Serious winter is upon us.  It’s cold, it’s snowy or icy or rainy (or all three!), and the sun makes far fewer appearances than most of us would like.  To add insult to injury, it’s still getting dark so early that PJs at 6 PM seems like the only sensible thing to do.  But, as we slowly slog towards spring, we can always enjoy the great indoors of our kitchens.  Winter is the perfect time to explore new cuisines, try something out of our comfort zone, and spend a few leisurely hours cooking or baking something warming and delicious.   Our group was more than up for the challenge for the January theme of “choose your own adventure,” and we hope our experiences will inspire you to do the same.

Most of us chose a book (or books!) to delve into; this provided a nice framework for trying out a less-familiar cuisine or technique.   One person decided to explore her French Canadian roots with A Taste of Quebec.  This turned out to be almost a combination travel guide and cookbook; there was plentiful information about various regional foods and their origins, “now I want to go visit!”  This title featured many meaty dishes, such as the iconic tourtière, a hearty meat pie that helps Québécois get through their long winters.  Root vegetables are also a common cold-weather ingredient, so our cook made a turnip soufflé, which elevated the humble turnip into something special, though “it did need an onion to sweeten it.”

January’s tradition of making New Year’s resolutions to improve eating habits was a theme for some.  One person experimented with vegan cooking using Plant Powered Families.  Though the book overall wasn’t a huge hit, she did find some worthy keepers: smoky bean chili (“very good– better than your typical vegetarian chili”), chickpea rice soup (“really hearty, good for winter”) and thick and hearty tomato sauce (“it used red lentils to thicken, which I really liked”).  Still on tap, a chocolate pudding with chia seeds, since she was curious to try these now-common seeds.  Another group member checked out the optimistically titled How Not to Die Cookbook.  This book was “very, very healthy;” so healthy that the recipes did not appeal, “I marked a few, but didn’t use the book.”  Some ingredients were off-putting (nutritional yeast), and there was lots of prep (many recipes called for spice mixes you made ahead of time).   So, our cook moved on to some Eating Well newsletters she had piling up in an email folder.  This was much more successful, producing several tasty meals like zucchini spinach gouda bake (“like a quiche, but drier”), cauliflower pizza crust (“not really a pizza– like a really thin potato pancake…you can’t eat it by hand”), creamy white chili (“more like soup, not thick enough…very smooth!”), one pot chicken Alfredo (“will make again!”), and slow cooker barbecued brisket (“pretty good…made a lot!”).   Not to neglect dessert, she flipped through Baking With Less Sugar, and baked some fudgy mascarpone brownies.  These were indeed fudgy with good chocolate flavor, and did use 1/3 less sugar than a more traditional recipe.  And with the leftover mascarpone, how about some lower sugar cheesecake?  This was “so so good– the most delicious ever!”  It also froze well, and if you are impatient, it was “even tasty half-frozen!”

Since January is also “get organized month,” (and another frequent New Year’s resolution), a second group member decided to work on some recipes awaiting her attention in her email.  She used a list of the most popular viral TikTok recipes of 2021.  Baked feta pasta was easy and delicious, if a bit salty; “will definitely try again.”  Creamy ramen sounded interesting and different; it was “tasty– but still kind of weird.”  The creaminess and the ramen were an unusual combo.  Still, it was intriguing enough to try again, perhaps with some added veggies or protein to make more of a complete meal.  We thought sheet pan pancake was a simple, and simply genius, idea: you pour your pancake batter into a sheet pan, bake, and then cut into squares or triangles to serve.  Great for a crowd or to make ahead and reheat on a busy morning.  This recipe is very similar to one that has been featured by Ree Drummond on her Pioneer Woman TV show.  Vegan carrot bacon is still on deck, but the idea is so unexpected, and the picture looks so “awesome” that it’s a must-try.

And January is definitely soup season, so one person undertook a one-woman soup festival.  A fan of the instant pot, she made split pea soup from her go-to title, The Step By Step Instant Pot Cookbook.  This was an excellent version of pea soup, and we also got a useful pro tip: the Honey Baked Ham store in Nashua sells ham bones, which are pretty much a requirement for pea soup.  Ham bones also figure in the iconic Senate bean soup, which our cook planned to try the day after we met, so no report back yet!  Chunky tomato soup was another instant pot success, quick to put together and mellowed with cream cheese added at the end.  And hearty homemade corn chowder (from the Chunky Chef blog)  was easy and “really good…I’d never made corn chowder before!”  Our soup maven then moved on to Dinner Then Dessert: Satisfying Meals Using Only 3, 5, or 7 Ingredients.  This book proved to be a winner, since “her pantry is (stocked) like mine,” which made dinner prep a snap.  Keepers included mushroom stroganoff, and the easy stir-fry garlic shrimp with oyster sauce.  Note that many of the author’s recipes are available online, if you want to road-test the concept.

