Book picks similar to
Girlfriends Forever: From the Heart of the Home by Susan Branch
cookbooks
susan-branch
non-fiction
cooking
The Pleasures of Cooking for One
Judith Jones - 2009
It’s a fulfilling and immensely economical process, one perfectly suited for our times—although, as Jones points out, cooking for one also means we can occasionally indulge ourselves in a favorite treat.Throughout, Jones is both our instructor and our mentor, suggesting basic recipes—such as tomato sauce, preserved lemons, pesto, and homemade stock—that all cooks should have on hand; teaching us how to improvise using an ingenious strategy of building meals through the week; and supplying us with a lifetime’s worth of tips and shortcuts. From Child’s advice for buying fresh meat to Beard’s challenge to beginning crêpe-makers and Lidia Bastianich’s tips for cooking perfectly sauced pasta, Jones’s book presents a wealth of acquired knowledge from our finest cooks.The Pleasures of Cooking for One is a vibrant, wise celebration of food and enjoying our own company from one of our most treasured cooking experts.
The Pastry Queen Christmas: Big-Hearted Holiday Entertaining, Texas Style
Rebecca Rather - 2007
As party invitations pile up in the mailbox, Rebecca Rather is up to her elbows in sticky meringue, creamy chocolate, and a sleigh full of savory treats to meet the entertaining needs of her neighbors.In The Pastry Queen Christmas, Rebecca shares nearly 100 traditional recipes reflecting her made-with-love-from-scratch philosophy and the tastes of small-town Texas. Show-off desserts such as Chocolate Cookie Crusted Eggnog Cheesecake, Sticky Toffee Pudding with Brandy Butterscotch Sauce, and Warm Pear Ginger Upside-Down Cake with Amaretto Whipped Cream are the perfect toppers to a family-style feast of Texas Spice-Rubbed Roast Pork, Baked Apple Pear Chutney, Brown Sugar Bacon, and No-Peeking Popovers. Still hungry the next morning? No problem-this country girl does an impressive breakfast, too: Bite-Sized Sticky Buns, Sweet Potato Scones, Cast-Iron Skillet Potatoes, and Mexican Ranch Chilaquiles ought to fill you up.And if you're still looking for excuses to entertain this season, you'll find ooey-gooey baked goods wrapped up as gifts, homemade craft and décor ideas to make your home sparkle, and holiday-worthy menus guaranteed to make your gathering a Texas-sized success. Tree-trimming, cookie decorating, and Santas running down Main Street . . . Christmastime is here.
Put 'em Up!: A Comprehensive Home Preserving Guide for the Creative Cook, from Drying and Freezing to Canning and Pickling
Sherri Brooks Vinton - 2010
Sherri Brooks Vinton includes recipes that range from the contemporary and daring — Wasabi Beans and Salsa Verde — to the very best versions of tried-and-true favorites, including Classic Crock Pickles and Orange Marmalade.
Nadia G's Bitchin' Kitchen: Cookin' for Trouble
Nadia Giosia - 2011
Now this Julia Child of the Net generation and host of the wildly popular Bitchin’ Kitchen TV show on the Cooking Channel brings her savvy chef know-how and rock star ’tude to glam up your dining experience. Trained at the culinary institute of Hard Wooden Spoon Whacks, Nadia says that her passion for food started in her Italian family’s kitchen, where meals became moments. In Cookin’ for Trouble, she shares recipes and cooking tips for beginner and seasoned home cooks to liven any occasion. • Back-of-the-Fridge Bachelor Brunches: Sometimes what lurks in the back of our fridge isn’t that inspiring, unless it’s been there long enough to strike up a conversation. No groceries, no problem! With just a few leftovers, whip up a scrumptious Sartu di Patate, or a Pasta Frittata that tastes like you’d planned it for days. • (Dysfunctional) Family Pizza Night: Bring your family and thighs closer together with the Giosia familia recipe for Rustica Pan Pizza, Puttanesca Panzerotti, and Traditional Italian Frittelle smothered in a creamy chocolate-nougat fondue. • Makeover Meals: We all get stuck in a rut sometimes, whether it’s the same boring dish, hairstyle, or boyfriend. It’s time for an upgrade! Turn ordinary dishes on their head with inspired crispy Tuna Sliders, smoky Chicken Risotto, and juicy Meatloaf Kebabs. • Plus Nadia’s creative menus for Hi-Speed Suppers, Girl’s Night In, Veg-Head Specials, Student Shkoff-fest, and a special chapter devoted to everyone’s favorite food group: Bacon! I know—we had you at “Bacon.” But there’s more! Loaded with gorgeous photos, more than fifty original recipes, sanity-saving “Nadvice,” a Bitchin’ Party Guide, and a hunky team of food correspondents—Panos, the Spice Agent, and Hans—Cookin’ for Trouble will take your meals from square to sassy faster than you can say “Tsaketa.”* *and for newbies, there’s an Italian Slang Dictionary!From the Trade Paperback edition.
