T. Susan Chang

Reviews by T. Susan Chang

• Keys to the Kitchen: The Essential Reference for Becoming a More Accomplished, Adventurous Cook by Aida Mollenkamp

  In the end, “Keys to the Kitchen” may not be an essential addition to shelves already overstocked with cookbooks. But it’s a very good place to start.

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  • Gingered parsnips with toasted almonds

    Best of all are parsnips with toasted almonds, roasted with a maple glaze, buttered and gingered and strewn with nuts. They’re the kind of side dish that ends up stealing the supper table show.

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• Burma: Rivers of Flavor by Naomi Duguid

  ...Duguid’s thoughtful efforts to capture the taste of the country more than satisfy homebound, curious palates.

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  • Shrimp salad

    Cool, crisp, and a flash to put together. The shrimp slices have plenty of exposed surface area to pick up flavors, and I never tire of the endless spectrum of ways fish sauce and lime...go together.

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• Asian Tofu: Discover the Best, Make Your Own, and Cook It at Home by Andrea Nguyen

  ...welcome to the world of bean curd, ever so much more savory and varied than you thought.

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  • Panfried tofu with mushroom and spicy sesame sauce (Dubu jeon)

    I don’t know how it is that those predictable ingredients – soy, sesame, garlic, scallions – can constantly offer flavorful surprises. Yet they do.

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• The Fresh Egg Cookbook: From Chicken to Kitchen, Recipes for Using Eggs from Farmers' Markets, Local Farms, and Your Own Backyard by Jennifer Trainer Thompson

  I call them "chicken romances." Part memoirs, part cookbooks, they're the stories of backyard chickens raised by amateurs like you and me. This year's is an easy one to love...

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  • Scrambled eggs, Indian-style

    It’s full of interesting, complementary flavors that keep bouncing off each other from the first bite to the last. In fact, the whole experience is over all too soon.

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• Comfort & Spice: Recipes for Modern Living by Niamh Shields

  • Crispy pomegranate molasses chicken wings

    Do not Skip the Dip. When the crisp, sweet, spiced wing meets the cool, tart, creamy dip, sparks fly.

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• Sweet Cream and Sugar Cones: 90 Recipes for Making Your Own Ice Cream and Frozen Treats from Bi-Rite Creamery by Kris Hoogerhyde and Anne Walker and Dabney Gough

  There is no bacon ice cream here, no beer or vodka ice cream, no celery sorbet. So thrill-seekers, seek elsewhere. Everybody else, jump right in.

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  • Buttermilk ice cream

    This is ultra-premium, private-jet-class velvet–caused by the protein-disassembling acids of buttermilk...It lingers in a soft cool mass on your tongue for a moment, and then it’s gone.

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• The Fresh & Green Table: Delicious Ideas for Bringing Vegetables into Every Meal by Susie Middleton

  ...the point is that these recipes work beautifully as written. That they can tolerate a bit of variation and common sense is a feature rather than a fault.

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  • Crispy red potato patties with warm Asian slaw and limey sauce

    The slaw is great, and it makes you feel good about yourself. But it was the crispy little bits of potato, perfect for dipping in limey sauce, that we were all fighting over in the end.

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• Cindy's Supper Club: Meals from Around the World to Share with Family and Friends by Cindy Pawlcyn

  A few of the dishes introduced me to new geographies of taste, allowing me to share in Pawlcyn’s enthusiastic open-mindedness about the world’s many flavors. Isn’t that worth a little extra chopping?

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  • Classic Georgian "pressed" chicken with walnut and beet sauces

    ...it was the sauces that really lit my chandelier. I kept going back and forth between the two, trying one, and then the other, and then both, in a glorious state of indecision.

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• Wild About Greens: 125 Delectable Vegan Recipes for Kale, Collards, Arugula, Bok Choy, and Other Leafy Veggies Everyone Loves by Nava Atlas

  I was persuaded that there really is something new to be said about greens. Atlas’s bold, liberal way with vegan ingredients ensures that even the most jaded palate can find something to like.

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  • Asian-flavored kale and napa cabbage slaw

    ...one of those salads that pretty much goes with anything, and it’s super-fast to make. The carrots and the sprouts and the seeds keep it crunchy and textural, and there’s none of the bitter taste..