Another group member decided to tackle the invitingly titled Simply Julia: 110 Recipes for Healthy Comfort Food.  This title received much praise when it was published, but our group member was unimpressed.  This book is the ever-more-common mashup of blog and cookbook, and for our reviewer, it was way too much talk and not enough action.  There are numerous two-page essays in the book (on various food-related topics), and copious headnotes; many love this window into an author’s world, but some prefer to stay happily ignorant and just go straight to the recipes.  And speaking of the recipes: spinach and artichoke dip chicken bake was “OK” but “kind of dry” despite a cup of sour cream.  Doug’s tex-mex turkey meatballs were super easy with only 5 ingredients; they used a cup of salsa, which was the dominant flavor; these were also “OK” though not outstanding. Future possibilities include Grace’s green beans, braised red cabbage and green apples, and carrot and chickpea korma.

Other titles we dipped into included Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar (“everything I’ve tried has been yummy and easy!”); Mooncakes and Milk Bread (“different- mostly sweet recipes you’d find in a Chinese bakery– the crispy Chinese sausage and cilantro pancakes were a project, but so good!”); Sumac: Recipes and Stories From Syria (“delicious simple, non-intimidating Middle Eastern food”); Pasta (“an exhaustive tome of pasta-making, definitely a project”), Once Upon a Chef (“loved it– these are the kinds of recipes I like.  I might buy it.”); Bittman Bread (“interesting and a little different.  You need a starter for everything.  For a future project!”).  And even though our theme was cooking, some also perused memoirs they’d recommend: Out of Line by local chef Barbara Lynch, and Into the Weeds: Around the World and Behind the Scenes with Anthony Bourdain by Tom Vitale.

Phew!  That’s a lot of cooking and trying new things.  And speaking of memoir, next month we’ll be reading Erin French’s gripping chronicle, Finding Freedom.  Ms. French, proprietor of The Lost Kitchen (“one of the 50 best restaurants in the world”) in Freedom, ME takes us through the difficult and winding road that has ultimately led to her incredible success.  Copies are available at the main circulation desk or via curbside pickup.  We’ll next meet on Friday, February 25 at 11 AM.  Plan to chat via zoom; link will be emailed on the morning of the program.

Stay warm and cook on!

Christopher Kimball has almost single-handedly transformed the world of home cooking.  Love him or hate him (and there are fierce advocates on both sides), his reach and influence are undeniable.  He founded Cook’s Magazine in the 1980s, which begat Cook’s Illustrated in the 1990s, which then morphed into the America’s Test Kitchen empire, which includes print, radio, television, and web.  Phew!  In 2015, he abruptly departed ATK and founded Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street, a magazine that has since diversified into radio, television, web, and— cookbooks!   Which brings us to October’s title, Cookish.  Milk Street’s tagline is “changing the way you cook,” and this book’s variation on that is “throw it together” using six ingredients or fewer and (mostly) taking 30 minutes or less.  We’ve test-driven this concept before (with Jamie Oliver) and were unimpressed.  Could this newer riff on that idea turn us into true believers?

We were all certainly attracted to the notion of speedy and delicious.  But in order to meet this goal, we discovered that a fair number of condiments are required.  Logically enough, if you want your end result to be flavorful, and you’re cutting flavor-developing time out of the equation, you need to start with assertive ingredients.  Accordingly, there was lots of soy sauce, fish sauce, hoisin, curry, smoked paprika, many types of chilies, lots of garlic– you get the idea!  This approach worked well, except when it didn’t!

In the “it really worked department,” four of us made roasted butternut squash with hoisin and chives (October is butternut squash month?).  Three of us adored this simple, colorful combination, and thought the pairing of squash and hoisin was inspired.  For one person with a squash traditionalist in the household, it was just “OK” but it’s a keeper for the rest of us.  Barley risotto with leeks and mushrooms turned out to be an “awesome” take on the classic combination of barley and mushrooms; and toasted bulgur and lentil soup was likewise “fantastic,” accented with garlic and lemon zest.  Broiled caribbean mahi mahi was another hit with its herby/citrus-y sauce; as a bonus “it looked just like the photo!”   There were several well-liked chicken dishes: moroccan chicken skewers (“very tasty”), spiced ground chicken with currants and pistachios (“unusual combo but very good– Middle Eastern-ish”), orange-ginger chicken (“easy and delicious version of a classic”), and spicy stir-fried chicken and snow peas, which was only “pretty good,” but “better the second day.”

The section on one-pot pastas proved to be a big hit; there was praise for the less-water one-pot method, which was new to us.  Gemelli with tomatoes, salami, and fontina was a bit on the spicy side (our cook used pepperoni, a listed alternative), but overall this combination hit the mark, and was excellent left over.  Penne arrabiata was a keeper: quick, easy, and flavorful with its fresh basil, pecorino cheese, and red pepper flakes.  And, lest we forget, only one pot to wash!

