Buy, Borrow, Skip

I am not a chef, a food critic, or someone who preps one show-stopping meal every weekend. These reviews reflect my love of easy baked goods and my need to get dinner on the table at 6:30. The three questions I ask when I read a cookbook are:

1)    Utility: are most of the ingredients, pans, and cooking strategies easily obtainable?

2)    Ease of Use: is the book (and are the individual recipes) well organized and readable?

3)    Appeal: does this book inspire me to get into the kitchen?

With these 3 questions in mind, I then arrive at a recommendation:

Buy: purchase the book

Borrow: get it from a friend or your library whenever you’re in the mood

Skip: Fold your laundry instead

*I do not receive any proceeds from these reviews. I haven not received free copies of these books. I do not receive commission from any of these links.

** Links are to Next Chapter books a Detroit based independent bookseller. I have no affiliation with this seller.

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Buy, Borrow, Skip

My America: Recipes from a Young Black Chef: A Cookbook by Kwame Onwuachi and Joshua David Stein (2022). Borrow

This book is beautiful, the narrative is engaging, and it made me want to cook, but it's definitely a book for chefs or at least people accustomed to multi-stage meal prep. Kwame does a great job laying out his building block recipes, and employs those building blocks to construct more elaborate recipes. This is not a methodology of cooking that I am used to (and you’re probably not either if you’re reading this blog). I intended to make “Brown Stew Chicken” but before I could even begin, I had to prep: “Garlic and Ginger paste,” “Peppa sauce”, “Browning”, “House Spice”, and “Chicken Stock.” The scale of the recipes is also unmanageable for people looking to dip their toe in. Peppa Sauce requires: 50 scotch bonnet peppers, 2 cups spiced pickling liquids and ¾ cup garlic cloves. That being said, I am going to keep a few of his building block recipes in my back pocket, and I think that his book is worth checking out.

Sweet Enough by Alison Roman (2023). Borrow

This is a (mostly) dessert cookbook, that begins with a quote from Mary Oliver, “Joy is not a crumb.” My 9-year-old loved making the three ingredient Oreo cake. The waffle recipe and her ginger turmeric cake were just mehhh. Alison’s voice is causal and her recipes are fairly simple. Her notes about what she thinks you could do with a recipe are (I think) an attempt to pass the oven mitts onto the reader, but felt forced. I'm going to make her breakfast cake, homemade marmalade, and a few other recipes. It was good enough that I will checkout her other cookbooks. This book is best if you’re looking for ideas but is not a bible of any sort.

More is More: Get Loose in the Kitchen by Molly Baz (2023). Skip

From "Pepperoni Friend Rice" to a "Pinachillin" cocktail, this is a hodge-podge cookbook . Molly has a very enthusiastic internet following and her book is highly rated on amazon and good reads, but to me, this book is a bear. Maybe it’s the fact that I’m an olds, but holy design hell. I could not even read through the recipes. I get that Molly is about “more.” She’s clearly reacting to the hygienic food photos you might find in a William Sonoma catalog, but it looks like someone threw up on every page.

My Mexico City Kitchen, Recipes and Convictions Gabriela Cámara (2019). Borrow

This book got significant buzz. It has beautiful photos, convincing mini-essays, and a chilaquiles recipe that made me happy. There are easy recipes and hard recipes and they all look delicious; the organization of the book is pretty good. So everything was sunshine and rainbows until I tried to make Mole Verde. The ingredient amounts were inconsistent (6 cups called for but 3 cups used), and the recipe did not work (the amount of pumpkin seeds was preposterous). Neither her corn tortilla recipe nor her fried quesadilla worked. I had better luck with the recipes on the back of the mesa package. I think there may be gems in this book, but tread carefully.

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Do you have a Cookbook you would like me to review or a recommendation of a book that you love and think other's might enjoy? Let me know and I'll consider it for a future quarterly book review.

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