April 20, 2020
Druckman (Women on Food) proves to be a home cook’s savvy companion in this helpful cookbook. The recipes are grouped by food groups (dairy, seafood, vegetables, etc.), and are presented as sets of three main ingredients used to create trios of dishes. Some trios are familiar but with twists, such as the oats-focused group that skews savory with dishes including an oats-apple-gouda combo that yields a fruity “oatotto” in which grated cheese is stirred in just at the end, and a dressed salad of sliced Granny Smith apples topped with a caraway–fennel seed–oat granola. Vegetables are a highlight: Celery root can be braised, caramelized, or pickled, then served with salmon and peas. As for main dishes, chicken legs, apple, and shallot can go into a roasting pan or Dutch-oven, or can be baked as a stunning tarte tatin entree. Other trios are more unexpected, such as the squid, cornmeal, and peppers used in a polenta dish; or shrimp, tomatoes, and almonds, which yield a bright buttermilk-dressed salad, a Spanish-inspired almond soup, and a Sicilian-pesto pasta. Druckman closes with appendices offering ingredient resources and a recipe list by course. The author’s conversational tone enlightens and entertains in this quirky collection of innovative dishes.
February 15, 2020
For the really adept cook, selecting and pairing ingredients is a paramount talent in creating dishes that appeal to both the familiar and the novel. Druckman (Women on Food, 2019) offers the expertise of both chef and teacher to embolden ambitious home cooks to experiment with simple combinations of ingredients to serve uniquely imagined dishes that taste much different from one another. She starts with pork belly, prunes, and radicchio and then offers three variants with these same three basic ingredients. In one instance, the three ingredients produce a Japanese-influenced stir-fry. Then this same trio makes a hearty braise for a showstopping dinner party main dish. Then a much lighter dish appears with pork belly cut up over a bed of radicchio and prunes reimagined as a salad dressed with lime vinaigrette. Eggplant, ground beef, and parsnips come together as Greek moussaka, as South African bobotie, or as an American eggplant-beef burger with parsnip relish. This sort of inspiration is bound to excite the cook looking for something unexpected and quite original for the dinner table.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)
May 1, 2020
Taking three key ingredients and creating three distinct dishes out of them is the premise of this new collection by Druckman (Women on Food), which features 25 of these match-ups for a total of 75 recipes. There are five overall categories: vegetables, beans/grains, meat, seafood, and dairy. Within these groups, flavor combinations range widely, from zucchini-pistachios-mint to pork belly-prune-radicchio. Each flavor trio is then expressed in three quite different preparations. To further encourage experimentation, a chart at the beginning of each of the combinations lays out similarly flavored ingredients that could be substituted, along with other ingredients that would be complimentary. Recipes are international in tone, well-illustrated and organized, with conversational headnotes outlining their underlying concepts or origins. While not "chefy," the recipes are often somewhat involved, not necessarily weeknight fare. Also, the fact that everything is based on these rather arbitrary ingredient combinations gives it a slightly limited feel, despite all of the efforts to the contrary. VERDICT A cookbook that combines the appeal of "Choose Your Own Adventure" and Chopped. Purchase where there is interest.--Susan Hurst, Miami Univ. Libs., Oxford, OH
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