Bay State Reader's Advisory

Cookbook Club

Last month’s cookbook club meeting happened via group email. I’m glad we were able to get the cookbooks out to everyone before the shut-down of library activities, but I do wish we had all had the chance to sample more recipes from this month’s author, Julia Turshen. We may have to revisit the March selections — Now & Again (Chronicle, 2018) and Small Victories (Chronicle, 2016)

Cookbook Reviews

Now & Again: Go-To Recipes, Inspired Menus + Endless Ideas for Reinventing Leftovers

I love cookbooks that categorize recipes by the seasons, so I really loved looking through Now & Again by Julia Turshen. I love cookbooks with menu plans, too, even though I have rarely — if ever — actually made a complete menu from any cookbook. Flipping through the pages, I daydream about hosting an elaborate “simple picnic” or putting on a restaurant-worthy brunch spread, but oh, well; now we can’t have guests over, anyway!

The layout and photographs (by David Loftus) in Now & Again are gorgeous, but don’t feel completely unattainable. Most of the recipes fit on one page, which is really convenient — especially in a cookbook borrowed from the library, because you don’t want to be turning the page with messy hands!

Now & Again by Julia Turshen was named the Best Cookbook of 2018 by Amazon and an NPR “Great Read”. I made two salads from Now & Again, and they were both delicious.

This cabbage salad recipe was from the Winter “Brunch for a Crowd” menu. The recipe notes say, in part: “This salad has all of the qualities I like in a recipe: colorful, affordable (thank you, cabbage!), crunchy, full of flavor, and, because it sits well, very friendly for entertaining.” It was delicious right after mixing it together and also the next day as leftovers. I used more red than green cabbage, which was the opposite of what the recipe called for, but that’s what I had more of.

This cabbage salad recipe was from the Summer “Afternoon Tacos” menu, and is basically a no-mayo slaw, very easy to put together once you’ve grated the carrots. I made the recipe as written although I think I reversed the proportions of red cabbage and romaine lettuce because I had more cabbage than lettuce. As leftovers, the salad was a little wilted, but stayed pretty crunchy with the pumpkin seeds and cabbage.

I also got my husband to make the Italian variation on “Garlicky Shrimp with Tequila + Lime” from Now & Again, made with white wine and lemon instead of tequila and lime. Delicious! In the picture, you can see one of the cabbage salads as leftovers. Still pretty enough a couple of days later!

All the recipes in Now & Again use whole foods, natural ingredients, and offer alternatives for various tastes and dietary needs, as well as suggestions for how to use leftovers. (Using leftovers in new recipes is where the title comes from; the author originally wanted to call the book It’s Me Again.)

There are many recipes from Now & Again I haven’t tried yet that I would like to, including Charoset Quinoa from the “Passover Seder Menu” –a variation on the traditional Jewish holiday dish, charoset — and Healthy, Happy Wife Cake from the Spring “Grace’s Birthday Late Lunch Menu” — a gluten-free, lower in sugar, but still tasty-sounding version of the original recipe in the author’s first cookbook, Small Victories.

Small Victories: Recipes, Advice, and Hundreds of Ideas for Home-Cooking Triumphs

The theme of Small Victories is that people know how to cook more than they often think they do. They say they only know how to cook two things, but the author says from those two things, you actually know how to cook 200 things!

Small Victories was named the named one of the Best Cookbooks of 2016 by The New York Times and NPR. I liked Small Victories a lot, too, and marked off several recipes I want to try:

• Kinda, Sorta Patatas Bravas
  Small victory: “The magical effect of boiling the potatoes before roasting them in a preheated caste-iron skillet”
• Jennie’s Chicken Pelau
  Small victory = You’ll have a few one-pot meals up your sleeve.”
• Cold Elixir
  Small victory = “A natural remedy that works”
• Peach + Bourbon Milkshakes
  This recipe started out as boozy homemade peach ice cream that didn’t freeze in time for dessert, so ice cream became milkshakes. Small victory = “Failure is sometimes just an invitation for a new name.”

I make soup fairly often without using a particular recipe, but I tried the instructions for A Bowl of Anything Soup, Anytime from Small Victories and made soup with shrimp, rice, herbs, and veggies with homemade stock that was delicious, using the author’s proportions.

The small victory here is making and freezing homemade stock ahead of time in the serving size you need (two cups per person). Because it was still soup weather in early April, I also made a vegetarian soup with quinoa, veggies, and herbs based on the proportions and suggestions here. The author calls this recipe “more of a frame of mind — feel free to be creative”.

Both cookbooks had cocktail recipes, which was nice during this time of extended evenings at home with no driving.

I mentioned the recipe for Maple Syrup Old-Fashioneds from Now and Again in my Weekend Cooking post last week about maple syrup. From Small Victories, I’ve made Whiskey + Maple Syrup Sours and Apple Cider and Ginger Beer Punch (for two, not ten).

Both cookbooks are beautiful to look at and enjoyable to read through. (I guarantee you’ll be bookmarking recipes right and left!) The author has written several other cookbooks and numerous articles on food and cooking. To get more of a sense of the author’s cooking and writing style, visit her Web site or check out her podcast, Keep Calm and Cook On.

Happy Weekend Cooking!