What I'm Reading, May 2025
Preliminary Thoughts On My Coffee Table Tower
Whew…when last I was here, I expected to be back by April with fresh reviews. Instead, I had a file full of half-written reviews that life kept pulling me from. This is why I hadn’t yet started a paid subscription option—for fear I couldn’t keep up with what a paying reader should expect—but that’s on the horizon. For now, subscribe for free, if you haven’t already, and enjoy today’s latest—with more to come, for real!
Pretty Delicious: Simple, Modern Mediterranean Served with Style, by Alia Elkaffas and Radwa Elkaffas
Given that I’m not generally not drawn to social media influencers, I am not the target audience for this book from the Food Dolls, though I was intrigued by a book that pulls heavily from their Egyptian heritage and Minnesota upbringing. And some things in here strike me as silly, like the dessert bar cart that would apparently require dressed-up guests to bend over to floor level to scoop out some trifle. But many recipes seem solid, if not particularly unusual (tomatoes and whipped feta, baked oatmeal, roasted cauliflower or olives)—with more interesting recipes sprinkled throughout, such as falafel based on dried fava beans or quinoa tabbouleh with a lime vinaigrette.
I love the combination of watermelon, feta, and mint (usually with lime juice and a drizzle of olive oil); here, the feta is pureed with sour cream, heavy cream, and sumac. Sumac-dusted salmon cubes served over a tomato-cucumber salad and topped with mashed avocado should make a pretty and easy summer dish. Baked halloumi is described as pan-fried in the headnote, the sort of error that makes me nervous about overall accuracy. We enjoyed the one recipe tested, the upside-down banana bread (with a butter-sugar-walnut topping in the base of a loaf pan); take the note about baking it on a sheet seriously, as the topping does bubble up around the edge.
*Sweet Farm! More Than 100 Cookies, Cakes, Salads (!), and Other Delights from My Kitchen on a Sugar Beet Farm, by Molly Yeh
Given where author Molly Yeh lives, you get what you’d expect here: sweet recipes. Cakes take the spotlight, and if you don’t like American-style powdered-sugar frosting, you’re better off checking this book out of the library than buying it. (I’ve never understood the appeal of it—gritty, too one-dimensional, way too sweet—but I would happily eat my Swiss meringue buttercream by the spatula-ful.) Cookies likewise get sandwiched together with powdered-sugar frosting, or thickly topped with powdered sugar glaze.
Still, Yeh’s exuberance about classic, un-fancy cakes shines through, and even tempts me to make homemade sprinkles for someone I love who loves them. She makes a good argument for combining coconut oil and butter to keep things moist, and she writes reliable recipes that list all ingredients by both weight and cups. The book includes cookies; bars, cakes; some miscellaneous frozen things and drinks; Midwestern sweet salads that include a bit of fruit to qualify as salad but also whipped cream or Cool Whip, candy bars, Jello-O, and pudding; and a few things that she calls pies but mostly are not.
Justine Cooks: Recipes (Mostly Plants) for Finding Your Way in the Kitchen, by Justine Doiron
Let’s hit all the trends! That’s how I felt after paging through this book, which offers them up like a hit parade: Earl Grey granola! Green tea coffeecake! Miso in soup, but also pancakes! Jammy eggs! Preserved lemons! Cashew cream! Dukkah! Kimchi! Turmeric! Harissa! Sumac! Toast! Heirloom tomatoes! Shishito peppers! “Melty” eggplant! ACV Brussels sprouts! (Apple cider vinegar, if you’re not quite fully trending yet.) Salted cookies! More turmeric!
In fairness, the recipes often look tasty. I tested only one, Tiny Salted Tiramisu Cookies, which were neither tiny nor particularly tiramisu-ish, quite flat, and a bit greasy, though flavorful. But the book lacks any real sense of place—a sense that these are grounded in something beyond hitting on the trends. Without much of a unifying theme beyond recipes aimed at vegetarians and pescatarians, it wasn’t one I could imagine pulling off the shelf again.