We were on the fence about some recipes; most of the following got at best an “OK” from our cooks: sweet and savory skillet-steamed eggplant, mustard-roasted cauliflower (“it was fine…”), skillet-charred brussels sprouts with coriander and cashews (“cashews surprisingly didn’t add much…wouldn’t rush out and make again”), chutney-roasted eggplant with scallions (“good– looked exactly like the picture”), ramen salad with shrimp and scallions (“nothing special– ramen with soy sauce”), chili-soy noodles with bok choy and peanuts (“OK– I have other similar recipes that are better”), and soupy rice with mushrooms and greens (“better the second night, flavors needed to meld”).  Pork, sweet pepper, and cabbage stew turned out to be “a nerve-shattering experience,” as our cook wrestled with a large and unfamiliar cut of pork; when all was said and done, the result was “fairly good…a maybe.”  Perhaps, like most stews, it will improve in the fridge?  Cabbage was also featured in cannellini beans and cabbage with pancetta and parmesan, which two people made; for one it was “pretty good;” but for another it was a keeper, “love this combination– I could eat a lot of it.”  Curried carrot salad was also a hit and a miss; one person didn’t like the curry with carrots, though the other did and enjoyed how the curry played with the sweetness of the carrots and raisins.  Both noted that the amount of curry called for seemed excessive: one tablespoon for a pound of carrots.  This was a bit overpowering in a dish where it was the main flavor, with no cooking to mellow it.

Overall, we liked this take on quick and easy.  We enjoyed most of the flavor profiles, and we live in a large metro area where less-common ingredients are easy to come by.  We liked that many ingredients also included an alternative, so you could use what you had on hand and/or could find at the supermarket.  We did note some negatives: some recipes used a lot of salt (for instance, the hoisin squash recipe called for one tablespoon) or overpowering amounts of spices (see carrot salad above).  In order to keep to the 30-minute time frame, oven heats were frequently listed at 475 or 500 degrees, which meant keeping a bit of an eye on things to prevent scorching or setting off the smoke detector!  Many recipes didn’t list stovetop burner heat at all, which, while perhaps not strictly necessary, is helpful when you’re doing something for the first (or even second or third) time.  Similarly, cooking times were often not listed.  Guess Mr. Kimball is making sure we’re paying attention while cooking!  And speaking of cooking, what’s the difference between “cook” and “cook-ish”?  The subtitle of this book is “throw it together,” but it could be argued that all cooking is throwing it together in some way.  Yes, these recipes are fairly simple– but you are definitely cooking.  That’s my soapbox moment for this month!

The book itself was a pleasure to use– there were truly lovely, artistic photos of most recipes, and since those recipes were short and sweet, almost all fit on one page.  Bonus!   We also enjoyed how some recipes were grouped by cooking method, like stir-fry or the aforementioned one-pot pasta.  This made it easy to try a new or different technique on multiple dishes.  And if you like Milk Street’s concept, there are several other cookbooks to peruse, as well as the TV show and an extensive website.  In the end, our ratings averaged out to around 3.5 (out of a possible 5), a better than average score for our group.

We’ll next meet on Friday, December 10 at 11 AM.  Plan to chat via zoom; we will meet outdoors in person if the weather is unusually warm(!)  We’re baking this month with local favorite Joanne Chang’s latest, Pastry Love (I highly recommend the chocolate-rye cookies!).  Copies are available at the main circulation desk or via curbside pickup.

Happy Thanksgiving to all, and see you on the 10th.

**And special thanks to LC for the post title!

Every day, the dinner decision looms: Chicken or pasta? Takeout or home-cooked? Thirty minutes or two hours?  Most of us are fortunate enough to have the luxury of dithering over what we feel like eating on any given night, and how much time and effort we want to devote to our evening meal.  And cookbook authors, it seems, are more than willing to keep revisiting this engrossing subject.  You’d think by now that all possible avenues would have been explored, but just in the last year alone, our Bibliobites group has cooked their way through six recent titles devoted wholly or primarily to dinner.  And continuing in that vein, this month we kitchen-tested Mark Bittman’s most recent title, Dinner For Everyone, a bold claim if ever there was one.  However, since Mr. Bittman is the one who taught us how to cook everything, dinner for everyone seems like a natural progression!

