• DKennedy on August 03, 2025

  This book came on my radar on the heels of Joe retiring from The Washington Post. I originally bought a copy for my daughter's bf (they live across the pond). I bought it as a kind of overview of American cooking for him. Unfortunately, the book arrived after their flight took off so I ended up keeping it for myself. And I am so glad I did. This book is fascinating. I have been introduced to a lot of chefs, restaurants, and dishes that are new to me. I can't believe I didn't know about Joe before this.

Notes about Recipes in this book

• Tomato soup with goat cheese gnudi [Mario Batali]

  • bwhip on December 29, 2020

    Great soup! The tomato soup was lovely, and the goat cheese gnudi were a very nice accompaniment. They didn’t have the usual goat cheese bite, which I was sort of expecting, but still very nice flavor and a delicate texture. We’ll make this again.

• Chicken pot tot hotdish [Molly Yeh]

  • FunkyViriditas on July 08, 2019

    I just used 3 tablespoons of chicken broth instead of the 1 tablespoon of chicken stock. The recipe states to taste the chicken mixture anyway and season to taste, so I added more salt and pepper and it worked perfectly.

• Jollof rice [Tunde Wey]

  • Kduncan on September 28, 2020

    This makes a lot of food. We had leftovers for days. Overall it's a nice vegetarian rice dish. Takes a good while to make, mostly due to prep time.

• Poached chicken with pepper sauce [Tunde Wey]

  • Kduncan on September 28, 2020

    This chicken has a lot of kick to it. The sauce is really good. Takes a real long time to make, definitely not doing this as a weeknight dish again, as you need to make the sauce before cooking the chicken, and somehow I missed an hour of sauce cooking time.

• Cod with roasted asparagus and green onions [Melissa Clark and Dahlia Clark]

  • Kduncan on October 15, 2023

    This is fine, but really needs a side like roasted potatoes

• Chinese stir-fried tomatoes and eggs [Francis Lam]

  • Kduncan on December 28, 2020

    This was fine. Easy recipe with a good amount of flavor. Will easily cook again if I have eggs and tomatoes laying around (which happens a lot every summer).

• Monday night red beans and rice [Pableaux Johnson]

  • crandall57 on May 26, 2026

    I added some barbecue sauce and some soy sauce and took out a lot of the water. They ended up being tasty, but my version was pretty far from the original.

• Simply Recipes

  A great cookbook for a great cause! This collection...brings together favorite recipes from American chefs, bloggers, and leading culinary personalities...

  Full review