Notes about Recipes in this book

• My favorite spaghetti with clams, crème fraîche, and green herbs

  • MissKoo on April 13, 2025

    A stellar main dish at cookbook group gathering. Easy to prepare, a relatively light dish. And very attractive to the eye. Versatile, too. Would work for a family meal or as a main course for company. The person who prepared the dish made 1 1/2 times the recipe to serve 8 women. The servings were more than enough for each of us. Served with Raw Asparagus Salad, Mint, and Parsley Pesto from Renee Erickson's A Boat, A Whale & A Walrus. Very nice combo.

  • pattyatbryce on June 16, 2025

    Fantastic dish. Easy to make and felt "fancy." It didn't even need the chili oil at all, though I had it on the table. I used about half of the herbs called for because I was running out of tarragon in my planters and didn't want it to tilt toward parsley too much. I also used some sour cream for the creme fraiche because the new container purchased was vanilla creme fraiche (who knew that existed).

• Chive-dill green sauce

  • pattyatbryce on June 12, 2025

    What a great sauce! The herbs could brighten any dish. Especially good with the Caviar Dip.

• Caviar dip for a party

  • MissKoo on April 13, 2025

    A definite hit at Cookbook Group gathering. The Dip is served with Chive-Dill Green Sauce (p. 22) and potato chips. Unexpected and delicious. You can't eat just one! Use substantial (thicker) potato chips or plan on having a small spoon to place the dip on thinner potato chips that break easily. Everyone loved it.

  • pattyatbryce on June 09, 2025

    The Caviar Dip for a Party combined the Chive-Dill Green Sauce with a creamy base with added pops of briny salt. When served on the recommended potato chips (Wavy Lays) made for a dip with everything I would ever want. Super delish and I woke up looking forward to it for cocktail hour tonight.

• Warm marinated olives

  • jessncanfield on January 06, 2025

    These are delicious. Everyone loved them. Served with focaccia for dipping in the oil. Would definitely repeat exactly as written.

• Parmigiano-Reggiano broth

  • bernalgirl on June 08, 2025

    I usually make parm broth with aromatics so I was skeptical but this results in a broth with enough body and flavor to be a perfect base for soups and for cooking rice or legumes. I collect parm rinds and this is so easy I’m likely to make it regularly.

• Lemon, anchovy, and caper compound butter

  • bernalgirl on June 17, 2025

    This is an outstanding compound butter, yes I added a good pinch of Aleppo chile but it was wonderfully flavorful without it. We loved it on flank steak although it doesn’t melt as well once the steak rests and is sliced. I would love this on a well-seared ribeye.

• Melted anchovy toast

  • MissKoo on April 13, 2025

    Exactly as described by chef Erickson. All about anchovies. "Salty, garlicky and spicy. It's messy, oily, and addictive." All of those things at our cookbook group gathering, and the smell in the kitchen as one member sautéed all the ingredients was intoxicating. So, so good.

  • rmardel on June 01, 2025

    These are all about the anchovies and they are exactly as described. Messy, garlicky, salty, spicy, comforting crunchy bites that are easy to pull together and oh so satisfying.

• Tomato salad with anchovy, Bayley Hazen blue, and big croutons

  • rmardel on June 03, 2025

    Excellent salad: fruity, sharp, tart, creamy. The creaminess of Bayley Hazen with its blue cheese tang plays very nicely with the tomatoes and anchovies, adding textural contrast, especially with the croutons, as well as flavor complexity. I'm sure it would work with other blue cheeses as well, although some fiddling would be required. I would look for a blue that also had that creamy component, which adds so much to the textural enjoyment of the salad.

• Burrata with black olive tapenade and tomato

  • pattyatbryce on June 12, 2025

    We liked this, but didn't love. My olives were very salty and it took away from the dish. But who doesn't love tomatoes and burrata?

  • bernalgirl on June 16, 2025

    This is a nice combination for summer — it would be even better with peak-season tomatoes. I like tapenade a little chunky and drizzled rather than dolloped so that it’s easy to enjoy every element in one bite.

