October 2014 Cookbooks

Brown Sugar Kitchen by Tanya Holland

Brown Sugar Kitchen is a collection of recipes from a restaurant of the same name in Oakland, CA. The author and chef owner of the restaurant was inspired by her Southern grandmother's cooking, but also her culinary training in Paris, France. Her food is a reinvention of Southern classic dishes. There were quite a few recipes I'd like to try and I'd love to be able to check out the restaurant one day. I love any cookbook with Southern or Southern inspired dishes and this one fits the bill.

Mastering My Mistakes in the Kitchen by Dana Cowin

I thought this would be a really interesting and helpful cookbook, but I was disappointed. The author works for Food & Wine magazine and was always embarrassed that her home cooking wasn't better since she had such good resources through her job. In the cookbook she works with various chefs to learn how to correct her kitchen mistakes. There were a few good tips (let baking ingredients come to room temp, read a recipe all the way through before you start, etc.), but overall it was disappointing. There weren't any recipes I wanted to try either. Overall, it did have some good tips, but not a great cookbook.

My Prairie Cookbook by Melissa Gilbert

This is part cookbook and part photo book/memoir about Melissa Gilbert's time playing Laura Ingalls on the TV show Little House on the Prairie. Throughout the books are tons of photographs and memories of Gilbert's time on the TV show. Some of the recipes are ones inspired by the show and others are just some of Gilbert's personal favorites. Overall, it was an interesting book particularly if you were a fan of the Little House on the Prairie TV show. There are a few recipes I'd like to try, but nothing ground-breaking or super creative in my opinion - good, but not great.

My Perfect Pantry by Geoffrey Zakarian

I love watching Geoffrey Zakarian as a judge on Chopped and on Iron Chef, so I was excited to check out this cookbook. The basic premise is that by stocking your pantry with good staples it makes cooking good meals regularly easier. Zakarian goes over the pantry staples he would recommend and gives a few recipes for each staple. There are definitely a few recipes I'd like to try from this one. Overall, not a new cookbook premise, but worth checking out.