THE DEFINED DISH (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2019, 291 pages, ISBN 978-0-358-00441-7, $30 USD hardbound) is by Alex Snodgrass, founder of the eponymous blog, which won a Saveur blog award in 2018 for the most inspired weeknight dinners. She's also a recipe developer and food stylist. In this current book, she now concentrates on healthy and wholesome weeknight dishes. She favours her local Tex-Mex cuisine, her mom's Italian cooking, Indian curries, Asian flavours, and a wide range of Mediterranean dishes. The table of contents are arranged this way, with other chapters for salads, soups, kid food, "southern" charms and date-night dinners. Her healthier dishes include pad Thai made with spaghetti squash, and mac and cheese made with a dairy substitute of squash and coconut milk. Recipes are marked gluten-free, dairy-free, grain-free, and paleo.
The book could have been improved if it also used metric in the recipes, or at least had a metric conversion chart. It might then sell better outside the USA.
Audience and level of use: those looking for wellness and family dishes.
Some interesting or unusual recipes/facts: carrot-ginger salad with baked salmon; minestra del sedano; sheet pan sausage with squash and roasted grapes; crispy-skinned branzino with parsnip puree; sheet pan rack of lamb with potatoes and mint chimichurri.
The downside to this book: while it is endorsed by Whole30, this is not quite properly explained in the text of the book...as to what it means.
The upside to this book: great preps for the health conscious.
Quality/Price Rating: 88
3.A GOOD MEAL IS HARD TO FIND (Chronicle Books, 2020, 160 pages, ISBN 978-1-4521-6978-1 $24.95 hardbound) is by Amy C. Evans and Martha Hall Foose. Evans is an artist and a storyteller; she's collected Southern food culture through oral history fieldwork. Foose is a cookbook author and storyteller; she won a Beard Award for American Cooking for "Screen Doors and Sweet Tea". It's a collection of culinary narratives augmented by stories, recipes and artwork. It's got 60 preps prefaced by funny vignettes, arranged by course (breakfast, lunch, afternoon pick-me-ups, and dinners. Amy is the artist, Martha is the cook, and together they create the stories. The book could have been improved if it had also used metric in the recipes, or at least had a metric conversion chart.
Audience and level of use: fans of story-driven cooking and Southern recipes.
Some interesting or unusual recipes/facts: Agnes Graton Firecracker popcorn; Alice's rosary cannelini salad; Ida';s Shore lunch loaf; Rita's roadside attraction; Gayle's lucky chicken posole; Vi's sherry pot pie; Frank's collard green and field pea fried rice.
The downside to this book: I wanted more.
The upside to this book: good pic, good stories.
Quality/Price Rating: 88
4.KEEPING IT SIMPLE (Hardie Grant Books, 2020, 176 pages, ISBN 978-1-78488-282-2 $24.99 USD flexibound) is by Yasmin Fahr, who is a food writer with a Master's degree in Food Studies. She wisely concentrates on easy weeknight one-pot recipes, which will be very popular. You'll need to have a good pantry with a variety of seasonings. There's a go-to weeknight pizza that is pretty basic, but there are a variety of variations in the toppings and doughs. Her chapter topics cover oven to table, quick and easy (faster than home delivery), gluten and grains, salads, and more. Preparations have their ingredients listed in avoirdupois measurements with some metric, but there is no table of metric equivalents.
Audience and level of use: beginners, harried workers
Some interesting or unusual recipes/facts: 20 minute spicy sausage with crispy broccoli; pork chops with nectarines; baked feta with greens and lemon-tahini dressing; simple whole fish with charred citrus; cumin spiced steak salad with avocado and kale; sleeveless sweet potato jackets with Dijonaisse.
The downside to this book: lots of citrus and cumin and feta.
The upside to this book: very useful
Quality/Price Rating: 88
5.POSH TARTS (Hardie Grant Quadrille, 2019, 193 pages, ISBN 978-1-78713-381-5 $19.99 USD hardbound) is another entry in Quadrille's "Posh" series, which emphasizes the flash of an easy prep with great visuals. Pip Spence has 70 recipes, from galettes to pastries, all arranged by ingredient or time of day: breakfast, meat, seafood, veggie, fruit, and dessert tarts. She opens with the basics of pastry, such as types and commercial sources. So you can either buy a shortcrust, a puff, or a filo pastry, or make it yourself. She has the recipes for them. It may help to at least start off with commercial pastry doughs, to see what they are about and to test the fills she proposes. And then move on to homemade doughs. Preparations have their ingredients listed in mainly avoirdupois measurements with some metric, but there is no overall table of metric equivalents.
Audience and level of use: beginners and up.
Some interesting or unusual recipes/facts: acorn squash and carrot tarte tatin; cherry Bakewell slice; heritage beetroot and feta slice; chickpea tagine filo tart; spiced lamb and eggplant tart; maple pecan pie; roasted fruit and granola tart; tonnato tart.
The downside to this book: I wanted more.
The upside to this book: makes it all seem easy, but the photos are great.
Quality/Price Rating: 89.
6.DINNER'S IN THE BAG (Hardie Grant Quadrille, 2019, 144 pages, ISBN 978-1-78713-485-0 $22.99 USD hardbound) is by Louise Kenney. She proposes 60 easy oven recipes all wrapped up in any of baking parchment, foil, or oven bags. The range is from healthy weekday suppers through veggie dishes and sweet desserts. As Kenney says, just bag it up, pop it in the oven, set the timer, and eat. It's a good little open and shut cookbook for one techniques using an assortments of meat, veggies, fish, and sweets. She's got photographic essays for the techniques. Preparations have their ingredients listed in avoirdupois measurements, but there is no table of metric equivalents.
Audience and level of use: beginners, the harried, needing a quick meal.
Some interesting or unusual recipes/facts: Italian salmon packets with couscous; lemon sole with potatoes, capers, lemon and herbs; ratatouille; baked peppers with lentils and goat's cheese; pork with ginger and coconut rice; sausages with sweet corn, peppers and zucchini.
The downside to this book: again, I wanted more.
The upside to this book: she has icons to let you know which wrapping is best (parchment, foil, bag)
Quality/Price Rating: 89
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