A Year Between Friends: 3191 Miles Apart: Crafts, Recipes, Letters, and Stories
Maria Alexandra Vettese - 2016
Maria Alexandra Vettese and Stephanie Congdon Barnes share a love of art and design, handmade pleasures, and a well-lived domestic life. Almost a decade ago, they began their first year-long project together, posting a photo from each of their mornings on their blog, 3191 Miles Apart, named for the distance between their homes in Portland, Maine, and Portland, Oregon. 3191 Miles Apart quickly acquired a worldwide following of readers drawn in by the delicate intimacy of their shared experiences. A Year Between Friends celebrates their most recent project together—a visual representation of 2015, month-by-month, side-by-side, but miles apart. In addition to 400 photographs recording their daily inspirations and creative undertakings and a foreword from New York Times bestselling author Molly Wizenberg, this unique collaboration expands on their prior work with over 25 handmade crafts and seasonal recipes, notes on simple living, and personal stories that follow the tide of a year filled with new life, change, and loss. It is an intimate joint portrait revealed through photographic snippets—mending a sweater, making a mobile from a cherished collection, creating fabric dyes from natural materials, baking scones—that defies distance through the celebration of shared moments of calmness, warmth, and family. Both aspirational and down-to-earth, A Year Between Friends is an inspiring visual love letter to friendship and creativity, a timeless reminder to appreciate life one day at a time, to slow down, to cherish simplicity, and to make the extra effort to do things with care and with the people we love.
How to Celebrate Everything: Recipes and Rituals for Birthdays, Holidays, Family Dinners, and Every Day In Between
Jenny Rosenstrach - 2016
Whether simple or elaborate, daily or annually, these rituals all serve the same purpose for Rosenstrach: to bring comfort, connection, and meaning to everyday family life. Recipes here are organized into groupings unique to Rosenstrach but familiar to everyone: Our Family Rituals (think tomato sandwiches for lunch after a family walk to the market, or homemade popovers on sleepover mornings); Holidays We Didn’t Invent, including Friday Challah and Easter Ham (yes, both, more on that inside); a Halloween Launch Party for trick-or-treaters, featuring a self-serve simmering pot of Chicken Chorizo Chili. A section on Birthdays includes Rosenstrach’s legendary chocolate frosted “mud” cake as well as a one-size-fits-all party planner with menus that do not rely on pizza. Lastly, in Family Dinners you’ll find celebratory Sunday meals (Soy-Glazed Grilled Pork Chops, Harissa Roasted Chicken, Summer Cobbler) alongside Rosenstrach’s signature easy weeknight fare (Crispy Chickpeas and Yogurt, Shrimp Tacos with Avocado “Butter,” and vegetable-packed Burrito Bowls)—all of which translate to prime quality time with the family. In this digital, overscheduled age, How to Celebrate Everything helps families slow down, capture the moments that matter—and eat well while doing it.From the Hardcover edition.
Handmade Gatherings: Recipes and Crafts for Seasonal Celebrations and Potluck Parties
Ashley English - 2014
Handmade Gatherings offers:∙ 16 seasonal party ideas ∙ 52 recipes ∙ 32 crafts and activitiesFrom the décor, to the entertainment, on down to the recipes themselves, Handmade Gatherings presents inspired suggestions for thoughtful, flavorful, festive communal dining. Here you'll find sixteen parties built around the rhythm of the seasons. Frosty winter fetes, lush springtime soirees, sultry summer get-togethers, and crisp autumn affairs--it's all here. Food, décor, crafts, and more are part of each event, all collectively assembled and executed. Throw memorable gatherings with your loved ones, enjoy the food, connect with your community, and get caught up in the splendor of it all.
Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving
Judi Kingry - 2006
Home canning puts the pleasures of eating natural, delicious produce at your fingertips year round. Preserving food is as modern and practical as the latest food trend, and its really quite simple. Easy-to-understand detailed instructions provide all the information you need before you begin a project. Enjoy the rewards of numerous homemade meals and snacks, created from just one preserving session.
