In September 2019, we started participating in The Kitchn’s Cookbook Club at its inauguration. Imagine a book club, but with cookbooks. It was really fun and inspiring, as well as a welcome distraction during the first year of the pandemic when we spent a lot more time at home. All our blog posts from cookbook club selections are tagged with Cookbook Club. After awhile, we didn’t really find ourselves keeping up with the monthly selections or the social media aspects of the club. We also found that we gravitated towards some of the books more than others – it almost became a chore to try to cook some that didn’t speak to us. I thought about deleting this page entirely when we stopped participating each month, but realized I didn’t want to delete the details about the books we really enjoyed. So we decided to change this page to highlight the cookbooks we’ve loved or circled back to, instead of recapping month by month endeavors.
The best thing we learned from the cookbook club experience though? You can find so many cookbooks at the library! It’s such a great way to test out a cookbook before purchasing. Or, check out ones we’ve cooked below!
The Book – To Asia, With Love, by Hetty McKinnon
Recipes Tried – The Roasted Leeks & Root Vegetables with Crispy Chili Oil and Miso e Cacio e Pepe.
Favorite Recipe – The Miso e Cacio e Pepe, definitely. Decadent and umami, yet very easy to make.
Still Earmarked to Make – Shawarma Singapore noodles, peanut butter green tea noodles with cucumber, red curry laksa, potato & leek momos, salt & pepper eggplant, & ginger-scallion-miso glazed eggplant
Book Review – We’ve enjoyed everything we’ve made out of this book so far and have lots more on our list to try. Lots of twists on pan-Asian classics or staples.
The Book – Six Seasons: A New Way with Vegetables, by Joshua McFadden
Recipes Tried – Brown Butter Turnips, Lettuce with Potatoes & Pancetta Vinaigrette, Lamb & Carrot Ragu, Pasta alla Norma with Sausage, & Pumpkin Bolognese
Favorite Recipe – Hard to choose. We’ve made the brown butter turnips (our interpretation of his Roasted Radishes) dozens of times now. The pancetta vinaigrette is amazing. The lamb & carrot ragu is a repeat recipe too, though we have changed it to our liking and haven’t quite settled it out to share here. The Pasta alla Norma is a summer go-to for the past two years now – perfect for the fairytale eggplants we get in the summer.
Still Earmarked to Make – The whole book? Asparagus frittata, pasta carbonara with peas, peas with proscuitto & potatoes, fava bean & pistachio pesto on pasta, onions three ways with ‘njuda, pasta alla gricia with sugar snap peas, roasted beets with avocado, grilled carrots over steak, carrots with carrrot-top salsa verde, pasta with broccoli & sausage, baked cauliflower with salt cod, squash tuna melt, red pepper/potato/prosciutto frittata, farro & carrot salad, carrot salad with burrata, burnt carrots with honey/pepper/almonds, carrot pie, onion bread soup, and probably some more.
Book Review – We found another winner with this book! It’s another one where we have multiple recipes earmarked for future endeavors. This book is set up seasonally, but into six seasons (as you might guess), in correspondence with their natural harvest seasons. We learned a lot about really eating seasonally and this book paired really well with our summer Farm Share. All of the dishes in here are vegetable-forward, but it is not a vegetarian book.
The Book – Parwana: Recipes and Stories from an Afghan kitchen, by Durkhanai Ayubi
Recipes Tried – Afghan Lamb & Root Veggie Aush and Afghan Chickpea Curry . Came back and tried the fasoolia/green bean curry as well.
Favorite Recipe – Love, love, LOVED the aush. The soup is layered and deeply flavored. Delicious!
Still Earmarked to Make – Vinegar chickpeas, turmeric braised chicken, yogurt braised lamb, Kabuli palaw, potato curry, chicken curry, & kolcheh nowrozi (Nowrouz cookies)
Book Review – Loved this book. Wish we had time to cook more of it. We’ve saved another dozen or so recipes to try later, so hopefully we’ll add some more as time passes. The recipes introduce the reader to the flavors and techniques of Afghan cooking in a beautiful way. We found that the portions are quite large though.
The Book – Falastin: A Cookbook, by Sami Tamimi & Tara Wigley
Recipes Tried – Kofta & Potatoes in Tahini Sauce, Chicken Musakhan, Saffron Butternut Squash Soup, Lemon Chickpea Salad (Balilah), Hasan’s Easy Eggs, and I think some more I’m forgetting
Favorite Recipe – Difficult decision, because we enjoyed so much of this book. Ally loved the kofta & potatoes and the chicken musakhan equally, but Selim’s love of the chicken musakhan as well tips the overall favor to that dish probably.
