Cookbook Club: Myers+Chang at Home & Baking With Less Sugar #weekendcooking

Myers+Chang At Home: Recipes from the Beloved Boston Eatery (HMH, 2017) by Joanne Chang with Karen Akunowicz, was our library’s virtual Cookbook Club selection this month. Just in time for Lunar New Year!

Baking with Less Sugar by Joanne Chang was the alternate selection.

Joanne Chang left a management consulting career to become a professional pastry chef, opening the famous Flour bakery in Boston, which is now a string of bakeries, and then opened the Myers+Chang restaurant with her husband, Christopher Myers.

Flipping through Myers+Chang at Home, with all its beautiful photographs and mouthwatering descriptions, I bookmarked at least eight recipes I wanted to try, right off the bat. Others were appealing, but called for ingredients I would probably have to order online or seek out at an Asian market. Since I’ve been trying to cook with what’s on hand or easily found at the local supermarket this month and to use stuff I overbought for holiday feasting, I put those other delicious-sounding recipes in the “maybe someday” category.

Plus, being an inefficient home cook, I was already looking at hours in the kitchen just to make the easier recipes in this book! Patting myself on the back for being organized, I had added necessary items to our bi-weekly shopping list such as bok choy, shallots, tofu, mint, and sambal oelek ahead of time and bookmarked five doable looking recipes. But what hadn’t registered was that the recipes had deceptively short lists of ingredients because some of the ingredients were recipes in themselves. (The old “recipes within the recipe” trick that I’m familiar with from cocktails!)

For example, the recipe for The Green Monster stir-fry (described in the cookbook as “everything green” – Brussels sprouts, kale, peas, edamame, spinach, leeks, avocado, cucumber, or whatever is awesome and in season – wok charred with chewy, nutty farro, and rich pistachio-lemongrass pesto) sounded amazing and versatile – I would substitute gluten-free buckwheat groats for farro, and snow peas for edamame, which my husband doesn’t like – and pretty straightforward. But first I had to make the pistachio-lemongrass pesto recipe (with substitutions, because I didn’t have fresh lemongrass), before starting the washing, chopping, and blanching all of those vegetables mentioned in the recipe description.

I planned to make Soy Sauce Deviled Eggs with Five Spice to go with The Green Monster; those had to be started at least four hours ahead so the hard-boiled eggs could soak up the soy-sauce marinade, so I needed to cook the eggs and get the marinade (cooked, then cooled to room temperature) ready early.

I did take a moment to admire the beauty of the star anise in the marinade.

Along with the Soy Sauce Deviled Eggs, I had planned to serve Sweet & Sour Brussels Sprouts and Ginger-Scallion Bok Choy on the side, but the bok choy needed the Ginger-Scallion sauce recipe made ahead , and the Brussels sprouts were to be served with Pickled Shallots, a separate recipe that needed to be started at least four hours in advance. So I got the Pickled Shallots done in time for this planned, at-home lunch, but not the Brussels sprouts, and the bok choy never even made it out of the refrigerator!

For a sample recipe from Myers + Chang At Home, check out this one for Pan-Roasted Soy-Glazed Salmon with Cool Cucumber Salad on Boston.com. (Note that there are three recipes within the recipe.)

So I wouldn’t recommend this cookbook for anyone looking to whip up a quick meal, but all the food was amazing and definitely worth the extra work (and dirty dishes) in the kitchen. And the cookbook is really enjoyable both to read through and to use.

I ended up making all the recipes I had planned, but spread out over several days. Some of the recipes for condiments could be used in other dishes, once they were made, and I reused the beautiful soy-sauce marinade with cubed chicken for a quick, improvised stir-fry another night. The author offers a few chef-approved shortcuts, such as using store-bought curry paste instead of making your own, and encourages recipe departures to accommodate your own or your family’s taste.

It was hard to go back to our regular Chinese takeout after having these meals!

Everyone in the cookbook club liked reading through the Myers+Chang cookbook for the author’s stories and recipe notes. The photographs of the food are gorgeous, and the recipe instructions are clear and well laid out.

The recipes in Baking with Less Sugar are also very appealing, but the vast majority aren’t suitable for a gluten-free kitchen, of course! I tried one of the few that are, and the Nutty-Seedy-Fruity Energy Bars were delicious – loaded with dried fruit, nuts, and whole grains – and I even cut the amount of honey and oil down a bit from the recipe. They were similar to Lara Bars in texture, but much better.

However, the recipes for Better Than Flour Famous Banana Bread and Cameron’s Lemon-Polenta-Pistachio Buttons in Baking with Less Sugar struck another member of the club (an experienced home baker) as more complicated than necessary and not an improvement over her own favorite recipes.

Modifying the recipes for less sugar, such as cooking the bananas to bring out their sweetness before adding them into the recipe may require more work from the cook, or since the author is a professional pastry chef, maybe she feels the additional steps are justified by a more perfect end result.

Check out Joanne Chang’s article on The Challenges of Baking with Less Sugar on Food52, where she shares five recipes from Baking with Less Sugar.

Joanne Chang is the author of three other cookbooks, including her most recent, Pastry Love: A Baker’s Journal of Favorite Recipes (HMH, 2019).

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