Notes about Recipes in this book

• Minted pea and arugula soup

  • Barb_N on April 29, 2018

    This is mildly flavored. I couldn't tell there was arugula, and caught only a hint of mint. Maybe use all arugula and no spinach? Or keep some arugula & mint raw instead of blanching it all? The creme fraiche is a perfect foil to the soup.

• Little gem salad with cheddar vinaigrette and pistachio granola

  • EmilyR on July 08, 2018

    This is the salad of my dreams. So flavorful, beautiful, and filling. The only things I modified was using meyer lemon olive oil, adding the meyer lemon zest, and using labne in place of the sour cream.

  • EmilyR on June 24, 2019

    Still a big fan of this salad. Every time I make it people ask for the recipe. It's a bit different, but truly superb!

  • Devons on January 04, 2021

    Flavorful and delicious. The granola portion of the salad is excellent and great by itself. Does require a bit of time and effort to pull all the components together, but it’s worth it.

• Farmstead mac and cheese

  • southerncooker on April 30, 2018

    We love mac and cheese and have tried many recipes over the years. Our daughter has made up some delicious mac and cheese recipes as well and had one published. This one is excellent. Even picky hubby declared it one of the best mac and cheeses he's ever ate.

  • sosayi on November 27, 2018

    Absolutely delicious macaroni and cheese recipe. I subbed panko for the fresh bread crumbs and had to fudge slightly on the cheese quantities (I was slightly under on brie once I cut the rind off, so I added more cheddar), but otherwise followed exactly. This might even replace our old go-to homemade mac and cheese recipe (from the original Gourmet cookbook), although I think I'd add a bit of mustard and a shake or two of red pepper flakes to the bechamel (like from that recipe).

• Milk-braised chicken legs with spiced rice

  • ksg518 on May 21, 2018

    This is good enough to make again but next time I'll change a few things. The thighs need to be browned in batches (this was my error; I put them too close together for a good sear). I would also remove most of the fat from the pan after browning the chicken; leaving it in made for a too rich sauce with the milk. Otherwise, the chicken was wonderfully tender and I really liked the seasonings (star anise, cinnamon and orange peel). My rice was not done in the time suggested by the recipe but I frequently have issues with brown rice cooking in the time suggested. The rice seasonings were nice but you could easily substitute some other rice recipe you prefer. Update: I was going to have the leftovers for dinner last night but opened the container to find the most unappetizing dish I've seen in a long time. The milk had curdled and nothing I did fixed it. It was edible but barely. I'm not making this again since it isn't worth making if it all has to be eaten at once.

• Grilled corn flatbread with burrata

  • ksg518 on July 17, 2018

    I've wanted to try this since I got this book. However, as I tend to do, I paid no attention to the quantities until I started pulling this together. The book says it will feed 6 as a main course and 12 as a snack. I think that underestimates the quantities. But the recipe does say you can freeze the dough so maybe next time I'll put some aside for use later. The toppings are very good but I would perhaps triple the amounts. The picture in the book shows a lot more corn on the flatbread than you would get if you followed the directions. These grilled up wonderfully but some practice told me that they should be slightly underdone for my taste.

• Coffee ice cream

  • bwhip on August 18, 2019

    Oh wow, mega coffee flavor in this one! Delicious ice cream, we really enjoyed this. Only change I would make next time would be to either grind the coffee a little more coarse, or try to find an even finer sieve to strain the mixture with. I strained it first through a large sieve that's pretty fine, and then a smaller one that's really fine, but it still turned out to have a pretty good bit of coffee grain. But man, the coffee flavor was really excellent.

• Sautéed summer flounder with tomato vierge

  • southerncooker on May 16, 2018

    I had whiting instead of flounder so I used that. Loved the tomato mixture on top. Delicious light supper.

  • mharriman on June 07, 2019

    Husband loved this. I thought my use of Maldon’s salt was heavy handed and would reduce the amount next time. The time to sauté the flounder on each side only took two minutes on my stovetop, so this was a quick, but hands- on, recipe after roasting the cherry tomatoes. The hands on part: watching the fish to make sure it was cooking properly, carefully flipping the fish, adding the butter after two minutes, spooning it on each piece, carefully removing the thin fillets from pan, draining cooked fillets on a towel covered plate before starting the whole operation again with the next fish batch. The operation started feeling A bit like making pancakes... That said, even though this recipe calls for more olive oil, butter, and salt than I normally eat, it was a delicious late Spring fish meal.

  • Kduncan on October 19, 2020

    Trying to finish up the rest of the tomatoes for the season. After having almost too much caprese (because really who can have too much caprese), this seemed similar but with flounder instead of the mozzarella. My biggest problem with this recipe was finding thick enough flounder, I had to redo a bit of the flounder cookery in order to not over cook the fish.

