Three Cookbooks Help Make the Most of Summertime
Christopher Kimball’s “Milk
Street”: Cook What You
Have: Make a Meal Out of Almost Anything.
WRITING AND EDITING BY J.M.
HIRSCH, MICHELLE LOCKE AND
DAWN YANAGIHARA
(CPK Media, 2022)
IT’S SIMPLE: Cook What You Have, helps home cooks transform goods taking up valuable pantry space—think dried or canned beans, jarred tomatoes and grains—into “something special,” often with more than one option. The same goes for refrigerators and freezers, where meats and vegetables can too easily become forgotten until you’re trying to stuff something into an already-packed appliance.
It goes beyond being practical, writes Charles Kimball, the popular founder of “Milk Street” and co-founder and former host of “America’s Test Kitchen,” in the introduction: It’s “a way to teach people how to think about cooking so that one starts to behave like a real cook who can make something delicious from whatever is available, rather than simply follow a recipe.”
The table of contents, renamed “Have This? Try That,” begins by sorting recipes by protein. Here the chicken came first, with almost 20 options including Chicken and Chickpea Tagine and Tandoori-Inspired Chicken Kebabs. Egg dishes follow, similarly aplenty with the likes of Cheesy Tex-Mex Migas and a frittata that uses other staples like breadcrumbs and cheese. Options seem endless: Eight-Ingredient Beef and Bean Chili, Vietnamese Pork and Scallion Omelet, Tomato and Sausage Ragù over Polenta, and even Potato Salad with Capers, Olives and Olive Oil Tuna (from, yes, a can).
Vegetarians have plenty of choices too with Salt and Pepper Tofu and Stir-Fried Tofu and Ginger Green Beans, to finally use that brick of tofu in the fridge. Or go for a One-Pot Pasta all’Arrabbiata or Rigatoni Carbonara with Peas, among others.
But perhaps the pantry staples most begging for fresh ideas are dried or canned beans and grains. Kimball offers up Toasted Bulgur with Wanuts and Pickled Grapes or Stir-Fried Grains with Charred Cabbage and Tomatoes or Quinoa Chaufa with Mixed Vegetables (see page 37).
“Milk Street” also enables home cooks to be better equipped for cooking on the fly with its “top 25 must-haves and why we love them,” from anchovies packed in oil to toasted sesame oil.
“Freed from a recipe, we start to connect with our ingredients and develop the creativity and intuition that allow us to improvise based on the season and food in front of us. And that’s when cooking becomes an adventure, because you never know what tomorrow may bring.”
Midwest Pie: Recipes that Shaped a Region
EDITED BY MEREDITH PANGRACE (Belt Publishing, 2023)
WE’VE ALL BEEN there, in what some might label a “hole in the wall,” but where culinary masterpieces, often from recipes handed down through generations, come together seemingly effortlessly.
In the introduction to Midwest Pie: Recipes that Shaped a Region, Phoebe Mogharei describes such a scene in a diner in her Iowa college town. The unassuming spot embodies character as rich as a favorite dessert, where “their priority was cooking, not interior design,” assuring a future that includes, no doubt, a fine piece of pie.
So begins this petite-sized tome—perfect to tote around on a summer vacation—in which Mogharei walks readers through the history of pies in America, particularly in the middle states.
“The Midwest has its own special and endearing relationship with the homey dessert,” she writes, calling back to “the covered-wagon days, taking cues from traditions that originated in immigrants’ motherlands and creating a unique regional legacy of its own.”
She details how pies were a crafty way to make food—mutton, fowl and the like—last longer, with simple non-tantalizing crusts existing to preserve fillings, not necessarily to be enjoyed.
“But by the mid-19th century, pie had become much more than a practicality. It was a favorite breakfast of Ralph Waldo Emerson, and some people ate it three times a day,” writes Mogharei.
