened pancakes that are traditional in Russia. There, they’re topped with sour cream or melted butter and treats like smoked salmon, whitefish, herring or caviar. According to Anya von Bremzen, author of Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking, blini are saucer-sized, “never cocktail-sized, and these days people prefer wheat to the archaic buckwheat.”

That’s fodder for another story, one about blini culture. In any case, I so loved the archaic buckwheat mini-blini in Jullapat’s book that I’ve made them twice in two weeks. Or maybe we could say four times: Her recipe makes enough batter for about 3 dozen blini, and both times I made them, I saved some of the batter to cook blini the following day. They’re so good — and so much fun to make — that I’m contemplating making them again tomorrow.

On the subject of the topping, Jullapat suggests that if you’re not a West Coaster, and don’t have access to Dungeness crab, using whatever is locally available. I used defrosted frozen lump blue crab, and that was fine, but I know it would be spectacular with Dungeness. I have also topped these with a smear of crème fraîche and a bit of smoked salmon or smoked trout, a squeeze of lemon and a sprig of dill or snip of chive. So good.

Buckwheat blini with crab salad, avocado and dill, from Roxana Jullapat’s ‘Mother Grains’

We do need to end with a sweet though, and Mother Grains’ Chocolate Dynamite Cookies are winners. Called “dynamite” because of Jullapat’s observation that they elicit explosively positive reactions in those who try them, the fudgy, brownie-like cookies are wheat-free (made with dark rye flour) and completely whole grain. Pretty astonishing for something that tastes so indulgent. Jullapat promises that if you make them, you’ll be invited to “every potluck, picnic and dinner party.” I’m sure she’s right!

I did have a small problem with them the first time I baked them, though I can’t exactly say that it’s the recipe’s fault. The cookies turned out as wonderfully as promised, but I lost my favorite Oxo mixing bowl in the process, thanks to some quirk of physics in which a vacuum was created by the chocolate-melting set-up Jullapat prescribed. I had to throw away that bowl and the pot to which it became permanently and irrevocably adhered. My adaptation won’t get you into that quandary, because I tweaked the melting method, substituting one favored by chocolate expert Alice Medrich.

I also tweaked the mixing instructions for cooks who, like me, do not own a stand mixer, but have a hand-held mixer instead.

Which brings me to the one small wish I have for the book. Because I’d like it to stay in print forever — finding a wide audience and passionate fans — I’m hoping that a future edition will get a fresh round of closer editing than it got the first time around. Among the 7 recipes I tested, nearly all lacked helpful info — particularly about what size bowls to use for various tasks — requiring more guesswork and/or extra dishes to wash than is ideal in a classic cookbook.

There is also a significant error in the book — of the sort an attentive editor or copy editor should have caught. A recipe for Vegan Pozole Verde calls for “2 cups, or 170 g.” of dried hominy. In my kitchen, 2 cups of dried hominy weighs more like 300 g., while 170 grams is 1 generous cup. I prepared the pozole using 170 g. rather than 2 cups, which was the right guess.

In any case, these are small flaws, easy to fix on the next go-round, should that come to pass. The important thing is Mother Grains is a wonderful book, one whose surface I have barely scratched. There are so many more things I want to try: Nectarine and Blackberry Crisp made with rolled oats. Grapple (grape and apple) Pie made with Sonora Wheat Pie Dough. Semolina Cookies with Fennel Pollen. Oatmeal Date Cookies. Crepes Suzette with Blood Orange and Mascarpone.

I could go on and on.

Want in on the deliciousness? Try one or more of the recipes we’ve adapted here at CWB. If you love them as much as we do you’ll want to buy Mother Grains lickety-split.

But wait; there’s more! You’re invited to join us as we host Roxana Jullapat, along with our favorite artisan miller, David Kaisel — founder of Capay Mills in Northern California — at a live video event, part of our new Cooks Without Borders Makers, Shakers and Mavens Q & A series. Attendance is free (limited to 100 people), and we know you’ll want to be there with your questions for Jullapat and Kaisel.

Cooks Without Borders Makers, Shakers and Mavens: The Grain Revolution with Roxana Jullapat and David Kaisel
Thursday, May 27, 3 p.m. PST, 5 p.m. CST, 6 p.m. EST

Sign up now to reserve your spot!

RECIPE: Roxana Jullapat’s Spelt Blueberry Muffins

RECIPE: Macadamia Brown Butter Blondies

RECIPE: Buckwheat Blini with Crab Salad

RECIPE: Roxana Jullapat’s Chocolate Dynamite Cookies

Author Andrea Nguyen brings unforgettable Vietnamese flavor into every home cook's wheelhouse

‘Vietnamese Food Any Day’ by Andrea Nguyen

By Leslie Brenner

Editor’s note: Women have a history of writing the best cookbooks. That’s why throughout March — Women’s History Month (and maybe even into April!) — we’ll be featuring cookbooks by our favorite female authors.

Over the past year, I’ve been working on developing a few Vietnamese-inspired recipes with the invaluable help and guidance of my dear friend An-My Lê — Cooks Without Borders’ Vietnamese cooking advisor. I want to get them just right, so I’ve been moving slower than I meant to on them; they will be coming sooner than later, I hope!

A brilliant photographer by profession, An-My happens to be one of the best cooks I know — in many idioms, including French (as well as Vietnamese). When I asked her some months ago to recommend the best Vietnamese cookbooks for home cooks, she didn’t hesitate. Andrea Nguyen’s books, she said, along with Charles Phan’s Vietnamese Home Cooking.