• Classic lobster rolls

  • mharriman on June 08, 2019

    Tasty. I used thawed from frozen lobster meat from a 7 oz. container for two of us - pricey but the convenience was worth the splurge. I used salmon shad roe caviar for the fish eggs but would probably eliminate that next time because they didn’t add that much flavor or texture to the mix and were very expensive. The minced celery added a nice crunch. I used light Hellman’s Mayo to cut down on fat calories. Instead of hot dog or oblong potato rolls, I used Martin’s hoagie rolls and they worked well. Served with steamed corn on the cob and homemade coleslaw. A nice, easy early summer dinner.

• Seafood tourtière

  • Dannausc on July 03, 2018

    My blender broke, and I wasn’t able to make the crust, so I turned it into seafood pasta. It still turned out quite good.

• Lemon beach plum thumbprint cookies

  • bwhip on May 10, 2018

    The flavor on these was really good - however... The recipe calls for you to blend the sugar and lemon zest, and then never actually tells you what to do with it. Presumably it's to be creamed with the butter and brown sugar, which is what I did. They flattened out a fair bit in the oven, so didn't really hold their "thumbprint" shape like others I've made in the past. I pulled them from the oven during baking as the recipe recommended, and just indented them again when using a spoon to drop some jam in the center before putting back in oven. I used a mixed berry jam rather than the plum. Flavor of the cookies was great, nice and lemony, and the texture was nice, but much softer than the usual thumbprint cookies I've made before, which were a little more shortbready.

• Chocolate-sea salt shortbread sandwich cookies

  • bwhip on April 30, 2018

    Crispy! Tasty! Easy! Delicious! We really enjoyed these. I wound up baking them for more than the 10 minutes called for. Starting with pretty cold dough, and not particularly hot oven (325), they hadn't yet gotten brown and crispy. Ours probably took closer to 15 minutes. We'll make these again for sure.

• Chicken liver spiedini with sweet beer mustard

  • mharriman on May 16, 2022

    Served for two as a main entree. The cooking method for the chicken livers intrigued me but in the end I found it cumbersome and not very workable. Chicken livers are slippery,soft,and wobbly, not the best vehicle for skewering and grilling on a skewer. We followed Mr. Jennings five minute grilling time and our livers were mostly under cooked. Trying to turn them to grill on all sides proved a challenge. These were okay in the end but mostly because the accompanying grilled vegetables outshined the chicken livers and made up for them.

• Maple-lime grilled chicken legs with bean salad

  • bwhip on April 26, 2018

    Excellent grilled chicken recipe, with a very unique flavor profile from the marinade with lime juice, hot sauce and maple syrup. The grilling technique, using a hot and cold side of the grill, is spot on and produces great results. Haven’t yet tried the bean salad accompaniment, but the chicken was excellent.

  • puddlemere on March 10, 2019

    Very good (both the chicken and bean salad). Our grill wasn't working very well, so we ended up just roasting the chicken legs in the oven. I really liked the bean salad as well--really nice combination of flavors and textures.

  • mharriman on April 08, 2021

    We loved this recipe, both the chicken and bean salad. As others have noted, the marinade has an unusual but appealing taste with sweet mixed with sour and hot sauce. The salad is a tasty alternative to potato salad for An outdoor grilled chicken meal. I marinated my chicken for six hours and made the bean salad early afternoon to give flavors a chance to meld for a dinner meal. Changes: We’re not big hot spice fans, so only used 1 tablespoon of hot sauce. Pan grilled the chicken on my stove top for 10 minutes before finishing in oven for additional 35. I used 2 percent Fage brand plain yogurt instead of full fat and sprinkled queso fresco on our individual salads before serving. Looking forward to making the chicken on the grill when it gets warmer. I’m sure the chicken will taste even better. This is the healthiest recipe I’ve made from this cookbook which elevates it to repeat in rotation status.

• Orecchiette Bolognese

  • Dannausc on July 03, 2018

    Fine; nothing special

• Beef rib eye with chanterelle mushrooms and beef fat Béarnaise

  • mharriman on March 14, 2021

    For the amount of time, prep, and multiple, some very involved, hands-on cooking steps, I wouldn’t make this again. I specially ordered doenjang so I could follow the marinating directions, and the paste did indeed tenderize my steaks, but I’ve had other ribeye without this step that were just as tender. For me, cooking the beef fat for later use, then preparing two temperatures of butter, then making sure my butter and canola oil were foaming before adding the mushrooms (I used oyster), then monitoring and stirring them, while also concentrating on making a béarnaise sauce (!!), a sauce that needs 100% attention, and then pan cooking the steaks, which needed to be rinsed and patted dry beforehand, was way too many steps and parts, and in the end, one of the more exasperating recipes I’ve ever made. All that said, the steaks were tasty but the béarnaise sauce curdled while sitting at the back of the stove.