This book is organized in a unique way: recipes are presented in sets of three, which detail three ways of producing a meal, either quick and easy; vegan; or company-worthy (essentially, a project for when you have time).  Each set of recipes represents a theme; a similarity of taste or ingredients or method.  This could be helpful if you knew you wanted to use a particular ingredient, or if you had a hankering for, say, Asian flavors.  But some in the group thought this arrangement was “contrived,” and others thought it was “fun to look at…but not so practical.”  Most of us aren’t yet inviting groups of people to our homes, so there wasn’t much testing of the “company” recipes; but we did appreciate that this title gave us lots of diverse choices.  One notably irritating aspect of the book was that for each set of three recipes, there was only  one photo, and most of the time the photo wasn’t of the recipe that was printed next to it.  This caused a fair amount of confusion, as we wondered why photo and nearby text didn’t match.  Needless to say, we wished for more (and logically placed) photos!

Most of us focused on the “easy” category (hey, we just want to use our time efficiently!), where we found some keepers– and a few duds.  Udon with ginger-roasted carrots and miso sauce was a definite keeper, with its deeply flavored, savory sauce.  Caramel salmon also had a fabulous sauce, though this traditional Vietnamese combination was “too sweet” for one person.  A “really good” peanut sauce was featured in pork tenderloin simmered in peanut sauce; as is true of almost any peanut sauce, it was delicious on just about anything and played quite nicely with chicken or vegetables.  Sausage and escarole used this slightly bitter green in a new way: it was roasted and topped with Parmesan cheese, which was enjoyably different.  Falafel hash was another keeper; this simple combination really delivered in the flavor department, with just enough spice and a lemony sauce.  It would be excellent for brunch with an egg fried on top, but was just fine all by itself.  Spicy tuna rice bowl was a quick and tasty bowl made with basic pantry ingredients, but it suffered mightily  in the looks department: the tuna and its soy-laced sauce created an unappealing lumpy brown puddle atop the rice, reminiscent of– well, perhaps better not to say!

There were a few misses in this “easy” category; for instance, shrimp melts were “kind of blah,” plus the  mixture was hard to work with and didn’t want to stick together.  However, when at last the cakes were formed, they did stick to the pan!  Orzo with shrimp and dill had way too much pasta for the amount of shrimp (a problem also encountered with orecchiette with salmon), and both dishes were a bit too basic.  Shrimp with olives suffered from some timing issues, but it was fast and easy, though a bit too salty.  Sausage gumbo was “good…easy…but I have other gumbo recipes that are better;” and couscous and chicken with tunisian spices, despite a nice variety of spices, somehow “didn’t have a lot of flavor.”  One-pot stroganoff was a hit and a miss: one person thought it was “bland” and needed something to add depth; but another person enjoyed it and pronounced it a keeper.

Moving on to more challenging categories, those who tried anything in the “vegan” group unanimously thought the recipes were complicated– as in, time-consuming and with a lot of prep.  We did attempt a few; creamy white bean pasta and cauliflower was a vegan version of that all-time fave, macaroni and cheese.  This one was “pretty easy” and did deliver on its promise of creamy, saucy pasta and crisp breadcrumb topper.  Mushroom-sweet potato moussaka was “a lot of work” with its many steps.  But it did make a big batch, and was “good….different,” though it called for too much cinnamon (2 teaspoons!).  However, it was worth trying again.  Teriyaki mushrooms also had lots of steps, but were “really delicious” with a yummy sauce.  And sweet potato and corn enchiladas were also a bit of a project (as enchiladas often are); overall, this dish was a winner, though the filling didn’t hold together well and “needed something.”  The sauce was excellent, though– in fact, most if not all of the author’s sauces were extremely well-liked.

One or two “company” recipes rounded out our adventures: orange beef was a super version of this classic, with a mellow, yet bracing, orange flavor.  Though it’s classed as a “project” recipe, it was fairly simple, and had the advantage of still tasting delicious after a few days in the fridge.  And baked mascarpone french toast was a keeper; this lush, custardy casserole was perfectly accented by sweet/tart fruit.  Bonus: you put it together the night before.

As a group, we were unequivocally equivocal about this title!  Most of us are Bittman fans, and several own his books (the most popular being How to Cook Everything).  But this one didn’t seem to measure up to some of his others, despite admittedly producing a decent number of keepers.   One person was thinking about buying the book– she liked the range of choices and many of the flavor profiles appealed to her.  For the rest of us, it was a bit of a “meh,” reflected in our voting, which averaged out to just over a 3 (out of a possible 5).  As a point of comparison, the author’s VB6 book (January 2018) garnered a 2, while How to Cook Everything Fast (May 2017) snagged an overall 3.25.  So, we mostly like him– but we’re not completely sold!

We’ll next meet on Friday, June 25 at 11 AM.  If the weather is favorable, we will meet in person outdoors!! If it’s rainy or super hot, we will revert to Zoom.  This month we’re mixing in some fiction with our food with Joanne Fluke’s The Chocolate Cream Pie Murder.  Copies are available at the main desk.  If you would like to attend the meeting, and are not already on our mailing list, please email group leader Andrea Grant.  See you then!