Author Andrea Nguyen / Photograph by Aubrey Pick

An-My is not alone in her opinion, obviously; Nguyen’s work has been honored with many prestigious awards, including a James Beard Cookbook Award for The Pho Cookbook and an IACP Cookbook Award for Unforgettable: The Bold Flavors of Paula Wolfert’s Renegade Life, which she edited.

Nguyen, who lives in Northern California and describes herself as “a bank examiner gone astray,” has published five other books as well, including Into the Vietnamese Kitchen, Asian Dumplings, Asian Tofu and The Banh Mi Handbook, as well as her most recent, Vietnamese Food Any Day, with which I’m currently obsessed. One of the dishes in that last title — a rice-noodle salad number — was a dream-bowl for us last summer.

Happily for her fans (me included), she also has a fabulous blog — Viet World Kitchen — where you can find a wealth of delicious stories, videos and recipes.

[Watch our Video Q & A with Andrea Nguyen and An-My Lê.]

I’d recommend Vietnamese Food Any Day for anyone wanting to dive into Vietnamese cooking, whether you’re a newbie or have lots of experience. The book is wonderful for teaching us how to bring the Vietnamese spirit and style of cooking and eating into our American home kitchens, starting with what to keep on hand — including brands: Red Boat or Three Crabs fish sauce! Three Ladies rice paper and jasmine rice!. But Nguyen has a great palate and delightful creative flair, with plenty to offer even someone like An-My (who can make spectacular bánh xèo with her eyes closed).

Nguyen’s parchment parcels of fish baked with ginger, garlic, baby bok choy and scallions is a great example — a quick and easy dish that’s as appropriate for a weeknight dinner as it is for a special evening (post-vaccine reunion?!) with friends when you want to really celebrate.

Halibut and baby bok choy with ginger, garlic and scallions roasted in parchment, from Andrea Nguyen’s ‘Vietnamese Food Any Day’

It’s just the thing to keep in mind to as we come into halibut season. It’s so damn easy to overcook or otherwise ruin halibut (which is expensive!), and this foolproof method gives you an impressive, fabulous slam-dunk. Let your guests or family tear open the parcels at the table, and they’ll find fish that’s gorgeously silky throughout, absolutely elegant, bathed in umami-rich and gingery-bright sauce that melds marvelously with the bok choy. I can’t recommend the recipe highly enough. It’s a great example of why you need this book.

Want something fancy to start that’s also easier than it might seem?

Mushroom pâté puffs from Andrea Nguyen’s ‘Vietnamese Food Any Day’

I’m a sucker for puff pastry, especially the all-butter frozen, buy-it-at-the-supermarket variety, and Nguyen’s Mushroom Pâté Puffs take full advantage. Their filling is a simple yet perfect mix of rehydrated dried shiitakes, white button mushrooms, shallots, butter and thyme. Nguyen’s recipe, which yields about 30, is meant to serve 8 to 10, but unless you are far more restrained, reasonable and mature than the four of us still-sequestered together (though not for long!), you will devour them like some insane, puff-pastry-starved maniacs. I shouldn’t be admitting this, but just want you to know how good they are.

On tap, for the very near future, I have bookmarked recipes for Baked Shrimp and Celery Toasts; Grilled Trout Rice Paper Rolls; Shaking Tofu; and Grilled Lemongrass Pork Chops.

All of which is to say many thanks, Andrea Nguyen, for improving the quality of our lives.

Looking for a new cookbook to make your spring and summer light, elegant and delicious? Look no further.

RECIPE: Andrea Nguyen’s Ginger Halibut Parcels

RECIPE: Andrea Nguyen’s Mushroom Pâté Puffs

Author Najmieh Batmanglij is the revered ‘goddess of Iranian cooking'

By Leslie Brenner

Editor’s note: Women have a history of writing the best cookbooks. That’s why throughout March — Women’s History Month — we’ll be featuring cookbooks by our favorite female authors.

The Washington Post called her “the grande dame of Iranian cooking.” Yotam Ottolenghi called her its “goddess.” Super-chef José Andrés has called her “a wonderful guide to the Persian kitchen.”

We’re talking, of course, about Najmieh Batmanglij — the author of seven books, including Food of Life: Ancient Persian and Modern Iranian Cooking and Ceremonies; Joon: Persian Cooking Made Simple; Cooking in Iran: Regional Recipes and Kitchen Secrets and other titles.

I’m embarrassed to say that Batmanglij’s wisdom only came into my life last year, when I started exploring Persian cooking in earnest. Food of Life — the magnum opus that she first published in 1986, revised for a 2020 25th-anniversary edition and is once again updating — is a great place to begin, if you want to explore this magnificent cuisine.

Sabzi polow — rice with fresh herbs — prepared from Najmieh Batmanglij’s ‘Food of Life’

Some of my happiest memories of annus horribilus 2020 involved Food for Life. For my late-September birthday, a masked celebration in the backyard of dear friends, my son Wylie and his girlfriend Nathalie prepared (at my request) an elaborate, insanely delicious rice dish from the book: Sabzi Polow,* Rice with Fresh Herbs. There are a full seven cups of fresh chopped herbs in the dish: dill, chives, parsley and cilantro, and it sports a crisp tah-dig crust. (Once I prepare it myself — soon! I’ll be sure to write about it.)

A couple months later, I spent a luxurious afternoon preparing abgusht-e morgh ba kufteh-ye nokhodchi — Persian chicken soup with chickpea-and-lamb meatballs. The aromas of dried rose petals, cardamom, saffron and fresh herbs lifted my spirits and transported me to another time and place.

