My little chef and I recently received The Kitchn Cookbook: Recipes, Kitchens & Tips to Inspire Your Cooking by Sara Kate Gillingham and Faith Durand, and we love it! The authors are the owners of Apartment Therapy’s The Kitchn website, and now they are sharing their expertise and experience with readers in this new cookbook.
What really makes this cookbook different is that it combines a complete guide to organizing and working in your kitchen with a well-stocked selection of recipes. The Kitchn Cookbook is full of photographs, which inspire and teach. There are even glimpses into actual kitchens, showing how and where “real” cooks create.
This book is like a kitchen primer, taking you through all the basics from setting up your kitchen, to what tools you should stock, and how you should maintain and care for your kitchen. There is advice for stocking the pantry and meal planning, as well as a wonderful section on “50 Essential Skills,” such as how to reduce a liquid, separate an egg, blanch vegetables, and safely thaw and store meat.
The recipes offer a wide variety of ideas for simple cooking. Each recipe forms a basis for any level of cook, so newbies can learn and practice new skills, and more experienced cooks can add to their repertoire. These recipes are “road maps” to meal planning for any season and any meal of the day.
The ingredients lists are clear, and the instructions are easy to navigate. Each recipe is introduced with the authors’ commentary, which helps give you an idea of what to expect from the dish (a big help for advance meal planning), such as whether a dish can sit out for awhile or should be served straight from the stove. The authors offer suggestions that make meal prep a pleasure.
The Kitchn Cookbook is a nice gift idea for recent graduates or newlyweds just starting their own kitchens, or for more experienced cooks who love inspiration. It’s as much fun to sit down and read as it is to cook from.
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