Still Earmarked to Make – Herb & sumac buns, freekah & chicken meatball soup
Book Review – LOVE, LOVE, LOVE! We LOVED this cookbook! Everything we made was delicious, and we made quite a few recipes. These are the flavors of Palestine from Tamimi’s youth, some recipes classic and some with modern twists.
The Book – The Sioux Chef’s Indigenous Kitchen, by Sean Sherman
Recipes Tried – Crispy Duck Legs, braised turkey thighs with apples, a delicata squash salad, and a maple vinaigrette
Favorite Recipe – the duck legs, by far. Selim has adopted these as one of his personal signature dishes now. The amazing texture and flavors belie the complete simplicity of the recipe.
Book Review – Great book to educate about Native American food and ingredients. Most of the recipes have very few ingredients and are therefore quite approachable. Some ingredients are a bit difficult to come by, which excluded a few recipes that I wanted to try.
The Book – Cool Beans: The Ultimate Guide to Cooking with the World’s Most Versatile Plant-Based Protein, by Joe Yonan
Recipes Tried – Caramelized Onions & Sweet Potato Enfrijoladas and Georgian Bean Stew (Lobio)
Favorite Recipe – We absolutely LOVED the enfrijoladas!
Still Earmarked to Make – black bean & plantain chili, black bean sopes, corn hummus with corn relish, lablabi, black bean soup with masa dumplings, & pumpkin oat muffins
Book Review – Fun book with all vegetarian (and mostly vegan) recipes. He incorporates recipes from all over the world, which we love. It’s a great guide to incorporate some hearty, yet still healthy and meatless dishes into your life.
The Book – Stir-Frying to the Sky’s Edge, by Grace Young
Recipes Tried – Stir-Fried Ginger Broccoli, Beef Chow Fun, and Classic Beef & Broccoli
Favorite Recipe – Definitely the Classic Beef & Broccoli, though we have several more recipes marked that we’re waiting to try!
Book Review – We absolutely loved this book! The pictures are gorgeous, the instructions are specific and precise (which you need if you’re a novice stir-fryer!), and the recipes are delicious. We enjoyed learning about traditional Chinese stir-frying and appreciated the variety of recipes in the book. This was a very popular selection in the online Cookbook Club group, only helped by the fact that the author joined the group and kindly offered feedback, tips, and suggestions!
The Book – Deep Run Roots: Stories and Recipes from My Corner of the South, by Vivian Howard
Recipes Tried – Smoky Spiced Pecans, Roasted Beets in Herb Yogurt, and Sage Honey-Glazed Pork Tenderloin with Bacon-Roasted Rutabagas
Favorite Recipe –The pecans! They’re the perfect snack.
Book Review – You might recognize Vivian Howard from her PBS show A Chef’s Life. This beautiful book is the perfect complement to her show. It’s huge, full of lovely pictures, fun stories, and anecdotes. She organizes it by ingredient. The ingredients are clearly the important thing for her, and she centers the book and her recipes that way. I think that’s a beautiful way to approach cooking in general and a cookbook in particular. My other critique was that many of the recipes, especially the main dishes, are actually multiple recipes in one. They’re delicious, but time-consuming! The beets we made and shared are actually one part of a full meal/recipe in the book.
The Book – Plenty, by Yotam Ottolenghi
Recipes Tried – Eggplant & Mango Soba Noodles and Potatoes Vindaloo
Favorite Recipe – Both were great, but I think the noodles were the favorite. The dish had all of the elements… it’s sweet and earthy and a little spicy and vinegar-y.
Book Review – A great book if you’re looking to add some vegetables into your life! The whole book is vegetarian. And it is full of dishes that still feel substantial and filling, despite their vegetarian status. As with other Ottolenghi recipes, many of these are fairly complex or appear so because of the length of the ingredient list. I’ve yet to find a recipe of his that I didn’t like though.
The Book – Salt Fat Acid Heat, by Samin Nosrat
Recipes Tried – Pasta with Clams & Sausage, Chocolate Cupcakes with Rosewater Cream, Sausages & Roasted Veggies in Agrodolce, steamy sauteed garlicky green beans, a yogurt & saffron brined whole chicken, and a big salad.
Favorite Recipe – Toss up between the pasta and the sausage & veggies in agrodolce – we LOVED both!
Book Review – At first I wasn’t super excited about this book. It’s not entirely a cookbook in the traditional sense; instead it is more of an educational tome of cooking and food science, with some recipes. This turned me off a little bit at first, but the more time I spent with the book, the more I appreciated it. I learned a lot and was very pleased with the recipes we tried. The illustrations are also super fun! It also prompted us to watch her four part Netflix mini-series (also called Salt Fat Acid Heat), which was great too!
Bon Appetit Baby! 
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