The book has been on my mind lately because Nowruz — Persian New Year — begins this coming Saturday, the first day of spring. I can’t think of a better way to celebrate than with Batmanglij’s Fresh Herb Kuku, which is traditional for the holiday. It’s like a Persian frittata packed with dill, parsley, cilantro and spring onions, beautifully spiced (more rose petals!) and garnished with quick-confited barberries.

[If you’re cooking with kids this weekend, consider quick-ordering Batmanglij’s Happy Nowruz: Cooking with Children to Celebrate the Persian New Year.]

Najmieh’s other six books are all on my wish-list(Joon is at the top.)

Still if I had to choose only one cookbook to cook from for the rest of my life, I would seriously consider Food of Life. The 330-recipe volume has enough delicious culture in its 640 pages to keep me delighted cooking and discovering Iran for a long time.

RECIPE: Najmieh’s Fresh Herb Kuku

RECIPE: Persian Chicken Soup with Chickpea and Lamb Meatballs

Related story: “Take a moment to honor 98 year-old Diana Kennedy, the “Queen of Mexican regional cooking”

Related story: “Outstanding cookbook author Toni Tipton-Martin puts history at the center of the American table”

Related story: “Dorie Greenspan knocks it out of the kitchen with books about baking and French cooking”

*The dish is the vegetarian variation of Sabzi Polow Ba Mahi — Rice with Fresh Herbs and Fish. We dropped the fish as the dish was meant to accompany delicious lamb kebabs my friends grilled outside on the Weber.

Take a moment to honor 98 year-old Diana Kennedy, the "Queen of Mexican regional cooking"

By Leslie Brenner

Editor’s note: Women have a history of writing the best cookbooks. That’s why throughout March — Women’s History Month — we’ll be featuring cookbooks by our favorite female authors.

International Women’s Day feels like exactly the right part of Women’s History Month to celebrate Diana Kennedy. The trailblazing cookbook author — who turned 98 last week — has devoted no less than six decades of her life to studying and documenting the richness, tradition and techniques of the regional cuisines of Mexico.

If you haven’t seen Elizabeth Carroll’s 2019 documentary about her, “Nothing Fancy,” do treat yourself. The 1 hour, 8 minute film does a wonderful job at explaining why British-born Kennedy is widely regarded — even in Mexico — as the world’s foremost expert in traditional Mexican cuisine.

“I think she’s a legend,” says Gabriela Cámara, chef and owner of Contramar in Mexico City and Cala in San Francisco, in the film. “Many Mexicans are against admitting that Diana knows more than they do about their food.”

“I think Mexico as a country will be eternally indebted to her efforts,” was celebrity TV chef Pati Jinich’s take.

The author of eight books on Mexican cooking, including the seminal 1972 book The Cuisines of Mexico, Kennedy was the pioneer who evangelized to the English-speaking world about the depth, breadth and fabulousness of traditional Mexican cooking, the way it is done in cities and villages throughout Mexico. That book is out of print, but it is collected — along with The Tortilla Book and Mexican Regional Cooking — in The Essential Cuisines of Mexico. It is a must-have for anyone interested in Mexican cooking.

It was The Cuisines of Mexico that prompted me to buy an aluminum molcajete and a tortilla press 36 years ago, when I was in my 20s. I still have both, though I’ve graduated to a giant wooden tortilla press.

I’ve learned so much from Kennedy’s books over the years, starting with the proper way to make guacamole, grinding white onion, serrano chiles, cilantro and salt in the molcajete — and no garlic, as Kennedy emphatically exclaims in the documentary. Her books are always the first place I go whenever I have any question about any Mexican dish.

I had the amazing opportunity, back in the early 1990’s, not just to meet Kennedy, but to spend a long weekend cooking with her at my friend Danièle Mazet-Delpeuch’s house in Dordogne, France. As you’ll see if you watch the documentary, Kennedy is famously crotchety, which was my experience as well. But I’ll always treasure the time, which I wrote about a few years ago, in a story about making tortillas.

If it’s interesting or vexing to contemplate the idea of honoring a British-born woman as the “queen of Mexican regional cooking,” as a Los Angeles Times story by Daniel Hernandez did last year, consider the comments in the documentary of Abigail Mendoza. The chef and owner of Tlamanalli, a restaurant in Teotitlan del Valle, Oaxaca, had been friends for 35 years at the time the documentary was filmed. “Ella está una hija adaptiva en México — She’s an adoptive daughter of Mexico,” she said.

“She’s very Mexican in her soul and heart. I believe Diana is a Mexican, who does not have to have been born in Mexico. But she is in Mexico and lives in Mexico, is working in Mexico and is a Mexican.”

Happy International Women’s Day. I’m off now to make a batch of guacamole.

Outstanding cookbook author Toni Tipton-Martin puts history at the center of the American table

By Leslie Brenner

Editor’s note: Women have a history of writing the best cookbooks. That’s why throughout March — Women’s History Month — we’ll be featuring cookbooks by our favorite female authors.

It is history itself that animates the books of Toni Tipton-Martin, a culinary historian, writer, editor and cook who has become a powerful force for amplifying, celebrating and honoring the voices of Black cooks throughout American history.

Toni Tipton-Martin / Photograph by Pableaux Johnson

In 2015, Tipton-Martin published her award-winning The Jemima Code: Two Centuries of African-American Cookbooks, which she followed in 2019 with Jubilee: Recipes from Two Centuries of African American Cooking.

[Read more about Toni Tipton-Martin’s Jubilee.]

Its pages are filled with delicious recognition of the contribution of African American cooks and chefs — and include some of our favorite recipes of the last year. I’m forever attached to Jubilee’s Pickled Shrimp, to Tipton-Martin’s Country-Style Potato Salad and to her Pork Chops in Lemon-Caper Sauce.

