• Eat Your Books

  2009 James Beard Award winner (Cookbook of the Year)

  See Susie's review of this cookbook at The Boston Globe

  See Eat Me Daily's review of this cookbook.

Notes about Recipes in this book

• Butter chicken (Murgh makhani)

  • wester on January 19, 2012

    Very fragrant, very rich. Wonderful.

• Welsh rabbit

  • adrienneyoung on May 22, 2011

    I've only made this once but it was really excellent. Best "rabbit" (rarebit) I've ever done.

• Brown butter ice cream

  • mseers on October 07, 2010

    Along with salted-butter caramel ice cream, this is my favourite ice cream. I made it with 10% cream instead of whipping cream due to the addition of butter.

• Pepper and orange pound cake

  • Silver.bird22 on May 06, 2026

    Must be good because someone cut it out of my used library copy.

• Slow-roasted pork belly with fennel and rosemary

  • Franci on March 15, 2012

    Made twice. Second time I presalted like 24 hours in advance and slow cooked for 6 hours and had much better cracklings. Both ways work great. Good recipe.

  • wester on December 23, 2013

    Very good - meltingly tender meat, crisp cracklings. This was the first time I made pork belly and the first time I used a meat thermometer. The pork belly is going to stay, I'm not sure about the meat thermometer. It reached the given temperature in half an hour or so, so I just turned the oven down to 150 C and cooked for about two hours, then finished under the grill as the recipe says. I salted the skin the evening before, at the same time as adding the herb paste, and I think this works very well. I will use more fennel and less kale next time. The recipe says you need 3 pounds of meat to feed 6 people. I fed 6 people (well, 4 adults and 4 children) on 2 pounds, and we were all so full that nobody wanted dessert.

  • bching on April 27, 2014

    As the previous reviewer noted, the meat thermometer reached the stated temperature within 30 minutes so I will need to reconsider the cooking instructions. And I will make this dish again because we liked it a great deal. Instead of serving the vegetables as a side dish, I pureed them as part of the sauce and skipped the thickener. My family liked this sauce quite a bit.

• Cheong Liew's braised pork belly

  • Franci on March 15, 2012

    This technique is a little different from the usual "red cooked" meat. Most of the time it is made a caramel and then the meat is brown in it withouth scorching. This was very nice, I cooked a little longer.

• Bacon fat spice cookies

  • HarlanH on March 25, 2018

    These are pretty good. Quite tender. The spice mixture is almost the same as Chinese 5-spice, and that might be a good substitute. In my oven, 12 minutes would have been better than the 10 I let them bake. I used turbinado sugar on top, and that was a good choice, as it adds a bit of brunch.

• Duck fat biscuits with cracklings

  • Franci on March 15, 2012

    Used duck crackling from 2 confitted legs and goose fat I had in the freezer and as herb, thyme. I really liked it but after they cool down they loose a lot, like any other biscuits/scones

• Garlic confit

  • rmardel on September 02, 2024

    This is my favorite way to confit garlic. The garlic/thyme duck fat is lovely as well.

• Red cabbage with goose fat

  • Franci on December 26, 2011

    very nice.

• Fat fat-cooked fries

  • Franci on March 15, 2012

    good. Potatoes need babysitting.

• Sautéed foie gras with gingered vanilla quince

  • Franci on March 15, 2012

    Vanilla sauce was very good. If making this again I'd like the quinces to get a little bit caramelized.

• Vegetable cake

  • Franci on March 15, 2012

    Easy and quite tasting.

• Duck fat and grapefruit salad dressing

  • wester on January 19, 2012

    This one blew me away. Green salads don't sound very exciting, but occasionally there is one that is really special, like this one. The poultry fat (I used goose) really works with the grapefruit. You will have to try this out to know how good it is. I did not think segmenting the grapefruit was worth the trouble, as the segments fell apart anyway. Next time I will just squeeze them. And half the amount of grapefruit was plenty.

• Roast potatoes

  • Franci on March 15, 2012

    It has become "my" recipe for roasted potatoes if potatoes are too floury thou they crumble on the outside too much with 8' cooking.

• Braised oxtail

  • Franci on March 15, 2012

    This must have been the most cooked recipe in my house in 2010-11. Resting overnight is key.

• Fuss Free Flavours

  What does spring out is just how traditional many of the recipes are, show how recent the fear of fat is, and how important fat used to be in our diets...

  Full review