Pangrace opens with tips and recipes about several crust variations, before diving into the recipes she’s selected, hinting at where each has gained popularity. While fruit- and dairy-based pies seem particularly Midwest-friendly, several recipes resonate as especially meaningful to Michiganders. Bean pie “became a staple in and beyond Detroit” after it “came to prominence through the Nation of Islam, the Black nationalist organization founded in Detroit.” Manoomin pie, “another sweet pie made with a typically savory ingredient,” is named for the wild rice native to the Great Lakes and harvested by the Ojibwe people.
Other recipes that seem distinctly hometown heroes include Win Schuler’s Grasshopper Pie, Blueberry Cream Pie (see page 49) and, of course, Michigan Cherry Pie.
At a time when most cookbooks double as coffee-table books filled with lavish photos, the tiny Midwest Pie takes a vintage vibe, with only a few black-and-white historic photos that aren’t necessarily of pie. The recipes feed the imagination enough, even for a cake person.
Pulp: A Practical Guide to Cooking with Fruit
215+ Sweet and Savory
Recipes and Variations, including a Baker’s Toolkit
BY ABRA BERENS
(Chronicle Press, 2023)
“FRUIT? Why would you need a book about it? Just eat it.”
If author Abra Berens didn’t get that response when she asked friends about the topic of her third book, Pulp, published in May, other friends told her they avoided buying fruit because it goes bad too quickly. That, she shares in the introduction, is why she wrote this book.
“Fruit is simultaneously simple and frustrating. It can be so perfect that it needs nothing but a splash of cream and a sprinkle of sugar to make the most ethereal dessert. It can also be disappointing and inconsistent, in which case there are very few techniques in most kitchens to help the ingredient along.”
Berens calls fruit inextricable from her cooking, in more than desserts: “A fatty cut of pork balanced by tart yet achingly tender roasted plums. Earthy lentils pepped with the sweetness of thin apple slices.”
“It’s possible there is so much fruit in my cooking because I’m from Michigan. The mitten state is the second-most agriculturally diverse state in the union, due in large part to the tremendous amount of fruit we grow,” she writes.
Like in her earlier books, Ruffage and Grist, Berens considers Pulp “a practical guide to particular ingredients, in this case fruit.” She sets out to introduce new methods to enjoy old favorites, as well as encouraging readers to step outside of their comfort zone to try new ways of preparing food, this time by making fruit-forward dishes.
Part one, “Baker’s Toolkit,” provides foundational recipes for batters and doughs to make crusts, cakes, cookies, crusts and curds, plus pie fillings and puddings and even pickle liquids. Part two, “Fruit and How I Prepare Them,” gets into the nitty gritty, divided by fruits: apples, melons, nectarines and peaches, pears, plums, quince, rhubarb and strawberries, and even less popular fruit like ground cherries, lingonberries and autumn olives. Each fruit’s section begins with a brief explanation about the fruit before diving into how to select, determine ripeness and best store. Then come the recipes, from raw to grilled, stewed to roasted, all the way to baked. Try chicken liver mousse with roasted raspberries or rosé-poached apricots with an Earl Grey semifreddo. Or delight in the simplicity of an apricot grilled cheese (see page 52).
Berens also pays homage to the reality that without farmers, we would have no food; and that while seasonal fruits are to be treasured, there is no shame in using frozen or canned.
As in her earlier two books, Berens’s recipes share pages with rich, naturally dazzling photos of orchards, fruit and, of course, plated dishes, all captured at their peak by Detroit photographer EE Berger. Berens’s continual love letter to the agriculture of Michigan makes Pulp connect with local readers, like you’re in on the secret (ingredient).
“Pulp is a beautiful ride through the fields, orchards and kitchens of the Midwest,” writes Tim Mazurek in the foreword. “Here you will find Abra doing what she does best: educating, examining big issues, sharing stories, making dumb jokes, and inspiring you in the kitchen. She’s going to change the way you cook, and maybe even the way you think, not through dictates and demands, but through insight, encouragement, understanding, and connection. Enjoy it.”
Cara Catallo is editor of edibleWOW and author of Pewabic Pottery: A History Handcrafted in Detroit and Images of America: Clarkston.