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• Susan Feniger's Street Food: Irresistibly Crispy, Creamy, Crunchy, Spicy, Sticky, Sweet Recipes by Susan Feniger and Kajsa Alger and Liz Lachman

  • Matzo candy with caramel, chocolate, and halva

    It’s just about the easiest dessert I know how to make, too, a making-the-best-of-what-you-have-on-hand kind of dessert – which seems somehow to true to matzo’s Exodus roots.

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• Grain Mains: 101 Surprising and Satisfying Whole Grain Recipes for Every Meal of the Day by Bruce Weinstein and Mark Scarbrough

  ...may not...be the whole-grains cookbook that will change your life, assure your longevity, and hand you the keys to the heaven of righteous eaters. But at the moment, I can’t think of a better one.

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  • Roasted corn and shrimp "ceviche"

    ...totally unprepared for the blast of flavor the shrimp picked up from what are...some pretty predictable ingredients: lime, red onion, cilantro. The radish & jalapeño contributed a lively bite...

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• The Sprouted Kitchen: A Tastier Take on Whole Foods by Sara Forte

  For the Fortes... eating naturally has a style and a gentle hedonism unanticipated by the oat-eaters of 50 years ago. You could almost forget that it’s good for you.

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  • Brussel leaf and baby spinach sauté

    ...the leaves are both tender and substantial enough to hold their shape a bit, a counterpoint to the wilty spinach. And best of all, there are Marcona almonds.

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• Make Your Own Soda: 75 Recipes for Fresh, All-Natural Pop, Floats, Cocktails, and More by Anton Nocito and Lynn Marie Hulsman

  ...an elegant little production with great interior design, a surfeit of interesting soda facts, and pictures so evocative you can almost hear the ice clinking on the rim of the glass.

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• Cookies & Cream by Tessa Arias

  Tessa Arias’ charming little book is a psychedelic tour both of ice cream...and of cookies... Arias’ suggested combinations...are pretty hard to refuse. But it’s easy enough to mix and match.

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• Bakeless Sweets: Pudding, Panna Cotta, Fluff, Icebox Cake, and More No-bake Desserts by Faith Durand

  ...a curiously comprehensive look at the custardy, the creamy, the gelled and the chilled. ...its fresh-faced design makes for good hammock reading too.

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• Vinaigrettes & Other Dressings: 60 Sensational Recipes to Liven Up Greens, Grains, Slaws, and Every Kind of Salad by Michele Anna Jordan

  The world seems to have a permanent shortage of salad dressing books, which is part of what makes this minuscule gem from veteran cookbook author Michele Anna Jordan so welcome.

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• The Animal Farm Buttermilk Cookbook: Recipes and Reflections from a Small Vermont Dairy by Diane St Clair

  ...a comprehensive tour of the buttermilk landscape and its many culinary delights... their backstories are often fascinating (and photographable) and their love for what they make is palpable.

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• The Four Season Farm Gardener's Cookbook by Barbara Damrosch and Eliot Coleman

  Despite the name, you need be neither a farmer nor a four-season gardener to profit from this book, whose principal attraction is its bone-deep appreciation of how our food is grown...

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• The Adobo Road Cookbook: A Filipino Food Journey by Marvin Gapultos

  ...a comprehensive, visual ingredient glossary, equipment index, personal and cultural notes, and dozens of drool-worthy iterations of pork, lemongrass, papaya, mango, adobo flavors, crab and so on.

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• Smoke & Pickles: Recipes and Stories from a New Southern Kitchen by Edward Lee

  His food is tirelessly inventive and refreshingly free of attitude and each recipe comes with practical, non-judgmental cooking tips. Even better are Lee’s own stories of living and learning food...

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• Wicked Good Burgers: Fearless Recipes and Uncompromising Techniques for the Ultimate Patty by Andy Husbands and Chris Hart and Andrea Pyenson

  We have here not only the beef burger, but the bison, the pork, the salmon, the turkey, even the oyster burger – not to mention the beefy portobello. There’s even a “$100 burger”...

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• The New Persian Kitchen by Louisa Shafia

  Overall, The New Persian Kitchen‘s is a stunner: a bridge between old and new, fresh and dried, cool and hot, and I can’t get enough of its juxtapositions.

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• Every Grain of Rice: Simple Chinese Home Cooking by Fuchsia Dunlop

  ...a workhorse of a book for everyday Chinese cooking...And with a few exceptions (dan dan noodles, for example)...there’s very little overlap with her previous publications.

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• Kitchen & Co: Colourful Home Cooking Through The Seasons by Rosie French and Ellie Grace

  Most of the recipes are not-quite-finished sketches of some very good ideas, which is fine if you’re the kind of cook who reads a recipe and then shuts the book and takes off running.

