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36 reviews for:
Food52 Genius Recipes: 100 Recipes That Will Change the Way You Cook
Food52, Merrill Stubbs, Amanda Hesser, Kristen Miglore
4.08 AVERAGE
36 reviews for:
Food52 Genius Recipes: 100 Recipes That Will Change the Way You Cook
Food52, Merrill Stubbs, Amanda Hesser, Kristen Miglore
4.08 AVERAGE
I like this book a lot - tons of great ideas. Strangely, though, not everything is genius.
Recipes are formatted well; it’s easy to tell the opening monologue from the ingredients from the recipe steps. Each opener has interesting information on where the recipe comes from, how it works better than others of its kind, etc. Some very pretty photos are included.
We tried several of the recipes. One was a recipe of spiced braised lentils and tomatoes with toasted coconut. It’s a simple recipe, although not everyone will have access to the black or brown mustard seeds. It was great the first night, but it’s only okay as leftovers. The ‘trick’ in this one is to cook the dry lentils in strong flavors before adding liquid, in order to really get the flavor into the lentils. I’m not sure it made that much of a difference over other lentil dishes I’ve tried.
The roast chicken worked much better than I thought it would. You simply roast it at 500 F, no basting. I was sure our chicken would end up with blackened skin, but it came out perfectly. A tip next to the recipe points out that the one difficulty is spattering (leading to smoking), and points out that you can put some chopped potatoes or other hardy vegetables into the pan where they’ll cook in the juices and prevent spattering. We tried that and were quite pleased by the results.
Our absolute favorite recipe from this cookbook was a fresh blueberry pie. I had a hard time imagining how it could make much of a difference over all the other blueberry pies we made, but I have to admit this really was the best blueberry pie I’ve ever eaten. The crust is made extremely flaky through the use of frozen butter. In rolling the butter into the dry ingredients the recipe resembles the instructions for making puff pastry, and that isn’t a coincidence. This is not an easy step, and certainly not a step that someone with arthritis or tendinitis in the hands could do. (The crust recipe also has quite a few steps and is not entirely easy.)
It isn’t just the super-flaky crust that made the pie so good, though. Instead of baking all the berries in the pie, you pre-bake the pie shell and that’s it. Instead you take one quarter of the blueberries, cook them down to jam, and thicken with cornstarch. You fold this into the other, uncooked blueberries, fill your pie shell, and allow to set for a couple of hours. It gives you the best of both worlds: a thickened filling that has that perfect fresh, bursting berries flavor.
I don’t think of every recipe in here as having some mysterious ‘genius tip’ that will make the recipe better than others of its ilk. I’ve had better lentil dishes than that one, for instance. But frankly, that pie alone makes it worth learning the book’s techniques, and there are plenty of recipes that really do have that working genius step.
NOTE: Book provided free by publisher for review.
For a longer review including photos from our own cooking, visit my site: http://www.errantdreams.com/2015/07/review-genius-recipes-kristen-miglore/
We tried several of the recipes. One was a recipe of spiced braised lentils and tomatoes with toasted coconut. It’s a simple recipe, although not everyone will have access to the black or brown mustard seeds. It was great the first night, but it’s only okay as leftovers. The ‘trick’ in this one is to cook the dry lentils in strong flavors before adding liquid, in order to really get the flavor into the lentils. I’m not sure it made that much of a difference over other lentil dishes I’ve tried.
The roast chicken worked much better than I thought it would. You simply roast it at 500 F, no basting. I was sure our chicken would end up with blackened skin, but it came out perfectly. A tip next to the recipe points out that the one difficulty is spattering (leading to smoking), and points out that you can put some chopped potatoes or other hardy vegetables into the pan where they’ll cook in the juices and prevent spattering. We tried that and were quite pleased by the results.
Our absolute favorite recipe from this cookbook was a fresh blueberry pie. I had a hard time imagining how it could make much of a difference over all the other blueberry pies we made, but I have to admit this really was the best blueberry pie I’ve ever eaten. The crust is made extremely flaky through the use of frozen butter. In rolling the butter into the dry ingredients the recipe resembles the instructions for making puff pastry, and that isn’t a coincidence. This is not an easy step, and certainly not a step that someone with arthritis or tendinitis in the hands could do. (The crust recipe also has quite a few steps and is not entirely easy.)
It isn’t just the super-flaky crust that made the pie so good, though. Instead of baking all the berries in the pie, you pre-bake the pie shell and that’s it. Instead you take one quarter of the blueberries, cook them down to jam, and thicken with cornstarch. You fold this into the other, uncooked blueberries, fill your pie shell, and allow to set for a couple of hours. It gives you the best of both worlds: a thickened filling that has that perfect fresh, bursting berries flavor.
I don’t think of every recipe in here as having some mysterious ‘genius tip’ that will make the recipe better than others of its ilk. I’ve had better lentil dishes than that one, for instance. But frankly, that pie alone makes it worth learning the book’s techniques, and there are plenty of recipes that really do have that working genius step.
NOTE: Book provided free by publisher for review.
For a longer review including photos from our own cooking, visit my site: http://www.errantdreams.com/2015/07/review-genius-recipes-kristen-miglore/
I know many people don't believe you can read a cookbook, but I did read this one. Every page and every recipe. I made a few of them - my favorites were an apple cake and porridge.
This is a library book and I kept it for the three months that I was allowed to check it out. I plan to borrow it again and make a few more recipes.
I will continue to resist buying my own copy, although this book is calling me.
This is a library book and I kept it for the three months that I was allowed to check it out. I plan to borrow it again and make a few more recipes.
I will continue to resist buying my own copy, although this book is calling me.
I found a number of interesting things to try. Author is very fond of cauliflower, which is okay. Also, I don't keep on hand both light aNd dark soy sauce, as I wasn't aware there was a spectrum.
So many keeper recipes from this cookbook, and I've owned it all of a month. Poached scrambled eggs are almost crepe-like ribbons. The chicken thighs with lemon came out the best I've ever made, crispy skin and perfect centers, and I'll be using this method going forward, it's that easy and good. The tomato sauce recipe has been in my repertoire for awhile, and it's the easiest thing in the world. But you know me and my penchant for desserts: the chocolate mousse, the dense chocolate loaf cake (even when I've managed to misplace my loaf pan and had to convert on the fly for a 9x9 square), the orange and almond cake, the molasses cookies. I'll be making the meatballs and the chocolate chip cookies this afternoon, and I suspect we'll have surprise dinner guests based on the scents likely to be wafting out of our kitchen.
Teal deer: winner winner chicken dinner.
Teal deer: winner winner chicken dinner.