This is a book for grown-ups: It doesn’t shout at you, doesn’t get cutesy, has gorgeous but not precious photos, and tells you what you need to know without babbling on for pages. Most of the chapters, including cakes, pastry, meringues, custards, mousses, puddings, and petits fours, open with a “secrets of success” page that explains, succinctly, the basic rules that make baking fun.

Clark also avoids the temptation to lecture about proper ingredients; she does point out in the easily overlooked introduction that because baking focuses on a few core ingredients, bakers should use the best. But that’s it. No tiresome fawning over organic/free-range/free-trade/pesticide-free eggs/chocolate/coffee. Just use the best you can; don’t worry if your results don’t perfectly match the photos; enjoy yourself; and indulge.

The one obstacle of the book for beginner bakers, or those who view this as a sometime hobby, is its listing of ingredients by metric and Imperial measures but not cups. If you don’t own a scale, you’re out of luck. But measuring by weight is part of what makes Clark’s quiet assurance possible in these recipes, because it guarantees consistency; an inexpensive scale will quickly prove its worth.

Although many of the recipes here are standards (éclairs, pavlova, panna cotta, tarte tatin, crème brulée, French macaroons), experienced bakers will still want to give Clark’s clear instructions for them a try, before moving on to popcorn sherbet, hibiscus jellies, green tea and jasmine delice, or a spongecake version of lemon meringue pie.

Now-trendy macaroons, for example, spur many writers to give great detail about how to get them just right. Clark simply provides a straightforward explanation of each step, with just enough tips and details to inspire confidence (leave the oven door very slightly open to let steam escape; run a little cold water between the parchment and the tray after baking to make them easier to remove). Notes at the end of most recipes offer alternatives to experiment with and further tips for success. Many of Clark’s simple recipes still offer professional tips for finishing touches, such as blowtorching the top of lemon posset to create a perfectly smooth surface, or using a tea strainer to dust shortbread with sugar for an even finish.

Lemon posset, a three-ingredient recipe, should be the first one here that any baker, but especially an inexperienced one, turns to. Its silky richness implies much more effort than this fast, easy pudding requires. (One quibble: the headnote mentions nothing about using the posset in other recipes, and the index also fails to point readers to the lemon trifle that calls for it.)

One of the simplest recipes in the book, Clark’s shortbread, doesn’t fiddle around with cornstarch, rice flour, or other ingredients intended to adjust the texture. Flour, caster sugar (superfine sugar, which can be hard to find but reasonably replicated by whizzing granulated sugar in a food processor), butter, and a vanilla bean will do it. This is one case where using the best butter you can afford will make a difference, but the cookies are worth making even with a supermarket version.

Chocolate Red Wine Cake, while delicious, doesn’t quite live up to its name. Bakers tempted to skip the garnish of tempered chocolate discs will want to serve the cake with a chocolate sauce instead; with just 1 teaspoon cocoa powder and 2 ¼ ounces dark chocolate, the cake tastes almost solely of wine and its finishing glaze of redcurrant jelly. A headnote suggestion to make the cake as individual servings with raspberry sorbet and hot chocolate sauce would balance the cake well.

Throughout the book, the photos will tempt bakers to replicate the results, and only rarely does a photo not precisely match the instructions (a recipe for cheesecake, for example, offers no instructions for making the chocolate garnish pictured). The meringue heart is one such recipe; meringue bases filled with cream and berries are common, but the beauty of the swirled heart makes this one—like so many in this book—stand out.

This review first appeared online at the New York Journal of Books.

Those readers need to pay extra attention, though, to the subtitle of this book, noting the “and other treats” part. Kids’ Cakes (from Clarkson Potter, released June 1, 2010) offers ideas for eight themed parties, including an “enchanted tea party,” a sleepover, and a circus party. Thus there are just 13 finished cakes, including a cheesecake. The book also offers some decorated cupcakes and cookies, chocolate shells to fill with pudding, flan, brownies, pancakes, and cinnamon bread for French toast.

Trendy cakes these days often get covered in fondant, which forms a beautiful, smooth shell. Fondant’s utter lack of flavor, though, means diners usually peel it off to get at the cake underneath—which will have just a bare covering of the buttercream frosting most people want. The Hansens believe all parts of a cake should be edible, so they generally ignore fondant in favor of decorations made either of frosting or melted wafer chocolate.

Wafer chocolate, also called confectioners’ chocolate, compound chocolate, or chocolate coating, isn’t real chocolate because it lacks chocolate liquor and replaces cocoa butter with vegetable oil. Real chocolate must be tempered—a somewhat fussy process in which it gets melted, cooled, and slightly reheated—so that it stays shiny and firm after setting up, but not wafer chocolate. It can be melted, tinted with food coloring, and piped, poured, and brushed into designs. Using it, the Hansens produce all sorts of edible, fanciful decorations, from simple hearts to circus horses to a detailed reproduction of a child’s portrait.

