What I'm Reading, Mid-June 2025
Preliminary Thoughts On My Coffee Table Tower
*Dinner: 120 Vegan and Vegetarian Recipes for the Most Important Meal of the Day, by Meera Sodha
In Dinner, food writer and columnist for The Guardian Meera Sodha describes how several years ago, she lost her love for food while going through a depression (apparently—she doesn’t label it as such). She found her way back to enjoying food by deciding she would cook for pleasure, not work, and was drawn to dinner prep more than other meals. This book documents the recipes she most enjoyed making during that period.
Sodha organizes chapters by main ingredient (eggplant, broccoli, greens, eggs/cheese, fungi, onions, roots, squash, tomatoes), but includes listings up front of recipes by season and other categories as well, such as curries, rice, and salads.
Recipes have heavy Indian, Chinese, Malaysian, Thai, and Korean influences, and many suggest a simultaneously light and luscious product, such as an eggplant salad with wild rice sparked by a dressing of cilantro, garlic, chilies, sugar, soy, citrus, and basil and mint. They pleasingly layer flavors, as in eggplant baked with chickpeas and spiced with Urfa biber and topped with tahini-spiked yogurt, mint, and pepper. (Chilies of some sort show up consistently.)
I appreciated how even a simple pasta dish still gets in plenty of healthful ingredients; I’ve noticed lately how often the New York Times seems to push main-dish recipes that sound tasty but lack much nutritionally—think with a gochujang or miso sauce, but no vegetables or protein. Sodha’s version of miso pasta purées nearly a pound of kale into the sauce. (Granted, she also includes a vodka gochujang pasta that will be more filling and satisfying than nutrition-packed.) And she puts interesting combinations together—eggy thin pancakes with a filling that combines kimchi and Gruyere might not be obvious to many cooks. Or how about shiitake rice with chipotle chili flakes and pecans, with pickled ginger on the side? Sodha’s recipes are often half a world away from what I usually cook, but just reading them makes my mouth water.
*Family Style: Elegant Everyday Recipes Inspired by Home and Heritage, by Peter Som
Fashion designer and recipe creator Peter Som’s book, celebrating the influences of his mother and grandmother on his cooking, takes traditional recipes from multiple cuisines and tweaks them with some sort of Asian influence: Fish sauce and chile crisp show up in many (maybe the majority) of his recipes.
For example, his deviled eggs start with tea eggs—marinated in a mix of soy sauce, Sichuan peppercorns, star anise, and black tea—that get topped with a crisp herbed panko mixture, nori, bonito flakes, and dill and cilantro. Shakshuka incorporates soy sauce, fish sauce, and rice wine into the tomato base, then replaces the usual unadorned eggs with egg in a hole. Cinnamon toast includes miso and five-spice powder in the cinnamon topping; radishes get dipped in butter flavored with oyster sauce and black sesame seeds. His hummus stretches the concept til the band nearly snaps, blending roasted carrots, gochujang, miso, sesame oil, and five-spice powder with chickpeas and tahini. Likewise his Caesar salad—roasted cabbage with a dressing that includes yogurt, tahini, lemon, Kewpie mayonnaise, hoisin sauce, and anchovy paste, all topped with toasted panko, sesame seeds, lemon zest, dill, and chives.
*Richard Hart Bread: Intuitive Sourdough Baking, by Richard Hart and Laurie Wollever
Acclaimed baker Richard Hart, whose business partner in his Copenhagen bakery is Rene Redzepi of Noma, promises to help readers “see, smell, touch, and taste your way to great bread.” There’s science here, but Hart is less interested in geeking out over it than in trusting his well-trained bread-baking intuition. So while the book will appeal to advanced bakers—such as those used to thinking in baker’s percentages, which Hart lists for each recipe as well as ingredient weights—it won’t discourage ambitious amateurs.
Written explanations are clear and direct, but when that just can’t suffice, Hart includes QR codes for clarifying videos. Watching how he simply folds an upside-down ball of dough in half before putting it into a banneton—no elaborate shaping here—provided a useful technique to use with many loaves.
Recipe complexity runs the gamut, but all tempted me, including rye wrapped in fig leaves, rice bread, polenta bread, rosemary and lemon bread, pita, and focaccia (with the interesting trick of blitzing olive oil and water in a blender to emulsify them, then quickly pouring that over the risen focaccia instead of oil alone before dimpling the dough) as well as brioche, cardamom-scented milk buns, and a fascinating, many-page panettone recipe.
*Symon’s Dinners Cooking Out: 100 Recipes That Redefine Outdoor Cooking, by Michael Symon
Taken on its own (without watching Michael Symon’s Food Network show of the same name), this book would confuse a reader. Why would someone want to use a charcoal fire to cook pasta from start to finish, or a casserole, or cookies, or panna cotta, or to deep-fry clams? And would the recipes in here be all that unusual or interesting cooked indoors?
To the first question, I have no idea; to the second, sadly, not that much. I can come up with good arguments for a lot of grilling—it’s too hot outside to heat up the kitchen, or you’re on an extended car camping trip (these are not recipes for backpackers), or you want a hint of smoke in every course, including dessert. But otherwise, the appeal of cooking, say, spaetzle in boiling water on a grill—especially one lacking the temperature control of gas, which is definitely not given as an option in this book—escapes me. And I doubt my grandmother, were she still alive, would long to return to the days when she had to fry her doughnuts over a wood-fired stove.
So, clearly, I am not the audience for this book. But even setting aside the wish to cook with firmer temperature control, space, and speed indoors, the fact remains that many of these recipes seem fine, but nothing special.
*I haven’t tested any recipes in this book.
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