Fat+ Flour: The Art of a Simple Bake, by Nicole Rucker
From the owner of the Fat + Flour Bakery in Los Angeles, this book at first glance seems not to offer much new. A whole chapter on banana bread? Pudding and cream pies that all start with instant pudding mix? Not very inspiring. But a closer look turns up Nicole Rucker’s vision for her recipes—to cut out anything unnecessary, from recipe ingredients to tools to steps.
She focuses on the reverse-creaming method, which she calls the cold butter method, in which dry ingredients are mixed together first, the butter is cut in, and then remaining add-ins and wet ingredients get briefly incorporated. As she notes, it saves time and helps newbie bakers avoid the question of how much creaming of butter and sugar is needed to get the correct fluffy result. The method comes into play in drop cookies, bars, bundt cakes, and dough for fruit and custard pies. Some of these recipes still sidle up to the trendy line (Earl Grey headlines two recipes, and dried fig leaves go in a shortbread, but miso gets a breather here)— most, though, are renditions of basics bakers love to come back to, and eaters love to get.
I won’t be trying those cream pies, since I don’t love the fake flavor of instant pudding. But that fig leaf-vanilla shortbread? Delicious, with the dried fig leaves offering a hint of coconut and a sparkling green top. I write that, though, with a bit of hesitation, because that’s the only recipe I tried, and it had one outright error. It calls for greasing the pan with oil before lining it with parchment, then sprinkling fig leaf sugar into the “prepared pan, and rotate the pan to coat the greased paper with sugar.” Unless you’re getting the sugar on the underside of the parchment, that’s an impossible trick. Also, it calls for two teaspoons/10 grams of ground, toasted fig leaves. My 2 teaspoons weighed nowhere near 10 grams, so it was unclear which measurement to go with, though the flavor of my 5 grams certainly came through.
*Salty Cheesy Herby Crispy Snackable Bakes: 100 Easy-Peasy Savory Recipes for 24/7 Deliciousness, by Jessie Sheehan
You’ll either find this book adorable or, if you’re allergic to cutesy, nearly unreadable. I’m admittedly in the latter camp (the repetition of “easy-peasy” and the like got grating fast), and too many of the recipes verge on over-the-top richness, but many sound just right for times when you have a craving or want something fun and flippant when friends are over. It opens with savory muffins that seem more heavy than appealing, moving into better-sounding biscuits and scones—think cream biscuits spiked with salt and pepper and sage-heavy scones that I could imagine at brunch with caramelized apples alongside. Other chapters include savory quick breads, yeast breads, cookies (such as gorgonzola thumbprint cookies filled with fig jam to go on a cheese board), crackers, a catch-all listing of snacks, and puff pastry treats such as a puff pastry Danish filled with salt-and-peppered goat cheese topped with sour cherry jam and rosemary. Hand pies, main-course pies, galettes, quiches, and tarts often use her recipe for pie dough made easy with melted butter.
*Kwéyòl / Creole: Recipes, Stories, and Things from a St. Lucian Chef’s Journey, by Nina Compton with Osayi Endolyn
Tracing author Nina Compton’s path from childhood in St. Lucia through cooking in Jamaica, Miami, and New Orleans, this lovely book offers vibrant photos and illustrations to accompany a mix of easy and challenging recipes. A “Top Chef” runner-up and now the owner of Compère Lapin restaurant in New Orleans, Compton writes essays introducing each place-based chapter that bring the food to life.
The book highlights expected ingredients—jerk seasoning, adobo pork, plantains, cornmeal, cassava, ackee—in traditional recipes that often include Compton’s tweaks: soursop mousse, cassava dumplings, breadfruit balls, banana and brown butter tea sandwiches, curried goat served with sweet potato gnocchi, callaloo, corn and pumpkin soup, ham and cheese croquetas, arepas, coconut tres leches cake, guava-glazed ribs, boudin balls, shrimp ragu and creamy grits, fried okra with pickled green bean roulade, and crepes with plantain pureed in the batter. Kwéyòl gives off a rooted, knowledgeable vibe that will make diving into these recipes both calming and exciting.
*I haven’t tested any recipes in this book.