Pickled shrimp prepared from a recipe in ‘Jubilee’ by Toni Tipton-Martin

Its historical depth is just as appetizing — for instance a deep dive into green gumbo — gumbo z’herbes — that inspired an upcoming Cooks Without Borders story.

In September, Tipton-Martin — who began her career at the Los Angeles Times, and later led food coverage at the Cleveland Plain Dealer as its food editor — was named editor in chief of Cook’s Country.

Dorie Greenspan knocks it out of the kitchen with books about baking and French cooking

By Leslie Brenner

Women have a history of writing the best cookbooks. That’s why throughout March — Women’s History Month — we’ll be featuring cookbooks by our favorite female authors.

[NOTE: This story was updated Feb. 16, 2022.]

Cookbook author Dorie Greenspan / Photograph by Heather Ramsdell/Food Network

It seems fitting to lead off our series with an appreciation of the woman who launched my own food-writing career: Dorie Greenspan. In the early 1990s, Dorie was the editor of a stapled-together newsletter from a cooking organization that had only been created a few years earlier: The James Beard Foundation. Dorie gave me the opportunity to write for that flier, called “News from the Beard House.”

Dorie was a wonderful editor to work with back in the day; in the decades that followed, she has proven again and again that she’s a splendid story-teller, and a great cook. Her recipes work beautifully, and they’re always delicious.

Dorie’s cookbooks include (among others):

• Around My French Table

• Baking with Dorie

• Baking Chez Moi

• Baking: From My Home to Yours

• Dorie’s Cookies

• Everyday Dorie

Around My French Table is one of my favorite French cookbooks — as is Café Boulud Cookbook, which Dorie co-wrote with chef Daniel Boulud.

An apple-Calvados cake adapted from a recipe in ‘Around My French Table’

A couple weeks ago, I thought about an apple cake I love in Around my French Table, swapped the rum in the recipe for Calvados, and we were all sweetly rewarded.

In honor of Women’s History Month, we’re celebrating our favorite female cookbook authors

By Leslie Brenner

Women have a history of writing the best cookbooks. That’s why throughout March — Women’s History Month — we’ll be featuring cookbooks by our favorite female authors. 

When we think about our favorite cookbooks of all time, the titles that endure, the cookbooks that we reach for again and again over the years — the ones that survive the period purges of our bookshelves — far more often than not, they are written by women. 

Throughout the month, we’ll be spotlighting female cookbook authors. Sometimes we’ll be honoring an entire long, distinguished career; other times a new author with a wonderful recent title; and occasionally someone who didn’t write many books, but gave us one or two truly great ones. 

As March is also our entry into spring, it feels like a great time to edit the bookshelf; bid goodbye to cookbooks that no longer “spark joy” (to quote Marie Kondo). Of course that’ll free up space — and we’re sure you’ll discover authors among those we’ll feature to add to your collections.

The first spotlight is coming shortly. Meanwhile, you might like to browse around our new list at Bookshop: “Women Have a History of Writing the Best Cookbooks.” Note that it only includes books available at Bookshop, so it’s missing some older titles we love. We will be featuring them, along with recent releases, in coming days and weeks in our stories.

Happy browsing!

Cookbooks We Love: Marcus Samuelsson’s ‘The Rise’ celebrates Black cooks in America

By Leslie Brenner

The Rise: Black Cooks and the Soul of American Food, by Marcus Samuelsson with Osayi Endolyn, recipes with Yewande Komolafe and Tamie Cook, photographs by Angie Mosier, 2020, Little, Brown, $38.

Backgrounder: A good deal has been written about The Rise — the cookbook super-chef Marcus Samuelsson published late last year. Most of the coverage came right around pub-time, in the form of new-title roundups or best-of-the-year cookbook stories (it made the Washington Post and New York Times’ lists, among others.) Samuelsson and co-author Osayi Endolyn gave an excellent interview to Food & Wine magazine shortly after the book was published.

Many of the universally enthusiastic write-ups did a great job focusing on Samuelsson’s goal for the book. As he expresses it in his introduction:

“Black food is American food, and it’s long past time that the artistry and ingenuity of Black cooks were properly recognized.”

Samuelsson, of course, is the Ethiopia-born, Sweden-raised chef with a nearly three-decades-long history in New York. He made his name in 1995 as the youngest chef to earn a three-star review from The New York Times when he was executive chef of Aquavit; he opened his own restaurant, Red Rooster Harlem, in 2010. The chef has since built an empire of dozens of restaurants in the U.S., Canada, Bermuda, Britain, Sweden, Finland and Norway.

What I haven’t found much of are reviews and stories that dig into The Rise’s 119 recipes (plus 48 Pantry recipes).

Why We Love It: Endolyn’s essays about the chefs, activists and cooks who have inspired the recipes in the book are wonderful, enlightening reads. Spinning through them is a fabulous way to understand something about the future, present and past of Black cooking in America. Endolyn sheds thoughtful light on who has done, and is doing, and will continue informing some of the most exciting cooking anywhere.

Meanwhile, Samuelsson himself is one of the most talented and accomplished chefs of our time, and his recipes — developed with Yewande Komolafe and Tamie Cook — are often thrilling.

We wasted no time weighing in on Papa Ed’s Shrimp and Grits two weeks after the book was published. The dish, inspired by Ed Brumfield, executive chef of Red Rooster Harlem, is heart-breakingly delicious, literally the best shrimp and grits I’ve ever had. Unless you have access to frozen okra, you’ll have to wait till it’s back in season in order to taste what I mean.

