Fall Into Good Cooking
At the center of most cookbooks is a conception of home. In her latest cookbook, Home Cooked: Essential Recipes for a New Way to Cook (Penguin Random House, 2016), Anya Fernald offers recipes that reflect all the places she has called home. Throughout Home Cooked, she weaves in stories of learning the art of cooking seasonally in Italy, Uruguay and the United States.
As the owner of an animal pasture and an avid carnivore herself, Fernald chooses recipes that focus on using fresh, local ingredients, including meat. Her diverse array of experiences in the culinary world makes for interesting and crowd-pleasing bites, such as Cornmeal Spoonbread, Stuffed Zucchini Blossoms in Tomato Sauce, Wine-Braised Brisket and Savory-Sweet Ricotta Cheesecake.
Aside from Fernald’s strong personal narrative, her cookbook is engaging in its easy-to-read format and clear photographs. The book is divided into different segments of a three-course meal: Snacks, Starters & Cocktails; Take a Seat, a segment dedicated to main courses; and Desserts. In addition to these three segments, the book also includes Fernald’s renditions of base ingredients that can be prepared ahead of time—a stellar tool for those beginning to cook and entertain. Home Cooked emphasizes the joys of cooking for friends and family using seasonal bounty.
Throwing away too much of your produce? Sherri Brooks Vinton knows that struggle far too well and dedicates her book, Eat It Up! (Lifelong Books, 2016), to sharing knowledge about how to utilize every bit of the produce and meat that you buy.
Eat It Up! is a compilation of sustainable food practices, ingredient information and 150 recipes meant to excite cooks to make use of those potato peels, cauliflower leaves and fennel fronds. The book begins with a brief but informative rundown of myriad reasons to use up everything you buy, and describes what is happening with food waste in America.
Vinton’s mission is to help fix these problems with good food, and she features inventive and delicious recipes such as pasta with beet greens, apple cordial, beef with brassica leaves, Yorkshire pudding and much more. Her recipes teach how to avoid the trash can and give purpose to whole foods, which can be delicious with a little know-how.
Vinton not only makes an accessible food utilization model for both the restaurant and home cook but delves into the deeper problems facing the food industry today. This book is a guide to raising awareness and reconnecting with food, always making sure to eat it up!