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• How to Boil an Egg: Poach One, Scramble One, Fry One, Bake One, Steam One by Rose Carrarini

  Like many Phaidon titles, this is an arty, stylish sort of book that you might consider giving as a gift as the spring egg season comes along. Just make sure you don’t give it to your rookie friends.

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• Making Artisan Chocolates: Flavor-Infused Chocolates, Truffles, and Confections by Andrew Garrison Shotts

  ...we think of chocolate craftsmen as painstaking lab technicians...Despite this intimidating aura, Shotts's book...emboldened me to make the attempt in the distinctly unscientific setting of my home.

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• Nigellissima: Instant Italian Inspiration by Nigella Lawson

  Photos are gorgeous, evoking the unhurried enjoyment of food that has always been part of Lawson’s message. But the recipes themselves could benefit from more of that slow care.

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• The Little Paris Kitchen: Classic French Recipes with a Fresh and Simple Approach by Rachel Khoo

  There may not be much that’s new in this book, when you come right down to it, but it does have nicely curated and fairly reliable recipes, winsome photographs, a charming voice, whimsical endpapers..

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• The Food52 Cookbook, Volume 2: Seasonal Recipes from Our Kitchens to Yours by Amanda Hesser and Merrill Stubbs

  ... It’s the kind that food lovers will alternately treasure and argue over. Like life, this book is sometimes inspired, sometimes messy, a bit imperfect, but full of heart.

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• The Science of Good Cooking: Master 50 Simple Concepts to Enjoy a Lifetime of Success in the Kitchen by Editors of Cook's Illustrated Magazine

  ...you could hardly do better if you’re looking for consistent results and abundant flavor in recipes you may already know. And answers to that eternal culinary question: why?

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• Mastering the Art of Southern Cooking by Nathalie Dupree and Cynthia Stevens Graubart

  For what it lacks in focus, “Mastering the Art of Southern Cooking” makes up for in passion, talent, and versatility.

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• Barefoot Contessa Back to Basics: Fabulous Flavor from Simple Ingredients by Ina Garten

  I like this book. New cooks will learn helpful techniques...while seasoned cooks might glean inspiration from the more unusual entries.

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• Jerusalem by Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi

  I learned something almost every day, whether it was a new technique or a new combination of ingredients or flavors... And in this case, almost every lesson was a winner.

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• Baked Elements: The Importance of Being Baked in 10 Favorite Ingredients by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito

  A few of the flavors - lemon, chocolate, cinnamon, caramel - are as essential to the baker as flour and butter. Others such as cheese and peanut butter are a little more offbeat.

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• Modern Sauces: More Than 150 Recipes for Every Cook, Every Day by Martha Holmberg

  ...the sauces often outshine the proteins and carbs that deliver them. But using surefire flavor combinations and optimal tweaks, Holmberg makes sure each sauce is delicious and worth your while.

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• Roots: The Definitive Compendium with More Than 225 Recipes by Diane Morgan

  Root vegetables don’t call out to everyone’s soul in the way that bacon, say, or chocolate does...But given the book’s generous trove of information...it’s an awfully good value.

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• The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook: Recipes and Wisdom from an Obsessive Home Cook by Deb Perelman

  ...Perelman describes her approach: “A lot of comfort foods stepped up a bit.” These reinventions may not be the last word in novelty..but a way of embracing interesting shortcuts and substitutions.

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• 660 Curries: Plus Biryanis, Breads, Pilafs, Raitas, and More by Raghavan Iyer

  In 10 Best Cookbooks of 2008: I never open this book without being struck by the diversity, comprehensiveness and sheer size, which led me to call it "the best 3-pound paperback of the year"...

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• The New Middle Eastern Vegetarian: Modern Recipes from Veggiestan by Sally Butcher

  ...translating these delicacies into your own kitchen may take a little patience, a little imagination, and perhaps a sense of adventure as strong as Butcher’s own.

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• The Vegan Cook's Bible by Pat Crocker

  ...after working so hard and soiling so many pots, I want to be a little delighted. The book won’t convert you, but if you’re already vegan, there’s plenty here you’ll like.

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• A Girl and Her Pig: Recipes and Stories by April Bloomfield

  "A Girl and Her Pig" is simple food, prepared with a high degree of attention and artfulness. Or you could say it’s comfort food, for those who find swooning comfortable.

