In our book notes on the Gastrokid cookbook, we said that the recipes weren’t so much recipes as sketches of inspiration and ideas. That’s not a bad thing though, not at all. The book is full of quick and inspirational ideas like this one: High-heat roasted vegetables.
Here’s one more book in our list of books to consider as gifts this holiday. This last book is one that I want to devour, but I am forcing myself to nibble it instead — short, delicious essays, consumed one by one.
Our look at some recent books that would make great gifts for cooks this Christmas continues with the latest from young star chef Marcus Samuelsson. New American Table is a love song to Samuelsson’s adopted country, the United States, and especially to New York City, which practically shows up as an extra character in this book.
“If you’re a parent, you don’t have time to read cookbooks. That’s why we wrote this one.” That’s how Hugh Garvey and Matthew Yeomans start their new book. It’s a pretty good way to sum up this slim, well-designed, and highly entertaining book for parents fed up with feeding their youngsters.
Marcus Samuelsson’s book New American Table is an explosion of love and praise for all the many immigrant cuisines that melt together to make American food so glorious. And yet the recipe in his book that we were most drawn to was Doro We’t, the classic Ethiopian stew. But maybe this just reinforces his premise: we all bring our own histories to the table, and this is part of his, and his wife’s.
Here are some great ideas for homemade gifts from the kitchen, including the totally retro and awesome Russian Friendship Tea (it has Tang!) with cute free downloadable labels.
We love the looks of just about every recipe in Pasta Sfoglia (see our review here). But we decided to reprint one of the simplest, most elemental recipes in the book: Fusilli al Telefono.
We’ve been working our way through a few more books that we think would make good gifts this holiday season. Here’s the next in our lineup: the gorgeous, mouthwatering pages of Pasta Sfoglia. “Sfoglia” means an uncut sheet of pasta, and as soon as you open this book you’ll want to run to the kitchen and make your own sheets of pasta so you can get to work on this book’s recipes.
Q: I’m working on my holiday shopping and would like to get an onion chipper for my boyfriend, who won’t cook with onions because they make him tear up. I looked on Amazon but many choppers seem to be flimsy or difficult to clean.
Any recommendations?
Sent by Neon
We are total suckers for this kind of story! Recently our hometown alternative rag asked two local chefs to take a bag of cheap (read: not nice) groceries and turn them into something gourmet. The results were pretty impressive, and while we might not go to the same lengths (separating frozen vegetables?) it is an inspiring look at turning unappetizing ingredients into something more interesting.
A gift of spices for mulled wine and cider, Rena Tom’s lovely grey kitchen, a great tip for cushioning holiday food gifts in the mail, and ten favorite tea towels. Plus, the difference between braising and stewing, a quick dinner of pasta with creamy tomato sauce, money-saving meat-buying tips, a hot pink homemade wedding cake, and ten techniques every cook should know.
We bought some deep red pomegranates at the grocery store and, rather than throw out the beautiful rind, we decided to make them into candle votives. Remembering Maxwell’s clementine candle project, we looked up the steps and modified them to make these holiday tealight holders.
• Read the full post at Apartment Therapy
We’ve blogged about raising chickens in New York and Los Angeles but it’s still sometimes hard to grasp the idea of having urban backyard chickens. One photographer, Todd Parsons, has documented San Francisco’s growing movement for backyard chickens with impressive results.
• Read the full post at Re-Nest
Lately I’ve been fixated on salt and pepper shakers or bowls — they are like mini objet d’art that also serve a purpose.
• Read the full post at Apartment Therapy
Making homemade dish soap—this is something we’ve been meaning to do for a long time and, now that we’ve got an easy recipe to follow, we’re out of excuses.
• Read the full post at Re-Nest
It’s high season for new cookbooks and good food reading. Sara Kate and others of us from The Kitchn have been doing our best to keep up with this year’s new books, giving you tastes and peeks inside some of our favorites. This week we are going to be reviewing several more new books that we think would make great gifts — for yourself, or for others! First up is a great little stocking stuffer or hostess gift of a book: a cookie book filled with inspiration and eye candy for bakers.
There are almost as many names for casseroles and gratins as there are recipes. It’s a rich genre of cooking, including everything from Italian lasagna to Indian biryani to American tuna casserole. It’s also an improvisational genre, with the best casseroles being mixes of leftovers and simple food, like the French peasant food the onion panade. Here are about a dozen casseroles from The Kitchn, with one layered baked dessert thrown in for good measure!
Here’s a great cookie to pair with your next peppermint mocha! This is from Cookie Craft Christmas, which we reviewed earlier today. We really like this easy recipe for gingerbread houses; it’s a lot more accessible (and eat-able) than all those more constructed and fancy gingerbread houses.
A cut of pork you should buy more, plus really strange-looking black pods (what are they?) and a pretty sauce boat from England.
We got a kick out of this kitchen pictured in the New York Times last week. The inhabitant, a jewelry designer, uses her home as workspace and showroom as well as for living. So everything is very minimalist and put away. And her oven, it turns out, is used to store party supplies. Do you store things in your oven?