Staff Pick
It was so hard to choose a recipe from this wonderful cookbook knowing that each one comes from the best of the best. During the summer months, who better to advise on combining fresh veggies from the garden and the best way to cook them than Alice Waters. Her easy and heavenly version of ratatouille combines just the right amount of garlic and basil along with summer's bounty. Recommended By Kim T., Powells.com
Genius Recipes is from the popular food blog Food52. Kristen Miglore heads their column of near-perfect recipes culled from various sources: well-known chefs, bloggers, and cookbook authors. Here are some reasons why you'll want this cookbook:
1. These recipes really are genius. They are tried and true; you can count on them.
2. Miglore does a great job of explaining what is the genius in every recipe, and I love to know details behind how a recipe works.
3. Miglore imbues her book with her personality. I take delight in the Chicken Thighs with Lemon recipe where she suggests: "Eat all the chicken as fast as you can."
Coworker Mark brought in the Use a Spoon Chopped Salad, and now this recipe is another Powell's office favorite. The story behind this recipe: Paul Newman wanted a salad at his restaurant, The Dressing Room, to have a salad so finely chopped it could be eaten with a spoon. His chef built a salad of veggies, apple, vinegar, and goat cheese that conspire together for that umami balance. Recommended By Tracey T., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
An essential collection of more than 100 foolproof recipes from food luminaries such as Julia Child, Alice Waters, and David Chang — curated, introduced, and photographed by the team behind the leading food website Food52.
This debut title from Food52 Works, a new imprint from Ten Speed Press, draws from Food52's James Beard Award-nominated Genius Recipes column, which features inventive recipes that rethink cooking tropes and, simply put, are nothing short of genius. In this inspired book for the modern cook, Food52's executive editor Kristen Miglore combines new genius recipes, greatest hits from the column, and her own kitchen wisdom in a sleek, lushly illustrated package. Whether it's fail-safe Fried Chicken from Michael Ruhlman or the imaginative Black Pepper Tofu from Yotam Ottolenghi, once you try these recipes, you'll never need to go back to other versions. Plus with abundant how-to and finished dish photographs throughout, Genius Recipes is destined to become every home cook's go-to reference for smart, enjoyable cooking.
Synopsis
There are good recipes and there are great ones and then, there are genius recipes.
Genius recipes surprise us and make us rethink the way we cook. They might involve an unexpectedly simple technique, debunk a kitchen myth, or apply a familiar ingredient in a new way. They re handed down by luminaries of the food world and become their legacies. And, once we ve folded them into our repertoires, they make us feel pretty genius too. In this collection are 100 of the smartest and most remarkable ones.
There isn t yet a single cookbook where you can find Marcella Hazan s Tomato Sauce with Onion and Butter, Jim Lahey s No-Knead Bread, and Nigella Lawson s Dense Chocolate Loaf Cake plus dozens more of the most talked about, just-crazy-enough-to-work recipes of our time. Until now.
These are what Food52 Executive Editor Kristen Miglore calls genius recipes. Passed down from the cookbook authors, chefs, and bloggers who made them legendary, these foolproof recipes rethink cooking tropes, solve problems, get us talking, and make cooking more fun. Every week, Kristen features one such recipe and explains just what s so brilliant about it in the James Beard Award-nominated Genius Recipes column on Food52. Here, in this book, she compiles 100 of the most essential ones nearly half of which have never been featured in the column with tips, riffs, mini-recipes, and stunning photographs from James Ransom, to create a cooking canon that will stand the test of time.
Once you try Michael Ruhlman s fried chicken or Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi s hummus, you ll never want to go back to other versions. But there s also a surprising ginger juice you didn t realize you were missing and will want to put on everything and a way to cook white chocolate that (finally) exposes its hidden glory. Some of these recipes you ll follow to a T, but others will be jumping-off points for you to experiment with and make your own. Either way, with Kristen at the helm, revealing and explaining the genius of each recipe, Genius Recipes is destined to become every home cook s go-to resource for smart, memorable cooking because no one cook could have taught us so much."
About the Author
KRISTEN MIGLORE is the Executive Editor at Food52.com. She has a master's degree in Food Studies from New York University and a culinary degree from the Institute of Culinary Education. Her writing has been published in The
Wall Street Journal,
Saveur, and
The Atlantic, and she was nominated for the James Beard Award for Best Food-Focused Column in 2014.
AMANDA HESSER is the co-founder and CEO of Food52.com and has been named one of the fifty most influential women in food by Gourmet. She has written the award-winning books Cooking for Mr. Latte and The Cook and the Gardener. Her book The Essential New York Times Cookbook was a New York Times bestseller and the winner of a James Beard Award.
MERRILL STUBBS is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Food52.com and has worked in the food industry for more than a decade. A graduate of Le Cordon Bleu, she has written for The New York Times, Edible Brooklyn, and Body+Soul.
FOOD52.com, which has more than 25,000 recipes and 3.2 million unique monthly visits, was named Best Food Publication at the 2012 James Beard Awards and Best Culinary Website at the 2013 IACP Awards.