Review by Booklist Review
Cookish--a word longtime TV chef Kimball uses to describe a cuisine built on ingredients (limited to six per dish) that pack a flavor wallop, deliver contrasts (sweet/sour, creamy/crunchy, with some bitter), and usually require only one piece of cookware to prepare--doesn't sound like a term that will stick with American culture, but then neither did Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, at first. Regardless, readers will delight in these fresh, surprising dishes, which usually take 30 minutes or less to prepare. How about a salad of box-grater-shredded beets and carrots, tossed with dill, lemon, olive oil, horseradish, and caraway seeds? Or seared radicchio, with sherry vinegar, blue cheese, and walnuts; halibut with chorizo, tomatoes, and green olives; or sake-and-citrus poached chicken with miso sauce? The splashy color photos of the finished dishes are smartly laid out, and the recipes are easy to follow, certainly plentiful, and helpfully organized into vegetable, beans and grains, pasta, seafood, chicken, pork, beef, and dessert chapters. Another strong outing by Kimball and his popular Milk Street crew.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Milk Street founder Kimball (Milk Street: The New Rules) collects solid recipes with six ingredients or fewer that build flavor with powerhouse components rather than fussy prep. Most of these meals, in which "time is no longer the key ingredient," are prepared in a single pot. The simplicity is appealing and the flavors are bright: a salad of shredded fennel and celery root pops when tossed in mustard dressing, and harissa brings the heat to pasta with yogurt. Sections are conventionally broken down by main ingredient, but then subdivided by method, so that the section on beans and grains includes heating canned beans in a microwave, tossing in flavorings (like charred tomatoes) and allowing them to cool into a salad. Options are the name of the game: a quintet of dipping sauces is recommended for fried chicken cutlets, and shredded pork can be transformed with miso; rosemary and balsamic vinegar; or soy sauce and star anise. Globe-trotting cultural references include West African--style chicken with peanut butter, Balinese-style roasted pork shoulder, and Korean-style noodle soup with kimchi and gochujang chili paste. Desserts offer crowd-pleasers such as four differently spiced rice puddings. The quick-and-easy concept is carried out consistently, and this clever title will be a boon for weeknight cooks. Agent: David Black, the David Black Agency. (Oct.)
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
The James Beard Award-winning team at Milk Street have built their latest cookbook around a "throw it together" approach to getting dinner on the table. Each of the more than 200 streamlined recipes is limited to essential ingredients (plus salt, pepper, and oil) and utilizes simplified cooking techniques, many of which are detailed in the helpful "Cookish Basics" section of each chapter. Recipes cover vegetables, salads, meats, pastas, and grains, relying on an accessible range of flavorful pantry ingredients such as miso, harissa, curry paste, and smoked paprika. Headnotes for each recipe describe how ingredients and cooking techniques contribute to the flavor profile of the dish, offer suggestions for substitutions and alternatives, and provide inspiration for adjusting basic recipes. Chapters on vegetables, beans, and grains are particularly outstanding, and the broad range of flexible, innovative meat-free dishes will have great appeal for vegetarian and vegan cooks. VERDICT Milk Street delivers another winning resource for home cooks seeking flexible, practical recipes that deliver maximum flavor with minimal time and effort.--Kelsy Peterson, Forest Hill Coll., Melbourne, Australia
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