• Braised Romano beans with anchovy, chile flakes, and fancy olive oil

  • bernalgirl on July 18, 2025

    As written, her recipe is a confit, but I reduced the olive oil by 2/3, increased the water by half, stirred half as often as she directed, and the result was still the most silken, deeply flavored braise, so much more than I could imagine. The anchovy melts in a subtle backnote, the basil adds lovely brightness. If you see Romano beans in your market, make this recipe.

• Mayocoba beans on toast with anchovy, sage, and crème fraîche

  • bernalgirl on June 08, 2025

    The flavor of these beans is outstanding and this is relatively straightforward to prepare once the beans and parm stock are prepared. Mayacobas are one of my favorite beans, I used Rancho Gordo but these are easily found in Latin American markets. My only tip: stir the cheese in slowly so it doesn’t clump up.

• Roast chicken with anchovy, ginger, and crème fraîche

  • anyah_h60oih on April 14, 2026

    This chicken is insanely good

• Sweet corn flan with spinach, Beecher's cheddar, and marjoram

  • pattyatbryce on June 26, 2025

    This was a hot mess of a dish. It tasted fine, but I don't know if I achieved the proper texture. I made a half recipe and tried to estimate bake time, but I'm not sure I got it right. There was a lot of moisture in the pan from the spinach. The recipe doesn't say when to add the chili at all, so I just mixed it in with the egg mixture. Used 1/2 cheddar and 1/2 gruyere per internet suggestion for Beecher's substitute.

• 1970's Mom's mayo-slathered salmon

  • bernalgirl on June 13, 2025

    The salmon comes out beautifully silken in this preparation. I had Atlantic salmon and cooked it two minutes longer. felt it needed more flavor so I dusted the fillets either Aleppo chile, black lime, and cumin — I love cumin with salmon. The lemon-tinged mayonnaise gave me pause but this is an easy and delicious recipe.

• Pan-roasted sockeye salmon with hazelnut and parsley sauce

  • peacheater on December 15, 2025

    Good, even though I couldn’t get my hands on sockeye salmon and had to use farmed (tried my best, Renee!). I will say though that the dish is expensive, between the salmon, hazelnuts and hazelnut oil. Also, I didn’t fully reckon with what that quantity of hazelnuts would mean for the sauce - it’s very nut-forward, so my husband who doesn’t love nuts didn’t love this preparation. But I adored it, all said and done.

• CSA slaw with cabbage, beet, and celery root

  • bernalgirl on June 08, 2025

    I adapted this recipe quite a bit. I used red and green cabbage, carrots, and two heads of fennel, fennel fronds instead of dill, pepitas instead of almonds, and about half the amount of sesame seeds. I loved the zippy dressing, and I concluded that I really don’t like salting slaw and then dressing it, it’s too limp. The dressing is plenty acidic to dress it an hour before serving rather than salting, draining and drying. I’ll make this again using my usual dress-and-let sit approach.

• Mushroom duxelles on olive oil-soaked, garlic-rubbed toast

  • pattyatbryce on June 18, 2025

    Very good flavor. A simple, classic preparation and was a nice addition to a dinner of stuff on toast. Not sure why you would hand chop the shallot and garlic vs. just putting them into the food processor for a few pulses before the mushrooms.

• Almost-burnt cauliflower with yogurt, lime peel, and Urfa biber

  • bernalgirl on June 02, 2025

    We generally like our cauliflower well-charred, and the yogurt and Urfa Biber chile complement the charred vegetable nicely. I added half the chile to the the yogurt, and used roasted pepitas in place of almonds. Rather than adding a hard bite, these add more of a crisp pop of flavor and texture.

• Roasted Castelfranco with soft scrambled eggs, Parmigiano, and balsamic vinegar

  • anyah_h60oih on March 05, 2026

    Balsamic really makes it, excellent with well-buttered sourdough

• Spring onion tart with chèvre, dill, and black pepper

  • alinutzamica on June 12, 2025

    This was delicious! The filling was fluffy and delicious. This was the first time I made a dough for the tart. I felt the instructions could have been clearer regarding the amount of water to add to make the dough. But I would definitely make this again.

  • rmardel on July 05, 2025

    This was truly delicious! Rich and creamy, more so than a standard quiche, not surprisingly given the proportions of egg to cream. The slowly caramelized spring onions and dill were the perfect compliment to the rich custard and the bright tartness of the goat cheese. Not a strongly flavored tart by any means, but richly comforting and satisfying.

