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Happy New Year! I hope your holiday season was delightful. I have a few sweet treats from my holidays to share today. For a Christmas dessert, I wanted to make use of my homegrown Meyer lemons but of course couldn’t decide what to make. I mulled it over for days and flipped through several books while considering various cakes, tarts, and frozen desserts. Then, I pulled Baked: New Frontiers in Baking off the shelf, found the little lemon-almond meringue tartlets, and wondered how I’d ever forgotten this recipe from this book. It was just what I wanted to make. They’re cute, individual-sized tartlets with a tangy lemon filling, and the pastry for the tartlet shells was made with an interesting twist. Amaretti cookies were ground and added to the flour in the dough. Amaretto liqueur is also suggested, but I used almond extract instead. Some years are better than others for my lemon trees, but I had plenty of lemons for the curd. I was amazed by the dark yellow color the Meyer lemons gav...

I love all kinds of cookbooks. I love technical ones with very specific ingredient lists and complicated, precise instructions. I also love ones that are straightforward and give you the simplest path to creating dishes. And, lately I’ve found I really love cookbooks that tell you how the author really cooks at home. That glimpse into how cooking decisions are made differently from one day to the next and how recipes get changed depending on the season or what’s in the refrigerator gives you options and ideas for your approach to each dish. The latest from Dorie Greenspan, Everyday Dorie: The Way I Cook , is in this category, and I received a review copy. Throughout the book, the head notes tell you how the recipe idea originated, various versions that she’s made over the years, and ideas for substitutions or tweaks. The chapters cover starters through dessert as well as basics. I got a little distracted in the Soup chapter and wanted to make everything. There’s a Potato Chowder Lots o...

Today is Terra Madre Day . It’s a day for celebrating good, clean, and fair food. This is a Slow Food celebration that focuses on protecting our environment and on the link between food and climate change. It’s a day to cook Food for Change . And, that can be one delicious way to work toward solving climate change. Full disclosure: I volunteer as the president of the Slow Food Austin chapter. Slow Food partnered with Camellia Beans and Meatless Monday to bring attention to vegetarian cooking for this occasion. After bringing home locally-grown cauliflower, onion, leeks, carrots, and thyme, a hearty soup with those ingredients plus lentils sounded perfect for a chilly night. I found this Lentil Soup with Cauliflower and Cheese on the Martha Stewart website. The broiled and browned parmesan on top made it comfort food in a bowl. I hope you’ll consider enjoying some Food for Change and Meatless Mondays or more days!  Here’s a list of some of my other favorite lentil dishes:  Len...

How do you cook when you’re cooking just for yourself? Do you really cook a whole meal from scratch when it’s just for you? I actually do. One of the reasons I like cooking is because I’m picky. For me, getting to cook just what I want, exactly the way I want, is fun. So, I was already completely on board with the premise of Anita Lo’s latest book Solo: A Modern Cookbook for a Party of One of which I received a review copy. This book is devoted to cooking, and cooking really well, for one. It’s about taking care of yourself and making a great meal to enjoy on your own. And, the dishes have signature Anita Lo flavors with lots of Asian and French influences. There’s a nice focus on not wasting any part of the ingredients you use, and none of the dishes take too long to prepare. Of course, they all scale up easily and can be used to cook for more than one. The Shaved Root Vegetable Salad with Smoked Salmon, Capers, and an Egg sounds delicious and would be bright and colorful with a vari...

What does cooking simple mean to you? It might mean something different to me depending on the day. Right now, I’m trying to make my Thanksgiving Day cooking as simple as possible this year, and that means getting as much done in advance as I can. I’m still making everything from scratch and shopping multiple times to make use of as many local ingredients as possible, but my goal is to pull it all together with less effort on the day of the feast. I was delighted to read the introduction in the new book Ottolenghi Simple: A Cookbook , of which I received a review copy, and learn of the intent to cover the bases for several different views of “simple.” The categories include recipes that work well if you’re short on time, if you prefer to use fewer ingredients, if you like to make things ahead, if you’d rather use pantry ingredients than shop, if you enjoy dishes that cook themselves with less hands-on time, and some that surprise with how easy they are to make. There’s even a code syst...

Cooking with lots of different types of seasonal produce is exactly what interests me. So, when a book comes along that’s all about encouraging home cooking with healthful whole foods, there’s a very good chance I’ll like it. The Whole Foods Cookbook: 120 Delicious and Healthy Plant-Centered Recipes , of which I received a review copy, inspires nutritious cooking with unprocessed plant foods. The recipes here are created in collaboration with Chad and Derek Sarno who also wrote The Wicked Healthy Cookbook . There are tips for cooking big batches of beans and grains, suggestions for creating layers of flavor without added oils or too much additional salt, and overviews for steaming, sauteeing without oil, and grilling. The book gives you all the information you need for a fresh approach to cooking and stocking your pantry. For instance, I’m looking forward to trying the risotto. There are two different recipes in the book, one for spring and one with butternut squash for fall and winte...