Cooking the Books

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Veggie tales

Monday, May 12th, 2008

Bonjour, mes amies! Finally, I have finished a long and tortuous stretch of busyness during which I went to school, studied, worked, and, well, that’s it. While French class continues, I have happily finished and filed a ton of work, leaving me free to concentrate on other things like cooking and scouring used book fairs for […]

Wrapping up

Monday, April 21st, 2008

Before we say goodbye to The Martha Stewart Living Cookbook: The New Classics, I thought I’d offer a few final positives and negatives –
+ Offers lots of easy, healthy, low-fat, flavorful recipes that are great for everyday dinners. Many of these are labelled “fit to eat” and have nutritional information.
+ Recipes for ethnic dishes like […]

Back again

Thursday, April 10th, 2008

Finally, we are happy to present another edition of Cooking the Books: The Martha Stewart Living Cookbook: The New Classics! Today’s dish is daube de boeuf provencal from the “meat” chapter, a classic French recipe that proved to be very easy and delicious, yet also a lengthy endeavor.

Brunch bonanza

Monday, March 31st, 2008

This past weekend saw a flurry of cooking, with food from other cookbooks (and thus unrecorded here) and also a brunch bonanza from The Martha Stewart Living Cookbook: The New Classics. It was All Martha, All the Time, and seriously, my back now hurts. I may be suffering from Martha-xhaustion. Is that a treatable syndrome?
From […]

Careless errors

Friday, March 28th, 2008

Do you ever make mistakes in the kitchen? I made one the other day while baking Elke Wood’s lemon squares (scroll down halfway) from the “cookies and candy” chapter of The Martha Stewart Living Cookbook: The New Classics.
You see, the recipe calls for 1 3/4 cups sifted all-purpose flour. As you probably know, lemon bars […]

Two in one

Thursday, March 27th, 2008

If you look closely at the photo above, you will see that I oh-so-cleverly combined two recipes into one meal last night, knocking the official recipe count of The Martha Stewart Living Cookbook: The New Classics down to 27!
Part I of the meal was a refreshing dish of soba noodles with tofu, avocado, and snow […]

Fish burgers

Wednesday, March 26th, 2008

Only 31 Martha recipes to go and our review of The Martha Stewart Living Cookbook: The New Classics will be o-ver! Confession #1: I can’t wait. Confession #2: I just looked at the Table of Contents again and made an executive decision to eliminate the “pastries” chapter from this review. We’re now officially down to 29 recipes — take […]

Recipe No. 10: In which Martha surprises me

Monday, March 24th, 2008

After making nine recipes from The Martha Stewart Living Cookbook: The New Classics, I thought I had the book figured out: Ethnic recipes, good. Continental recipes, bland. And then along came chicken cassoulet with crisp breadcrumb topping.
Upon first glance, this dish seemed hearty but plain, with white beans cooked simply with carrot, onion and celery, and […]

Plain pasta

Friday, March 21st, 2008

 
I made spaghetti with garden vegetables from The Martha Stewart Living Cookbook: The New Classics a few days ago, but have been putting off a post about it. Why? Well, I love garden vegetables, I love pasta, but this was pretty darn bland. Perhaps Martha feels similarly because I can’t find the recipe on her […]

I’m not Irish, but I still like cabbage

Tuesday, March 18th, 2008

In honor of St. Patrick’s day, Cooking the Books dipped into the “side dishes” chapter of The Martha Stewart Living Cookbook: The New Classics and made a large, starchy dish of colcannon. What is colcannon? It’s an Irish dish of boiled potatoes mashed with leeks, cabbage, milk and butter. According to my favorite reference book ever, […]

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