Ithai Schori

I’m a sucker for hipster cookbooks. Cookbooks with rustic, earthy, and perfectly staged shots of food with names like ‘maple panna cotta with candied almonds and buttered bread crumbs.’ The kind that make me want to turn down the oil lamp in an urban homestead kitchen, throw on some vinyl, and drink cocktails out of a mason jar.

Back in reality, my wife and I work full-time jobs, have two young children, and live central Kentucky. And although Cassie is an excellent cook – and purchases far more practical cookbooks than me – I’m pretty incompetent in the kitchen. Throw more than one pot or concurrent steps and I turn into a gibbering mess. But, in spite of reality, Twenty Dinners by Ithai Schori and Chris Taylor fit my cookbook M.O., so I decided to take a look.

There is something different about this book right from the introductions. It’s not written by chefs for chefs. Ithai Schori is a professional photographer and Chris Taylor is the bassist for the indie band, The Grizzly Bears. Both have a great passion for cooking, but it’s not their profession. This may not seem like a big deal, but I think it sets the tone for the entire book.

Twenty Dinners has the all the hipster aesthetics I love. Tasty, cool sounding dishes and excellent photography. It also has the sensibility and humbleness home chef’s cookbook. It contains twenty different meals, each one including an appetizer, main dish, dessert or salad, and a drink, all grouped by seasons to coincide with the availability of fresh produce.

What I most appreciated about this book was that it uses simple, plain ingredients. With few exceptions, the recipes don’t require exotic spices, rare produce, or weird vegan cheese substitutes. Instead, they focus on combining simple ingredients into something greater than the sum of it’s parts. Every dish in this book can be sourced from the farmer’s market & local butcher or any grocery store.

Tucked between some of the recipes, the authors invited their friends to give short exposes on topics like choosing wine, preparing a home bar, and brewing coffee. Unfortunately these extras dripped with the hipster pretentiousness that the author’s had avoided. After describing a kitchen counter with “random spirits,” the home bar expert remarks, “I do what any good barman does when confronted with this scene: I look in the fridge for beer.” For many of these sidebars, the message is loud and clear: you’re not as cool as the author.

The exception to this was the contribution by Byron Bates called “Mastering wine”. I thought his article was perhaps most innovative and exciting introduction to wine I’ve ever read. He draws correlations between discovering wine and finding new music. Rather than shame readers or laden them with rules he encourages them. “It’s just like when you started exploring bands as a teen — you heard that great single on the radio, listened to it to death, then asked around about what else the group had done or other groups that were similar. Maybe it was the guys at the record store, your older brother, or your friends. You went to someone whose taste you trusted and follow their lead. The same goes for win, except here you’re looking for a good bar, a restaurant whose wine list always delivers, or a wine store whose staff you like.”

The appendix includes sections on techniques, tools, pantry essentials, and shopping tips. It has tips on how to blanch vegetables, different types of kitchen knives, and how make sure your buying quality meat. This might seem silly to experienced chefs, but I’ve often read recipes with certain techniques and tools I’m not familiar with. I think their willingness to explain these thing – no matter how ‘obvious’ – gives readers a sense of comfort and ease.
This book is the perfect blend of hipster aesthetics and home cook sensibility. Not only did it look great, but the recipes we tried turned out awesome. My wife and I even spent a weekend turning fifty pounds of tomatoes into tomato sauce from one recipe. There is something here for everybody from the seasoned professional, to a guy like me who is lacking in kitchen confidence. I definitely look forward to trying more.… (plus d'informations)

Don’t you love the cover? I know I do. That’s what first drew me to the book. Then I read the blurb and was sold!

The contents are… Introduction, Fall, Winter, Spring and Summer. Then there are sections that cover Techniques & Terms & Handy Advice, Tools & Pantry & Shopping For Ingredients, the acknowledgments and the index. The Introduction tells us how the authors started cooking together etc.

Right after the Introduction there is there Chris’s Story, which starts with “I swear, my mom could smell when I was cutting an onion wrong. I first learned about cooking by hanging out in the kitchen with her, an amazing cook who learned from her mom. No matter how high the tree I had climbed at the park or how much I might have wanted to stay out with friends, I always came home in time for dinner. I was always there to help my mom cook- preparing vegetables and meat by her specific requests. When I did it wrong she’d always notice and would patiently ask me to do it again, telling me why were cutting things up a certain way and how different cuts cooked at different rates, which is why you wanted everything to be the same size”.

Ithai’s Story starts with “Oh man, I used to make some of the worst food when I was a kid. My parents would go out for the night and I would try to cook something for my brother and me. An ambitious kid in a kitchen is not a pretty sight, and there were definitely nights when my brother went to sleep hungry. I think he still has nightmares from that time. I tried to make a stir-fry. I thought all there was to it was grabbing everything in the fridge, stirring it together, and throwing some soy sauce on it. I was wrong. Really really wrong. But over time, I got better”.

Some of the recipes were ones I’d never heard of before like Whiskey’d Burrata Toast and Duck Confit & Tagliatelle. I learned a few things from reading this book, one of them was that pasta water is an underrated ingredient. It’s a classic Italian grandmother’s secret to reserve some of the pasta cooking water to give sauce a little more body. And you can also add it to any pasta dish that’s a bit dry. I think I’ll try that next time I cook pasta.

This book was a joy to read. I loved the recipes and the photos were beautiful. There are so many recipes in this book that I want to try, but I decided to start with a simple and quick one, and since I’ve never tried pickling anything I think I’ll start with Sweet And Sour Pickle Brine.

I love this book and would recommend it to anyone who likes Italian food or just loves cookbooks.

I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review… (plus d'informations)

I like the concept of this book and the layout. The photos are well done, not limited strictly to plated meals but artistic landscape shots as well. The meal plans are divided up by the four seasons and cover appetizers, main meal, dessert and a beverage suggestion.

As the title states this book features 20 meals, most of them simplistic enough for the average kitchen cook. There are a few meals with ingredients that are more expensive than I budget for weekly meal plans but nothing so exotic that I need a specialty store. Lots of suggestions on substitutions which is great in case you don’t like a particular ingredients or are out of stock in your pantry or crisper.

In some cases the suggested beverages are a particular red wine but others have recipes for cocktails or non-alcoholic drinks. There are several pages devoted to brewing good coffee, how to stock a home bar and an introduction to different wines. Very comprehensive.

Although a gorgeous book to peruse there won’t be many meal plans I’ll prepare in full. This would be a book I would check out of the library rather than purchasing but that’s my personal preference.… (plus d'informations)