My Paris Kitchen: Recipes and Stories
David Lebovitz - 2014
In that time, the culinary culture of France has shifted as a new generation of chefs and home cooks—most notably in Paris—incorporates ingredients and techniques from around the world into traditional French dishes. In My Paris Kitchen, David remasters the classics, introduces lesser-known fare, and presents 100 sweet and savory recipes that reflect the way modern Parisians eat today. You’ll find Soupe à l’oignon, Cassoulet, Coq au vin, and Croque-monsieur, as well as Smoky barbecue-style pork, Lamb shank tagine, Dukkah-roasted cauliflower, Salt cod fritters with tartar sauce, and Wheat berry salad with radicchio, root vegetables, and pomegranate. And of course, there’s dessert: Warm chocolate cake with salted butter caramel sauce, Duck fat cookies, Bay leaf poundcake with orange glaze, French cheesecake...and the list goes on. David also shares stories told with his trademark wit and humor, and lush photography taken on location around Paris and in David’s kitchen reveals the quirks, trials, beauty, and joys of life in the culinary capital of the world.
Cravings: Recipes for All the Food You Want to Eat
Chrissy Teigen - 2016
Maybe she’s making people laugh on TV. But all Chrissy Teigen really wants to do is talk about dinner. Or breakfast. Lunch gets some love, too.For years, she’s been collecting, cooking, and Instagramming her favorite recipes, and here they are: from breakfast all day to John’s famous fried chicken with spicy honey butter to her mom’s Thai classics. Salty, spicy, saucy, and fun as sin (that’s the food, but that’s Chrissy, too), these dishes are for family, for date night at home, for party time, and for a few life-sucks moments (salads). You’ll learn the importance of chili peppers, the secret to cheesy-cheeseless eggs, and life tips like how to use bacon as a home fragrance, the single best way to wake up in the morning, and how not to overthink men or Brussels sprouts. Because for Chrissy Teigen, cooking, eating, life, and love are one and the same.
Made from Scratch: Discovering the Pleasures of a Handmade Life
Jenna Woginrich - 2008
Learn a few basic country skills, she reasoned, and she would be able to produce at least some of the food and resources she used every day.Goodbye, fast food and Wonder Bread; hello, homesteading. With enthusiasm and joy for the tasks at hand, Woginrich embarked on a journey that has been sometimes hilarious, sometimes heartbreaking and always soul satisfying.From the fulfilling work of planting a garden and installing honeybees, to the bliss of gathering fresh eggs for an omelet or playing an old-time ballad on the fiddle, Made from Scratch shares the honest satisfaction of doing for oneself, and brings the reader to a deep appreciation for the value of simple skills performed well.
The Bread Baker's Apprentice: Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread
Peter Reinhart - 2001
Never one to be content with yesterday’s baking triumph, however, Peter continues to refine his recipes and techniques in his never-ending quest for extraordinary bread.In The Bread Baker’s Apprentice, Peter shares his latest bread breakthroughs, arising from his study in several of France’s famed boulangeries and the always-enlightening time spent in the culinary academy kitchen with his students. Peer over Peter’s shoulder as he learns from Paris’s most esteemed bakers, like Lionel Poilâne and Phillippe Gosselin, whose pain à l’ancienne has revolutionized the art of baguette making. Then stand alongside his students in the kitchen as Peter teaches the classic twelve stages of building bread, his clear instructions accompanied by over 100 step-by-step photographs.You’ll put newfound knowledge into practice with 50 new master formulas for such classic breads as rustic ciabatta, hearty pain de campagne, old-school New York bagels, and the book’s Holy Grail–Peter’s version of the famed pain à l’ancienne. En route, Peter distills hard science, advanced techniques, and food history into a remarkably accessible and engaging resource that is as rich and multitextured as the loaves you’ll turn out. This is original food writing at its most captivating, teaching at its most inspired and inspiring–and the rewards are some of the best breads under the sun.
The Science of Good Cooking: Master 50 Simple Concepts to Enjoy a Lifetime of Success in the Kitchen
Cook's Illustrated - 2012
Unlike other food science books, we make a direct and practical connection between the science and the cooking. We divide the book into 50 core principles, support them through detailed yet friendly explanations, bring them alive with color illustrations and inventive experiments, and reinforce them through recipes that put the principle to work. At Cook's Illustrated, we've been asking why in the kitchen for over 20 years and often find our answers in science. We believe good science makes great food and that understanding basic science will make you a great cook.
Momofuku
David Chang - 2009
A once-unrecognizable word, it's now synonymous with the award-winning restaurants of the same name in New York City: Momofuku Noodle Bar, Ssäm Bar, Ko, and Milk Bar. Chef David Chang has single-handedly revolutionized cooking in America with his use of bold Asian flavors and impeccable ingredients, his mastery of the humble ramen noodle, and his thorough devotion to pork. Momofuku is both the story and the recipes behind the cuisine that has changed the modern-day culinary landscape. Chang relays with candor the tale of his unwitting rise to superstardom, which, though wracked with mishaps, happened at light speed. And the dishes shared in this book are coveted by all who've dined—or yearned to—at any Momofuku location (yes, the pork buns are here). This is a must-read for anyone who truly enjoys food.