• Eat Your Books

  A James Beard Foundation/Kitchenaid Book Award Nominee.

Notes about Recipes in this book

• Sourdough English muffins

  • anya_sf on November 10, 2024

    A friend with a mature starter uses a nearly identical recipe to this, but with slightly more sugar and salt. I stuck to this one except my starter wasn't vigorous, so I added 1/4 tsp yeast with the starter. My friend also leaves the muffins in the (greased) rings while they rise and cook so they turn out tall and narrow, a neat look. I did the same, but the muffins that were initially thicker (the stated 3/4") rose too high (rings were 1 3/4" tall) and mushroomed. One muffin fell out of the ring onto the griddle and had a more traditional shape. My muffins took much longer to cook (at 300 F to avoid burning) and I ended up baking them for 5-10 min to ensure they were cooked through. I only got 14 muffins. They were delicious, albeit with a more closed texture than "classic" muffins (both shapes were the same inside). Next time I'll roll the dough 1/2" thick, will probably let the muffins rise in the rings, and may or may not cook them in the rings as both looked nice.

• Grilled wild salmon with fresh tarragon butter

  • hillsboroks on August 18, 2022

    The flavors are lovely, the recipe prep is pretty simple and the results were very, very good. It was easy to make the tarragon butter sauce and following her directions for grilling, our salmon was perfect.

  • sdeathe on July 17, 2023

    Absolutely delicious. Nice spark from the lemon, flavour unusual which is nice to come across. Used red onion, which worked fine and was very pretty.

• Spinach salad with honey-sesame seed dressing

  • sdeathe on March 17, 2025

    Delicious, unusual dressing. The flavour of the toasted sesame seeds lovely. I used a mix of spinach and lettuce, forgot the orange and omitted the bacon.

• McCormick's hot seafood salad

  • anya_sf on August 17, 2022

    I basically doubled the recipe to serve 3 as a dinner main with bread. I didn't have scallops, just used bay shrimp, a full pound. The shrimp had been frozen and gave off a lot of liquid in the skillet, which ended up as the salad dressing, although there was too much. I seasoned to taste rather than use the stated amounts of salt and white pepper, which seemed high. Overall this was fine, not as good as I'd hoped, and the bacon overpowered the shrimp. The salad benefitted from a lot of lemon juice. Probably better made in smaller amounts as a lunch dish or starter.