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• The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Food from My Frontier by Ree Drummond

  The first thing you should know about this book is that there’s nothing "frontier" about it. The second thing is that there’s not much that is new...many of the recipes can be found on the blog.

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• Pasta Italiana: 100 Recipes From Fettuccine to Conchiglie by Gino D'Acampo

  With its bold colors and process photos, Pasta Italiana is a joy to look at and use, and it's full of accessible recipes that are nevertheless not overly familiar.

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• Humphry Slocombe Ice Cream Book by Jake Godby and Sean Vahey and Paolo Lucchesi

  ... billing itself as "the ice cream counterculture revolution" - is for the jaded palate in search of fresh adventure...

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• United States of Pie: Regional Favorites from East to West and North to South by Adrienne Kane

  ...understated, practical charm that will make it easy to figure out what to do with summer's bounty...You could eat a pie every day this summer - not that you should - and still not finish this book.

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• Herbivoracious: A Flavor Revolution with 150 Vibrant and Original Vegetarian Recipes by Michael Natkin

  ...if you embrace a certain globe-trotting ethos of meatlessness this is an easy choice...photographs are colorful, the headnotes informative, and the attitude more flavor-forward than right-minded.

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• Ripe: A Fresh, Colorful Approach to Fruits and Vegetables by Cheryl Sternman Rule

  The recipes are well-chosen representatives that make the most of their featured ingredient, and most...deliver high flavor with an absolute minimum of stress.

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• Ripe: A Cook in the Orchard by Nigel Slater

  Not every fruit can be easily found on these shores - white currants, gooseberries, damsons and sloes among them. But Slater is so vivid and surefooted in his manner...you can almost taste them anyway

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• The Sunset Edible Garden Cookbook: Fresh, Healthy Flavor from Garden to Table by Sunset Magazine

  What this book offers is an abundance of crop-specific recipes that will help you make the most of what's in season. It's less anecdotal than many recent eat-local cookbooks and more informational...

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• Modern Spice: Inspired Indian Flavors for the Contemporary Kitchen by Monica Bhide

  I think of Indian cooking as summer food, when there’s time to track down curry leaves and chickpea flour...But with dishes like these, my Indian summer may just have to last all year.

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• The Gastrokid Cookbook: Feeding a Foodie Family in a Fast-Food World by Hugh Garvey and Matthew Yeomans

  ...these are not pretentious, not condescending, simple recipes for weeknights that look very much like my regular rotation of dinner standbys...Just plain food, and pretty good food at that.

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• The Asian Grandmothers Cookbook: Home Cooking from Asian American Kitchens by Patricia Tanumihardja

  If you missed out sitting by your grandmother’s stove, or your family ethnicity doesn’t happen to match the food you know you were born to eat, this book goes a long way toward addressing that need.

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• Golden Door Cooks at Home: Favorite Recipes from the Celebrated Spa by Marah Stets and Dean Rucker

  ... portion sizes are close to normal, requiring a little upward adjustment to feed a ravenous family...Practically speaking, though, the recipes offer what can only be described as mixed results.

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• The Brazilian Kitchen: 100 Classic and Contemporary Recipes for the Home Cook by Leticia Moreinos Schwartz

  Even though most Brazilians would probably say their food is too diverse to pigeonhole, "The Brazilian Kitchen" is a solid first step toward codifying the national cuisine.

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• The Commonsense Kitchen: 500 Recipes Plus Lessons for a Hand-Crafted Life by Tom Hudgens

  ...common-sense way of coaxing flavor into and from ingredients, which gives his book something of an edge over many similar basic cookbooks...I found myself warming to his slightly offbeat techniques

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• In the Kitchen with a Good Appetite: 150 Recipes and Stories about the Food You Love by Melissa Clark

  ...whatever your tastes, you can be certain that every recipe in this book works as it was meant to. And because of that, someone is bound to love each one.

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• Chicken and Egg: A Memoir of Suburban Homesteading with 125 Recipes by Janice Cole

  ..after eating from this book for a week and never once having to hunt down a difficult ingredient, I found it reassuring that raising chickens is also, and probably always will be, strictly optional.

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• At Elizabeth David's Table: Classic Recipes and Timeless Kitchen Wisdom by Elizabeth David

  Reissuing recipes that are decades old and making no apology for it is a risky move...As it is, this curious, elegant hybrid of old-school and new-school recipes would be a shame to overlook.