The very first recipe I took for a spin was the lead-off recipe in the book: Baked Sweet Potatoes with Garlic-Fermented Shrimp Butter. I’m a sucker for a roasted sweet potato in any guise, and as this is Samuelsson’s tribute to David Zilber — a Toronto-born chef who’s the former director of fermentation at Noma in Copenhagen — the recipe beckoned that much louder. It’s almost decadent in its lusciousness. The shrimp paste (which I keep on hand for Thai dishes) gives the avocado-butter a wild and wonderful funk.

Nor can I resist a boozy dessert, and this one — a vanilla cake soaked in dark rum and frosted with whipped cream — didn’t disappoint. Montego Bay Rum Cake is Samuelsson’s tribute to chef Herb Wilson, whose trail-blazing upscale Caribbean restaurant in New York City’s East Village, Bambou, was an early inspiration for him. As originally published, the recipe requires a stand mixer; I’ve adapted it so you can use a hand-mixer, if you like.

You’ve gotta try this: Dressed up with minced dill pickle, onion, sambal oelek, fish sauce, celery salt and paprika, the jazzy mayo that tops these roasted cauliflower steaks is worth making on its own. (What a dip for boiled Gulf shrimp this will be!) And slathering it on cauliflower steaks dusted with the Moroccan spice blend ras el hanout is out of this world. (I do wish there were a recipe for ras el hanout in the book. I didn’t have any on hand, and used this one from Paula Wolfert via the San Jose Mercury News.) The recipe honors Nina Compton — chef and owner of Compère Lapin and Bywater American Bistro in New Orleans. The ingredients in the mayo sauce reflect that city’s “diverse African, Haitian and French populations.”

Still wanna cook: Circling back to okra season, the moment those pods start popping into markets, I’ll make Leah Chase Gumbo. Chase — the legendary chef-owner of Dooky Chase’s in New Orleans, who died at in 2019 at age 96 — is one of the chefs to whom Samuelsson dedicates the book. (You’ll have to pick up the book to read the wonderful anecdote about what Chase did to President Obama when he sprinkled hot sauce on her gumbo without tasting it first.) Samuelsson’s tribute gumbo includes shrimp, andouille sausage and filé powder, along with the okra.

Asparagus season will precede okra season, though, and at that moment I’ll pounce on The Rise’s recipe for Shrimp Fritters with Bitter Greens and Grapefruit — a West African-inspired recipe in honor of Jonny Rhodes. Rhodes is the highly acclaimed young Houston chef behind Indigo, a neo-soul food restaurant “focusing on the history, culture, and social experiences that have shaped and guided African American foodways.”

There are many more enticing recipes besides — and all those cool essays.

Here’s a great way to celebrate Black History Month: Buy yourself a copy of the The Rise. While you’re at it, buy one for a friend interested in exploring the delicious, dynamic diversity that is Black American cooking.

BUY The Rise at Bookshop

BUY The Rise at Amazon

RECIPE: Papa Ed’s Shrimp and Grits

RECIPE: The Rise Sweet Potatoes with Garlic-Fermented Shrimp Butter

RECIPE: Marcus Samuelsson’s Montego Bay Rum Cake

RECIPE: The Rise Roasted Cauliflower Steaks with Nola East Mayo

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Cookbooks We Love: 'Ottolenghi Simple' is one of the most inspired — and inspiring — cookbooks in a decade

By Leslie Brenner

Ottolenghi Simple, by Yotam Ottolenghi with Tara Wigley and Esme Howarth, photographs by Jonathan Lovekin, 2018, Ten Speed Press, $35.

Backgrounder: Unless you’ve been cooking under a rock for the last decade (or only started cooking recently), you probably know who Yotam Ottolenghi is. The London-based, Israeli-born chef probably has had greater influence than any other in the world on contemporary American (and other Anglophone) cooking in the last decade. His kind of free-form, casual, herb-strewn, plant-based (whether vegetarian or vegan or not), sun-kissed, Mediterranean-inflected aesthetic informs the creative endeavors of cooking writers, chefs and recipe developers for mainstream generalist sites like New York Times Cooking or Washington Post Voraciously, as well as a generation of cooking bloggers, restaurant chefs and Instagram posters. If formal, carefully arranged, tweezer-food plates feel out-of-date, it is largely thanks to Ottolenghi.

Ottolenghi’s first title, Ottolenghi: The Cookbook — co-written with his business partner, chef Sami Tamimi, was published in Britain in 2008, followed by Plenty (2010); Jerusalem (2012, again with Tamimi); Plenty More (2014); Nopi (2014, with Ramael Scully); Sweet (2017, with Helen Goh); Ottolenghi Simple (2018, with Tara Wigley and Esme Howarth); and Ottolenghi Flavour (or Flavor, for the U.S. edition, 2020, with Ixta Belfrage and Tara Wigley).

Puy lentils with eggplant, tomatoes and yogurt from ‘Ottolenghi Simple’

Why we love it

Simple may not be as exciting or groundbreaking as Plenty or Jerusalem were when they were published (they are still two of my favorite cookbooks), but it is packed with an astounding number of recipes we want to cook over and over again, as well as recipes we can’t wait to try. As with his other books, the recipes work; rarely is there anything about them I’d change or tweak. Yet unlike many of his other books, these recipes are do-able by ordinary cooks who don’t want to chase down a long list of obscure ingredients or start preparing sub-recipes the day before you want to eat.

Most are designed to be simple enough so that you can achieve them on a busy weeknight — which is a big part of why the book is so incredibly appealing. It’s a book for the way so many of us want to eat — we want dishes that are delicious, plant-forward, interesting, healthful, satisfying and unfussy, and that’s what this book delivers, over and over again. If you keep a few key ingredients in your pantry (things the author calls “Ottolenghi Ingredients” — sumac, tahini, preserved lemon, black garlic and za’atar, to name half of them), plus staples like yogurt and green lentils and basic seasonal produce, you can often pull together these dishes without making a special shopping trip. Other times, there’s an easy swap you can make, if, for instance, you don’t have the suggested herb.