• Beef and pork meat loaf with crispy onion rings

  • Nkrieda78 on February 11, 2019

    This recipe’s description has Korean Chile Paste in it but it's not in the ingredients list. Has anyone tracked down the amount of Gochujang that should be added to the recipe??

• Brined pork chops with apples and cipollini onions

  • ksg518 on November 29, 2018

    The brine for these pork chops is wonderful. I also made the apples and onions but it's really a separate dish from the pork chops. The apples and onions recipe is somewhat lacking in instructions; it doesn't mention peeling the onions. But overall a great dish.

• Cranberry-ginger hand pies with cream cheese glaze

  • puddlemere on March 10, 2019

    These came out relatively well, but the crust had a more shortbread-like texture than pie crust, and I think I might prefer more of a pie crust texture. The crust was quite crumbly and kept breaking. I also couldn't find cranberries anywhere, so substituted blueberries and reduced the sugar a bit. I also forgot to make the cream cheese glaze, which probably would have been great but they were also pretty good without.

  • Kduncan on November 30, 2020

    We really enjoyed these. Had lots of fresh cranberries left over from our thanksgiving CSA, so decided to indulge and make these. As someone who doesn't like sugar, in the future I'd add less sugar to the filling but other than that, these were really delicious.

• Butter-roasted chicken with Asian pears and winter greens

  • ksg518 on November 14, 2018

    This was OK. The chicken was actually quite good but I think it's impossible to turn out a bad chicken if you smear an entire stick of butter under the skin. Roasting the chicken over the Asian pears was a nice touch. The greens (we used kale) and Asian pears was just OK; it's not a bad combination but nothing special.

  • Dannausc on April 18, 2021

    I used apples in place of the pears because that’s what I had on hand. It was good but not great.

• Blueberry cobbler bars with grilled lemon curd

  • bwhip on July 30, 2018

    The lemon curd was excellent. Very creamy, very lemony, nice and tangy. The blueberry cobbler bars were less successful. When warm the bars were delicious, especially with the curd, but after cooling they were quite doughy, despite being baked a good 20 minutes longer than called for in the recipe.

• Chocolate beet cake with chocolate-orange glaze

  • EmilyR on March 23, 2019

    This is a phenomenal cake. I reduced the sugar 1/4 c and I would possibly even attempt to reduce it 1/2 c next time. I used dark chocolate as opposed to milk for the "glaze" (it's more like a ganache).The orange zest definitely comes through with a light flavor. Sprinkling with pistachios also worked nicely. Don't forget that Maldon sea salt - it really is a wonderful touch.

• Pan-roasted venison with spiced butternut squash and braised chard

  • mharriman on January 30, 2021

    Flavors in this three piece entree were delicious together; parts of the whole need tweaking, however. I didn’t have Berbere spice blend so I made it from scratch. I ended up using a fraction of what was called for because it’s very hot and spicy, too much heat for my palate. The little I used made for a tasty rub on the squash. Will repeat.The directions for roasting the squash were spot on. The braising paste for the chard was also delightful. Unfortunately, my chard was wilted within two minutes, and ready to serve-not in 15 as recipe states. The photo of the chard (P.303) isn’t of chard ribbons and cannot possibly be for 15 minutes of braising. I would make this again by leaving this part of the entree to the very last two minutes. For the venison, the crushed peppercorns, star anise, juniper berry rub enhanced the meat nicely. I had individual loin steaks, so I modified the directions- pan roasted 6 mins per side. This recipe has many parts & requires planning, lots of time.

  • Dannausc on April 18, 2021

    I used pork loin in place of the venison. Makes 8 hearty meals. Both my wife and I liked it.

• Braised turkey thighs with potato-apple pancakes

  • annmartina on May 05, 2018

    This may be the best turkey I've ever made and the braising sauce makes the easiest most delicious turkey gravy. It may be my go-to recipe going forward rather than roasting a whole turkey.

• Sweet potato gnocchi with aged cheddar and mushrooms

  • Kduncan on November 30, 2020

    Oh my does this make a lot of dough. Ended up freezing some to use later on as I got about 6 servings from 1/3 of the dough. The sauce was really good, I didn't use the sage, as I am not a sage person, but the rest was really yummy with the gnocchi.

• Boston Globe

  A loving exploration of the dishes, landscapes, and ingredients of the region, it is filled with recipes that are personal while pushing the envelope of local cuisine...

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• New England Living

  ...a comprehensive debut cookbook written in an engaging conversational tone. Organized by landscape...more than 100 recipes are perfect for both family dinners and entertaining.

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• Los Angeles Times

  ...a decidedly enjoyable cookbook. The 100-plus recipes include both the traditional (that clam chowder recipe, lobster rolls, brown bread) and the unexpected (maple Peking duck, kimchi salad...

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