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A review by shanacorrin
Baking Chez Moi: Recipes from My Paris Home to Your Home Anywhere by Dorie Greenspan
4.0
I don't know why it hadn’t occurred to me before that Goodreads would list cookbooks. Um, they’re books, Shana. Duh.
Well, I’m so glad they do.
Now it is totally weird to say I read a cookbook because a cookbook isn’t like a novel, where you generally need to read cover to cover to legitimately say you read it. A cookbook is a different animal, but one worth reviewing nonetheless. So let me begin by saying I haven’t read every word or tried every recipe. I’ve browsed and read a good bit of it, and so far I’ve tried two recipes: the Brown-Butter-and-Vanilla-Bean Weekend Cake and the Custardy Apple Squares. However, I can guarantee I will try more.
The Brown-Butter-and-Vanilla-Bean Weekend Cake was the first recipe I tried—because why not start at the beginning? It was delicious, but. Yes, but. I don’t know why, but I just expected more. It was just a really great slice of vanilla loaf cake. Nothing more or less, and I guess—perhaps unfairly—I was expecting more. I will make it again, though, and despite the fact that I’m not sure how much of a difference browning the butter made in the final product, it is a trick I am going to try with my own master muffin recipe that I use to make everything from banana to blueberry to zucchini to orange-cranberry muffins. Can’t hurt, right? And I melt the butter anyway.
The Custardy Apple Squares, however, were a different story. I wasn’t expecting much. There aren’t any spices. Its flavor comes solely from the apples, vanilla, and the optional alcohol. (I used dark rum, just as I did in the weekend cake.) I kept wondering if I should add some cinnamon or something, and though it wouldn’t have hurt to add some spice, the apple squares were awesome as they were. I was thinking that next time, if I were serving this to guests, it might be fun to follow the recipe but serve the squares with some sort of spiced whipped cream. You could go with a simple cinnamon whipped cream or an apple-pie-spiced whipped cream. However, these rocked my world as they were, and I can see them making my list of regular recipes. Dorrie Greenspan calls this a back-pocket recipe, and I think that is a fair assessment. This is the sort of thing that is easily whipped up last minute. All the ingredients—except maybe the apples?—are things you likely have around the house on any given day, and if you have a mandolin, slicing the apples is a cinch. I don’t think it would be that hard without the mandolin either, just a little more time consuming. Best of all, I could put my boyfriend on apple-peeling duty and make him feel helpful.
The last thing I’ll say about this is cookbook is bravo for the tone and writing. Some cookbooks feel dogmatic. It can feel like if you don’t do exactly what you are told, disaster could result. My own cooking method usually involves changing recipes, either to suit my taste or because I started cooking and realized I was missing some ingredient. I often don’t use recipes at all. I just wing it. 99.9% of the time, it comes out fine and even great, so I appreciate a cookbook that encourages cooks to experiment, and Dorrie Greenspan definitely does that. All of the recipes seem to have serving and storing suggestions, which are helpful, and most seem to have “Bonne Idée,” or a good idea. In these, she encourages you to get creative and customize to your own taste.
Finally, I love the little intros to each recipe. She tells you the story of the recipe—who it came from or how it came to its present form. In these, she also encourages your creativity. In the lead-in to the Spiced Honey Cake, for example, she tells us that the spice mix she chose was based on whatever she had around at the time, and since she was happy with it, it stuck. That is so much how I do my own cooking and so much how I wish others could approach cooking, too. So many people I know don’t cook because they are scared of doing it wrong, but as far as I’m concerned, it’s not wrong as long as you are happy with how it tastes and it isn’t cooked beyond edibility. Yes, there is often room for improvement, but hey, there’s always next time.
(Oh, and this tentatively has four stars because I’ve made only two things from it. However, once I’ve cooked a few more, I can easily see changing this to a five-star rating.)
Well, I’m so glad they do.
Now it is totally weird to say I read a cookbook because a cookbook isn’t like a novel, where you generally need to read cover to cover to legitimately say you read it. A cookbook is a different animal, but one worth reviewing nonetheless. So let me begin by saying I haven’t read every word or tried every recipe. I’ve browsed and read a good bit of it, and so far I’ve tried two recipes: the Brown-Butter-and-Vanilla-Bean Weekend Cake and the Custardy Apple Squares. However, I can guarantee I will try more.
The Brown-Butter-and-Vanilla-Bean Weekend Cake was the first recipe I tried—because why not start at the beginning? It was delicious, but. Yes, but. I don’t know why, but I just expected more. It was just a really great slice of vanilla loaf cake. Nothing more or less, and I guess—perhaps unfairly—I was expecting more. I will make it again, though, and despite the fact that I’m not sure how much of a difference browning the butter made in the final product, it is a trick I am going to try with my own master muffin recipe that I use to make everything from banana to blueberry to zucchini to orange-cranberry muffins. Can’t hurt, right? And I melt the butter anyway.
The Custardy Apple Squares, however, were a different story. I wasn’t expecting much. There aren’t any spices. Its flavor comes solely from the apples, vanilla, and the optional alcohol. (I used dark rum, just as I did in the weekend cake.) I kept wondering if I should add some cinnamon or something, and though it wouldn’t have hurt to add some spice, the apple squares were awesome as they were. I was thinking that next time, if I were serving this to guests, it might be fun to follow the recipe but serve the squares with some sort of spiced whipped cream. You could go with a simple cinnamon whipped cream or an apple-pie-spiced whipped cream. However, these rocked my world as they were, and I can see them making my list of regular recipes. Dorrie Greenspan calls this a back-pocket recipe, and I think that is a fair assessment. This is the sort of thing that is easily whipped up last minute. All the ingredients—except maybe the apples?—are things you likely have around the house on any given day, and if you have a mandolin, slicing the apples is a cinch. I don’t think it would be that hard without the mandolin either, just a little more time consuming. Best of all, I could put my boyfriend on apple-peeling duty and make him feel helpful.
The last thing I’ll say about this is cookbook is bravo for the tone and writing. Some cookbooks feel dogmatic. It can feel like if you don’t do exactly what you are told, disaster could result. My own cooking method usually involves changing recipes, either to suit my taste or because I started cooking and realized I was missing some ingredient. I often don’t use recipes at all. I just wing it. 99.9% of the time, it comes out fine and even great, so I appreciate a cookbook that encourages cooks to experiment, and Dorrie Greenspan definitely does that. All of the recipes seem to have serving and storing suggestions, which are helpful, and most seem to have “Bonne Idée,” or a good idea. In these, she encourages you to get creative and customize to your own taste.
Finally, I love the little intros to each recipe. She tells you the story of the recipe—who it came from or how it came to its present form. In these, she also encourages your creativity. In the lead-in to the Spiced Honey Cake, for example, she tells us that the spice mix she chose was based on whatever she had around at the time, and since she was happy with it, it stuck. That is so much how I do my own cooking and so much how I wish others could approach cooking, too. So many people I know don’t cook because they are scared of doing it wrong, but as far as I’m concerned, it’s not wrong as long as you are happy with how it tastes and it isn’t cooked beyond edibility. Yes, there is often room for improvement, but hey, there’s always next time.
(Oh, and this tentatively has four stars because I’ve made only two things from it. However, once I’ve cooked a few more, I can easily see changing this to a five-star rating.)