Two cases in point

Puy Lentils with Eggplant, Tomatoes and Yogurt (pictured above) is fabulous garnished with the fresh oregano leaves it calls for, but I’ve also subbed in parsley, mint or cilantro when I didn’t have any oregano, to delicious effect. I’m sure basil would be great as well.

And for a dish of Chickpeas and Swiss Chard with Yogurt, Ottolenghi grants permission in the headnote to leave off his suggested cilantro garnish should you find yourself without. The night I made it — entirely pulled together from stuff I had on hand — parsley and mint did the trick perfectly. The dish is the kind of satisfying and interesting main course I’m always wishing for on days when I want to do without meat. That night, I happened to whip it together to go with a dish my son Wylie had spotted and was making also from Simple — Lamb and Pistachio Patties with Sumac Yogurt Sauce. Both were wonderful.

You’ve gotta try this

Brussels Sprouts with Browned Butter and Black Garlic. When I spotted packages of black garlic (intensely umami-forward fermented garlic) at my supermarket a few weeks ago, I grabbed one; it lasts for two or three months unopened. Then, the other day when I was trying to imagine how not to be bored by the pound of Brussels sprouts I’d envisioned for that evening, I found this exciting-looking recipe in Simple. Fortunately I happened to have some pumpkin seeds and caraway seeds (of course those are easy to find). The dish was brilliantly quick to prepare: a 10-minute roast in a blazing oven, followed by a toss with browned butter and a quickly made paste of black garlic, caraway seeds and thyme. A big squirt of lemon juice, a drizzle of tahini and dinner is served. It was insanely good.

Maybe you’ve already tried this — Stuffed Zucchini with Pine Nut Salsa. We wrote about it last summer in a story about zucchini. I’ve also made and loved more dishes than I could fit in this story: Cucumber and Lamb’s Lettuce Salad; a mezze spread called Crushed Zucchini; Roasted Eggplant with Anchovies and Oregano.

On a sweet note

I wanted to try one of the twelve great-looking desserts in the book, but for every one I was missing an ingredient. (I’ve been snowed in for four days!). I baked a Blueberry, Almond and Lemon Cake from the book anyway, subbing in a bag of frozen wild blueberries and I had for the fresh ones. It was a treat, but I think it’ll be even better with fresh berries, as the frozen ones were a bit dull. Stay tuned for an update once the ice melts. Come summer, I’ll be excited to make his Plum, Blackberry and Bay Friand (a friand is a light almond cake that the headnote tells us is popular in Australia, New Zealand and France).

Also still wanna cook

Most of the book! The minute it’s asparagus season, I’ll make Roasted Asparagus with Almonds, Capers and Dill. And I covet Cavolo Nero with Chorizo and Preserved Lemon; Cauliflower, Pomegranate and Pistachio Salad; Roasted Baby Carrots with Harissa and Pomegranate; Roasted Beets with Yogurt and Preserved Lemon; Orzo with Shrimp, Tomato and Marinated Feta; Pasta with Pecorino and Pistachios; and Lamb Siniyah — “the Middle Eastern equivalent of a shepherd’s pie, with a tahini crust standing in for the layer of mashed potato.”

Do yourself a favor. If you don’t have this book, and these are the kind of dishes that appeal to you, treat yourself to a copy today. Flavor has been getting lots of great press — and it’s a good book — but the recipes don’t scream “cook me” (in my ear, anyway!) as loudly as they do in Simple.

RELATED: “Exuberantly delicious and beautifully told, ‘Falastin’ is one of those life-changing cookbooks”

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Cookbooks We Love: Exploring Chinese cooking? ‘Every Grain of Rice’ is the first book you should buy

Every Grain of Rice: Simple Chinese Home Cooking, by Fuchsia Dunlop, photographs by Chris Terry, 2012, W.W. Norton & Co., $35.

Backgrounder: If you think a British woman shouldn’t be writing Chinese cookbooks, you haven’t read — or cooked from — Fuchsia Dunlop’s books. Dunlop was the first Westerner to train as a chef at the Sichuan Institute of Higher Cuisine in Central China; she’s fluent in Mandarin and has traveled, eaten and cooked all over China. Cambridge-educated, she has been called the best writer in the West on Chinese food. “The recipes in this book are a tribute to China’s rich tradition of frugal, healthy and delicious home cooking,” Dunlop writes in the introduction. “They include meat, poultry and fish dishes, but this is primarily a book about how to make vegetables taste divine with very little expense or effort, and how to make a little meat go a long way.”

Why we love it: Dunlop has a fabulous palate, and though the recipes in this book are generally simple — it is, after all, about home cooking — everything I’ve cooked from it has been nuanced and gorgeous-flavored, as well as beautiful to behold. Hers is a finely tuned and delicious aesthetic that runs through all her books, and her recipes work magnificently.

When you cook with Dunlop, she holds your hand in the nicest way, and you wind up learning a whole lot about technique without even realizing you’re being taught. Dunlop makes it feel easy and natural.

Her Yangzhou Fried Rice is a great example. It includes pork fillet, ham, cooked chicken, shrimp, shiitake mushrooms, bamboo shoots, scallions, egg and peas, but she gives you permission to change it up according to what you have; “the key is to have a tempting selection of colors and tastes amid the rice.” You can make it a meal on its own, or serve it as part of a special meal, such as a Chinese New Year’s celebration.