• Tribute to Mom's potato salad

  • pattyatbryce on June 15, 2025

    The potato salad was also very good, but may have been overly heavy on the olive oil. I think I'd like a bit more mayo and less oil. It is definitely one that I'd play with to find the right balance and I'd consider it one of the best that I've ever made.

  • bernalgirl on June 17, 2025

    As others have noted, this is a very good potato salad. I made 3 lbs of potatoes and increased everything but the olive oil. I also added 1/3 cup dill pickles cut in tiny dice. A straightforward make-ahead recipe and family asked to take home the leftovers — a win!

• Butternut squash soup with tomato, garam masala, and coconut cream

  • Lsblackburn1 on December 15, 2024

    Very tasty soup. I doubled the recipe and it took forever to cook down, but worked out in the end.

  • peacheater on December 24, 2025

    Delicious, doesn’t suffer from the usual pitfalls of butternut squash soup (not too sweet or too stodgy). I added about double the amount of coconut cream (mostly because I didn’t want an open half carton of coconut cream in the fridge), roasted the squash precut (how I bought it). Added the optional salt and lime at the end and thought it really lifted the soup (I would add the lime a bit at a time - possible to add too much - I used only half a lime). Served with some olive oil drizzled on top.

• Grilled pork ribs with garlic, Aleppo pepper, honey, and rosemary

  • pattyatbryce on June 08, 2025

    These were fine, but we really prefer using sous vide to cook spareribs and then finishing on the grill. The flavors in the olive oil sauce really didn't come through, except for a little of the finishing honey.

  • mirage on January 04, 2026

    Surprisingly more-ish. Pleasantly smoky flavor - we did use a charcoal grill, but the aleppo was fantastic.

• Green chermoula chicken with yogurt and radishes

  • pattyatbryce on June 15, 2025

    The chicken was tasty. We made on the grill and shown before adding chermoula table-side. A couple of comments - not sure if it's worth putting the chermoula on the chicken for grilling because it fell off. This makes a lot of chermoula, so you might want to consider half. Either way, start with less olive oil and add to taste. It seemed excessive to us.

• A couple of offbeat steaks with lemon, anchovy, and caper butter

  • rmardel on August 22, 2025

    The instructions for cooking the steaks are fairly standard and solid. Erickson gives good recommendations for timing and temperature. I felt the compound butter was a tad too delicate for the steak, but perhaps I just prefer stronger flavors.

• Grand aioli with smoked black cod, mussels, and summer vegetables

  • SheilaS on February 28, 2026

    I served this as a composed salad around a small dish of the aioli instead of as a shared platter. Nothing incredible but a nice meal for a hot day

• Big meatball feast

  • pattyatbryce on July 01, 2025

    Decent meatballs. Not sure I like the anchovies in there. I only used 3 vs. 4 called for. Next time, I'd leave out. Make with Marcella Hazan's sauce as recommended.

• Oyster pan roast with yuzu kosho cream, and spicy cornmeal biscuits

  • SheilaS on February 06, 2026

    This looks like a bowl of beige but the combination of yuzu kosho, sake, cream and briny oysters is absolutely delicious! The biscuit recipe calls for a pinch of cayenne. I used 1/4 tsp and found that pleasantly spicy. I made square biscuits instead of cutting out rounds for efficiency and laziness.

• Lemon posset with raspberry compote and thyme

  • MissKoo on April 13, 2025

    This was the finale for our cookbook group meal that was based on recipes from all three of Renee Erickson's cookbooks. It is a wonderful light dessert with the zing of the lemon offset by the sweetness of the raspberry compote. The colors contrast nicely too. Along with the compote we had the Walnut Brutti ma Buoni Cookies (p. 243-244).

  • pattyatbryce on June 22, 2025

    Easy to make and a refreshing end to a meal. The compote was very nice, but like many sub-recipies in the book, the proportion was way off. It felt right to use a tablespoon or two on the posset. The recipe makes 4 possets, so that's about 4-8 tbs necessary. Instead, it is written with 3+ pints of raspberries. We could have easily had enough with 1 pint or maybe two. Now I have a big bowl of compote to figure out to use up. Suggestions welcome.

• Tiramisu in good company

  • meggan on September 08, 2025

    Great for a crowd!