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• Fresh & Fast Vegetarian: Recipes That Make a Meal by Marie Simmons

  ...then there are books like "Fresh & Fast Vegetarian", practical, un-showy volumes with a lot of good recipes. Guess which ones actually make it into the kitchen?

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• The Kitchen Garden Cookbook: More Than 200 Recipes, Picking and Cooking Tips, Preserving Ideas by DK Publishing

  I have nothing against the team approach to cookbook publishing. It means that you can have info-packed design, terrific visuals,...a few should have been spared for recipe-testing.

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• The Food of Spain by Claudia Roden

  There are not many cookbook writers who can pull off a book as ambitious, thoughtful, and deeply nourishing as "The Food of Spain".

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• For Cod and Country: Simple, Delicious, Sustainable Cooking by Barton Seaver

  ...has a little of that translated-from-restaurantese quality that one often sees in chefs’ first books. Recipes evince a bias toward plating/presentation, a certain disregard for the number of pots..

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• Ching's Everyday Easy Chinese: More Than 100 Quick & Healthy Chinese Recipes by Ching-He Huang

  ...a title like Ching’s Everyday Easy Chinese makes you wonder what you can learn if you know how to stir-fry, have a great Hunan cookbook, and go out for dim sum. The answer is: more than you think.

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• The Food of Morocco by Paula Wolfert

  I don’t advise you to turn to it for a quick weeknight supper...Yet every layer of complication corresponded to greater depth of flavor, and I finished testing a slightly better and more patient cook.

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• The Lee Bros. Simple Fresh Southern: Knockout Dishes with Down-Home Flavor by Matt Lee and Ted Lee

  Susie finds the Lee Brothers new book "picks up the pieces (okra, collards, shrimp, bourbon) and puts them back together in astutely reimagined ways."

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• Jamie at Home: Cook Your Way to the Good Life by Jamie Oliver

  "Oliver's pace may be dizzying, but his joie de vivre is contagious. So it's hard to hold it against him when, as is bound to happen, his boisterous recipes show signs of some overly speedy testing. "

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• Bean by Bean: A Cookbook: More Than 200 Recipes for Fresh Beans, Dried Beans, Cool Beans, Hot Beans, Savory Beans...Even Sweet Beans! by Crescent Dragonwagon

  ...in my experience a diet of beans is more likely to pall within two days. I viewed the delay in uprisings as a genuine endorsement of this food.

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• Notes From A Kitchen: A Journey Inside Culinary Obsession (Signed Special Edition) by Jeff Scott and Blake Beshore

  ...billed as "the re-envisioning of the modern American cookbook." Yet the one thing this book is not is a cookbook. It’s a portrait, a travelogue, a gallery, and an immersive analog experience.

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• The French Slow Cooker by Michele Scicolone

  There are a few reasons to turn to Scicolone’s book rather than to the many other slow-cooker technique books on the market. It’s well-designed, accessible, and the recipes work.

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• All About Roasting: A New Approach to a Classic Art by Molly Stevens

  Stevens’s book clearly shows that with just a little ingenuity and a handful of ingredients, you can end up with vegetables that are even better, dishes that routinely steal the show.

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• Ruhlman's Twenty: 20 Techniques, 100 Recipes, A Cook's Manifesto: The Ideas and Techniques That Will Make You a Better Cook by Michael Ruhlman

  No one could accuse Ruhlman of being an ascetic. Neither is he an innovator...But that’s exactly its charm. If "Ratio’" appealed to the food geek, "Twenty’" appeals to the perfectionist.

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• Cook This Now: 120 Easy and Delectable Dishes You Can't Wait to Make by Melissa Clark

  The book’s subtitle is "120 Easy and Delectable Dishes You Can’t Wait to Make". But it could just as well be "Now Why Didn’t I Think of That?"...the highest praise anyone who cooks can give another.

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• The Flexitarian Table: Inspired, Flexible Meals for Vegetarians, Meat Lovers, and Everyone in Between by Peter Berley

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• A Southerly Course: Recipes and Stories from Close to Home by Martha Hall Foose

  Foose writes storybooks. In a typical cookbook, headnotes on recipes offer vital information...Foose’s headnotes and subtitles are so wildly creative they are practically a genre of their own.

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• Planet Barbecue!: 309 Recipes, 60 Countries by Steven Raichlen

  Susie's review is in her round-up of the best summer 2010 cookbooks.

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• Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking by Michael Ruhlman

  Susie included this book in her round-up of the best 2009 cookbooks.

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