Silken Tofu with Soy Sauce, prepared from a recipe in ‘Every Grain of Rice’ by Fuchsia Dunlop

Simple yet elegant: One example of a simple dish that’s way more impressive than you’d imagine is Silken Tofu with Soy Sauce (Xiao Cong Ban Dou Fu). It couldn’t be more basic: It’s just sliced scallions scattered over silken tofu with hot oil poured over to make the scallions sizzle, quickly followed by soy sauce and sesame oil. The result is stunning.

Other simple recipes I’ve loved are Bok Choy with Fresh Shiitake and Chinese Broccoli in Ginger Sauce.

Pa Pa Cai — Tender Boiled Vegetables with a Spicy Dip

You also can get a keen sense, with many of the recipes, of what it’s like to eat like a regular person in a Chinese home, so if you’re interested in understanding the culture, this book is a treasure. One recipe that really did that for me was Tender Boiled Vegetables with a Spicy Dip — Pa Pa Cai in Chinese. In her headnote, Dunlop writes that it’s a “staple of the rural Sichuanese supper table” that she likes to make after “a day or two of eating rich food.”

It’s so plain, I’m going to skip giving you a formal recipe; it’s just boiled vegetables (without even salt added) set out, with some of the cooking liquid, in a serving bowl. On the table are small bowls of ground chiles, ground roasted Sichuan pepper, finely sliced scallion greens and toasted sesame seeds. Everyone serves themselves some of the vegetables, an in a separate small bowl mixes the condiments to their own taste, adding in a bit of the cooking liquid, as a dipping sauce.

You’ve gotta try this: Dunlop calls her Cold Chicken with a Spicy Sichuanese Sauce “one of the most marvellous of all Sichuanese culinary ideas.” I call the dish Fuchsia Dunlop’s Spicy Sichuanese Chicken Salad. It’s basically slivered cold poached or leftover chicken dressed with scallions, sesame seeds and a sauce of soy, Chinkiang vinegar, chile oil, Sichuan pepper and sesame oil. It’s so good.

Still wanna cook: Oh, so many things. Silken Tofu with Pickled Mustard Greens. Sour-and-Hot Mushroom Soup. Stir-Fried Chopped Choy Sum. Sichuanese Wontons in Chilli Oil Sauce. Steamed Sea Bass with Ginger and Spring Onion. That last one would be just the thing for a Chinese New Year celebration.

I also love Dunlop’s Land of Fish and Rice. But if I could have only one Chinese cookbook in my library, it would be this one.

RECIPE; Yangzhou Fried Rice
RECIPE: Silken Tofu with Soy Sauce

RECIPE: Fuchsia Dunlop’s Spicy Sichuanese Chicken Salad

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Our favorite thing in Maneet Chauhan's new cookbook, 'Chaat': out-of-this-world saag paneer

Chaat, as anyone who knows anything about Indian food knows, is the subcontinent’s vibrant, colorful, tasty culture of snacks. Here’s the way Maneet Chauhan and Jody Eddy put it in the intro to their new Chaat: Recipes from the Kitchens, Markets, and Railways of India:

“Chaat are typically snacks or small meals that are tangy and sweet, fiery and crunchy, savory and sour all in one topsy, turvy bite. Some iconic chaat include Bhel Puri, Puchkas, and Aloo Chat.”

As well as being a star of Food Network’s ‘Chopped,’ Chauhan is executive chef of a group of well-known restaurants in Nashville including one specializing in those very street snacks — Chaatable. So I was most excited to dive in and start cooking and snacking, living the chaat life.

Six recipes into my exploration, you may be surprised to learn, my hands-down favorite has not been a chaat like the Mumbai-style Bhel Puri — which was topsy turvy to the extreme, and quite a lot of work once you make the two chutneys involved.

Instead, I went wild for the Saag Paneer — braised greens with farmer cheese. It’s a dish that strikes me not so much as a snack, but more of an unplugged, slow-food, sit-down-to-a-real-meal kind of affair. Especially because Chauhan’s features paneer (that’s the farmer cheese) that you make in your very own kitchen.

In fact, among the myriad pandemic cooking projects I’ve thrown myself into, making that paneer has been one of the most fun and rewarding.

It’s surprisingly easy. Scald milk. Stir in lemon juice. Cover and let it sit 10 minutes. Now it’s curds and whey: ladle them into a cheesecloth-lined sieve set over a bowl.

Curds of paneer in a cheesecloth-lined sieve

Gather up the curds in the cheesecloth and compress. You’ve got cheese. The bowl’s got whey.

Gather up the cheesecloth around the curds, compress, and this is what you’ve got.

Incredible, right?! Now mold it into a rectangle, compress a few minutes, and you’ve got paneer.

The finished paneer

Here’s the Paneer recipe.

You could stop there, that cheese is so lovely. I certainly would have been happy just to eat it as is.

But a handmade paneer really deserves a saag. But wait, what does “saag” even mean?

Whether you’ve made it at home or eaten it a hundred times in Indian restaurants, if you’re not Indian, chances are you think saag means “spinach.” That’s what I had always thought.

Not exactly, Chauhan explains. In India, “saag means any dish made with leafy greens, not just spinach.”

Her exuberantly spiced recipe takes delicious advantage of a full spectrum of greens. As she writes in the headnote to her Saag Paneer recipe:

“In Jharkhand saag dishes often include a variety of leafy greens that are indigenous to the region. In Nashville, I like to whip up this easy recipe on days when I need a reboot, packing it with a variety of greens I consume not only for their flavor but for their nutritional benefits. . . . Feel free to stick to the more common saag paneer recipe, swapping in spinach for the arugula and kale, but if you’re feeling adventurous, pack this recipe with healthful virtue by adding in as many greens as you can get your hands on.”

