Home Cooked: Essential Recipes for a New Way to Cook by Anya Fernald and Jessica Battilana

  • Sofritto (page 17)

    from Home Cooked: Essential Recipes for a New Way to Cook Home Cooked by Anya Fernald and Jessica Battilana

    • Categories: Cooking ahead; Vegan; Vegetarian
    • Ingredients: olive oil; white onions; carrots; celery
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Notes about this book

  • Tinala523 on December 31, 2019

    The potatoes asado are a huge hit every time I make them. Less of a recipe than a technique but it's a good one! Must use a cast iron pan for the crispiest potatoes. Family fav!

  • DKennedy on May 06, 2017

    Super excited to own this book - I am a fan of Bel Campo's. Got the kindle version (currently on sale). Can't wait to read it cover to cover.

  • prpost on April 25, 2016

    This books exhausts me. This isn’t the type of cookbook that you pick up and make a weeknight dinner out of. It’s not even necessarily the one you grab to make a special dinner for friends on a weekend. Rather, this is one of those books that assumes you want to adopt the author’s complete kitchen and meal planning approach. I’m not so sure these are “essential” recipes for a “new” way to cook. Rather, they are the essential recipes for Anya’s way to cook. Ultimately, this book just isn’t for me and our family. We don’t eat Italian foods often enough to have ice cube trays of soffrito on the ready at all times, and I already have books with delicious recipes for stock, ragu, bolognese, etc. And those recipes don’t ask me to make three sub-recipes.

Notes about Recipes in this book

  • Bird and bunny ragu

    • DKennedy on August 29, 2017

      This sauce is wow-worthy. It is a light sauce and would be excellent served as a small 1st course. The sauce is meat centric with very little tomato coming through. So, excellent for summer. I used twice the amount of soffito called for and omitted the flour. I also used a whole chicken and a cut up rabbit. After browning all the meat, I allowed the chicken to fall off the bone into the sauce, much like one does when making stock. This recipe is a fair amount of work. Shred by hand to get all the tiny bone particles out of the finished sauce. In LA a rabbit costs $27, the chicken $7. Pairing the rabbit with the chicken really allowed the flavor of the rabbit to permeate the sauce at a much lower price point. The recipe made enough sauce for tonight's meal plus 3 containers for the freezer. Served over black ink pasta and topped it with sage and fresh time as suggested in the headnote.

    • DKennedy on September 04, 2017

      I am making a second batch of the tomato sauce part of this recipe. Because I have 3 batches in the meat sauce in the freezer, I am concerned that when I defrost them, there won't be enough liquid. I will use this as needed to supplement and report back.

  • Romano bean salad

    • nlehrer on July 15, 2025

      Used dill and garlic instead of parsley

  • Blistered green beans

    • sosayi on February 14, 2019

      Less of a recipe than a suggestion on how to cook green beans on high heat in the oven. I did enjoy the lemon juice on the beans, though, as it brightened the dish up in a really easy way.

  • Wine-braised brisket

    • julesamomof2 on March 23, 2020

      Very tender and moist brisket. I braised the meat, chilled it overnight, then crisped it in the oven the following day. Also chilled the juice overnight, then defatted and reduced the next day. We eat very little red meat these days, so this was a special treat, yet didn't seem particularly fatty to me with this method.

  • Almond torta

    • Siegal on December 25, 2021

      I substituted orange rind for lemon and it came out really amazing

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Reviews about this book

  • Food52

    Anya Fernald...takes unassuming ingredients (like chicken hearts, but also chicken braised in vinegar and aromatics) and turns them into staple dishes to make into nourishing weeknight meals.

    Full review
  • ISBN 10 1607748401
  • ISBN 13 9781607748403
  • Linked ISBNs
  • Published Apr 05 2016
  • Format Hardcover
  • Page Count 304
  • Language English
  • Countries United States
  • Publisher Ten Speed Press

Publishers Text

A recipe collection and how-to guide for preparing base ingredients that can be used to make simple, weeknight meals, while also teaching skills like building and cooking over a fire, and preserving meat and produce, written by a sustainable food expert and founder of Belcampo Meat Co.

Anya Fernald’s approach to cooking is anything but timid; rich sauces, meaty ragus, perfectly charred vegetables. And her execution is unfussy, with the singular goal of making delicious, exuberantly flavored, unpretentious food with the best ingredients. Inspired by the humble traditions of cucina povera, the frugal cooking of Italian peasants, Anya brings a forgotten pragmatism to home cooking; making use of seasonal bounty by canning and preserving fruits and vegetables, salt curing fish, simmering flavorful broths with leftover bones, and transforming tough cuts of meat into supple stews and sauces with long cooking. These building blocks become the basis for a kitchen repertoire that is inspired, thrifty, environmentally sound, and most importantly, bursting with flavor. Recipes like Red Pepper and Walnut Crema, Green Tomato and Caper Salad, Chickpea Torte, Cracked Crab with Lemon-Chile Vinaigrette, Veal Meatballs, Anise-Seed Breakfast Cookies, and Ligurian Sangria will add dimension and excitement to both weeknight meals and parties. 

We all want to be better, more intuitive, more relaxed cooks—not just for the occasional dinner party, but every day. Punctuated by essays on the author’s approach to entertaining, cooking with cast-iron, and a primer on buying and cooking steak, Home Cooked is an antidote to the chef and restaurant books that leave you no roadmap for tonight’s dinner. With Home Cooked, Anya gives you the confidence, and the recipes, to love cooking again.

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