She suggests collards, carrot tops, beet greens, chard or bok choy leaves. “The possibilities are endless.”

I made it exactly as written in the recipe, melting ghee in a pan, adding spices, ginger-garlic paste and minced serrano chiles, then giant handfuls of arugula, baby kale and baby spinach. You cook those until they’re wilted, let it simmer a minute, blitz it all in a food processor, add lemon juice, put it back in the pan, then reheat and gently stir in cubes of paneer.

To serve, Chauhan has you drizzle the Saag Paneer with more melted ghee, garnish it with cilantro, serve it with basmati rice and chapatis. (I skipped the chapatis, and no one was the wiser.)

It’s absolutely wonderful: earthy from all those greens, aromatic with deeply layered spices (cardamom, cumin, mustard seeds) and luxuriously rich with the ghee and delicately melting, tender and marvelous paneer. That paneer is nothing like that rubbery stuff you usually find even in pretty good Indian restaurants and Indian groceries.

What else did I love in the book? So far, a quick and easy Tibetan chicken-noodle soup, Thukpa, which Chauhan recalls first tasting in a train station in Guwahati on a cold winter’s day. We’ll be featuring it soon in our series “Around the World in Chicken Soup.” (Here’s Part I, starring Brazilian canja de galinha; here’s Part II, in which Jenn Louis’ Chicken Soup Manifesto treats us to Ethiopian Ye Ocholoni Ina Doro Shorba.)

I’ll be continuing to explore the chaat in Chauhan and Eddy’s book, many of which are pretty involved. In the meantime, I highly recommend the engaging volume, which is a great, fun, illuminating read, filled with invaluable cultural intelligence from all over delicious India.

RECIPE: Paneer (Fresh Indian Cheese)

RECIPE: Maneet Chauhan’s Saag Paneer

Chaat: Recipes from the Kitchens, Markets, and Railways of India, by Maneet Chauhan and Jody Eddy, CLARKSON Potter, $32.50.

Jenn Louis' new 'Chicken Soup Manifesto' celebrates the feel-better elixir as expressed in 64 countries

No sooner had we embarked on an epic voyage around the world in a bowl of chicken soup, when the startling revelation that we were not the first to do so splashed into our soupy consciousness.

Of course to travel well, one must be open to diversions, and this one is so fortuitous: Renowned Portland, Oregon chef Jenn Louis has just published a new book, The Chicken Soup Manifesto: Recipes from Around the World.

Next-day delivery put the book in our hot little hands. It spoke to me right from the intro:

“Looking at the world through the lens of a simple bowl of chicken soup reveals volumes about a society and its people: the ingredients within their reach, the techniques that mark their style of cooking, and, often, a folkloric or family history, too.”

Almost all cultures have chicken in common, Louis continued; her manifesto is an account of “the diversity of a commonality.”

After taking a spin through its delightful pages, I picked up the phone and called the author, who was happy to talk about why and how she wrote it.

Traveling home several winters ago from a charity event, she had come down with a bad cold — so bad she couldn’t even imagine how she’d survive a two-hour plane flight. She texted her sister, who surprised her by leaving a giant pot of chicken soup on her doorstep to greet her on her arrival home.

“I ate three bowls, really fast,” Louis recalled. “Though I was still sick, I felt so much better. And I just kept thinking: This is a thing. This is magic!”

The experience led her to think about how chicken soup is a culinary connection that is shared by cultures around the world, while expressing different flavors and sporting different garnishes from land to land. To explore them, she launched her into a soupful odyssey, as she collected, developed and researched chicken soup recipes from all over — many crowd-sourced from her friends and followers around the world. A Palestinian woman she sat next to on another plane trip told her unbidden about her mother’s (Hanan’s Mom’s Palestinian Chicken Soup, page 176). Some of the soups came to her through Facebook posts.

The result is deliciously diverse — filled with bowls both familiar (Greek Avgolemono, Mexican Pozole Verde, Thai Tom Kha Gai) and new to me. There’s Kubbeh Hamusta from Iraq: a turmeric-tinged chicken and chick pea soup with zucchini and semolina dumplings filled with minced chicken, onion, parsley and spices. Dak Kalguksu from Korea — a rich broth with shredded chicken and hand-cut noodles (kalguksu means “knife noodles”), garnished with scallions and a chile-soy-sesame sauce.

Ye Ocholoni Ina Doro Shorba, prepared from a recipe in ‘The Chicken Soup Manifesto,” by Jenn Louis

I’d been looking for one from Ethiopia for this “Around the World in Chicken Soup” series of stories, and I found it on page 34: Ye Ocholoni Ina Doro Shorba, a peanut-chicken soup.

I gathered ingredients – chicken broth, chicken breasts, peanut butter, a plump sweet potato, onions and carrots. I toasted whole spices (green cardamom, cloves, fenugreek seeds, coriander) and ground them up to make a Berbere spice mix. I got out my soup pot; it didn’t take too long to put together.

Thick, warm, comforting, garnished with chopped roasted peanuts and an extra sprinkling of Berbere spice, it hit the spot.

I’ll be dipping back into the book once or twice for this series, with a review in mind as well.

In the meantime, it goes without saying that the book’s timing is impeccable. Heading into what’s likely to be a brutal winter, so many of us will be needing chicken soup.

So please: Help yourself to a bowl of Ye Ocholoni Ina Dora Shorba.

RECIPE: Ye Ocholoni Ina Dora Shorba (Ethiopian Peanut-Chicken Soup)

And yes, this book will make a marvelous holiday gift.

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