Kids’ Cakes gives full directions and templates for all of those; non-artists may want to avoid the portrait, but the rest are less intimidating, and many require little more than an ability to trace a simple drawing with a pastry cone instead of a pencil. A host of animal faces for cupcakes, for example, come together fairly easily in melted chocolate, far easier than trying to pipe the details directly onto a cupcake in frosting,

The book does, to the authors’ own surprise, offer a recipe for marshmallow fondant to use in one recipe. If a cake forces you to use fondant, marshmallow is the way to go for ease and slightly better taste, and the Hansens offer a standard recipe (though without offering the far easier option to knead the fondant in a stand mixer than by hand).

The cake and filling recipes are fine, if not especially exciting; experienced bakers will likely use this book more for decoration ideas than recipes. Sugar cookies, for example, could use a flavor boost, and many bakers will cringe at the buttercream recipe that uses high-ratio shortening (useful because it produces more vivid colors, but many bakers may choose to stick with the Italian meringue buttercream at the expense of color).

The authors provide nice tips throughout the book, such as good advice on immediately using their tasty cookies and cream filling (Oreos folded into stiffly whipped cream) so it doesn’t collapse, and “kids can” sidebars that note where children can help.

An emphasis in the introduction on not getting hung up on the details should come as a welcome reminder that these are, after all, cakes meant to be eaten. Too much time spent looking at cake books that focus on fondant and other inedible decorations will intimidate most home bakers; these photos are beautiful, but you can still see where the spatula swept across the icing. All is not perfection, and for most bakers, that will be the most perfect recipe for success.

This review first appeared online at the New York Journal of Books.

Fans of Ciao Bella, which sells gelato and sorbetto in groceries across the county and has shops in California and Manhattan, will find about 100 recipes based on those offerings in this book, by F.W. Pearce and Danilo Zecchin. (Clarkson Potter, May 2010).  Although they’re not quite as quick as whisking together cream and sugar, the recipes keep things lazy-summer simple.

A cook needs just a saucepan, a thermometer, and an ice-cream maker for most of the recipes, and cooks with experience in making a custard sauce could skip the thermometer. Although the authors note that an expensive machine with built-in refrigeration allows multiple batches to be made in a day, they reassure readers that inexpensive makers with canisters that must be kept frozen will still produce terrific desserts.

The book offers two base recipes for gelato, which differs from ice cream by using more milk and less cream, and by having less air churned into it. For plain and chocolate bases, a cook makes a custard by whisking hot milk and cream into egg yolks beaten with sugar, then heating the mixture until it thickens slightly. Readers will have to plan ahead a bit, to chill the custard for at least 4 hours (overnight is better, especially for the canister makers) before churning.

The base recipes each make a tasty quart of gelato on their own, but then the variations begin. Some require further cooking, such as one that combines rice pudding with gelato, a luxurious combination. Most, though, need just a few mix-ins, such as extracts, chopped chocolate, and nuts.

The stracciatella method of drizzling in melted chocolate to a plain base (barely scented with vanilla; I wished for a bit more, just as readers accustomed to American excess will wish for more chocolate) makes an easy, delicate chocolate-chip gelato. Although the suggestion of drizzling in the chocolate just as the gelato finishes churning seems easier, follow the recipe’s preferred method of folding it in by hand for a more even result. (Pet peeve alert: The recipe calls for folding with a rubber spatula. The accompanying photo shows a metal spoon. Yes, it’s minor, but if the point of a photo is to demo the recipe, why doesn’t it follow the recipe?)

Cinnamon gelato, using the plain base plus cinnamon and a touch of vanilla, came out full of flavor on its own; variations include a ribbon of caramel swirled in or crumbled oatmeal cookies added at the end of churning. Mint chip gelato was also a hit, although it was too mild with just ½ teaspoon peppermint extract; the authors suggest increasing to ¾ teaspoon, and mint lovers will want even more than that. The recipe’s ¼ cup of chopped chocolate also seemed a bit scanty; ½ cup made tasters happier.

Mixing the plain or chocolate base with peanut butter yields a very kid-friendly, sweet gelato, made even better with a swirl of strawberry jam. Calling for “sweetened smooth peanut butter” may confuse some readers; presumably it means Jif or Skippy or something similar, not “natural” peanut butter. The recipe was tested with regular Jif; note that reduced-fat peanut butters, which have even more sugar, would make this gelato far too sweet.

Because the recipes are so simple, cooks will soon feel free to experiment on their own; try crossing the peanut butter-plain base gelato with the stracciatella gelato’s method of drizzling in melted chocolate, or substitute the peanut butter-chocolate version in the book’s recipe for a s’mores gelato.

While most of the recipes are fairly tame (despite the assertion that the lower fat content makes gelato more intense than ice cream, many of the flavors here are quite mild), the book does offer some more adventuresome ideas. Gelati with black sesame seeds, ginger, green tea, saffron, or chai prove interesting but not bizarre, and an “adults only” section will get cooks started on liqueur experiments.

Some of the more intense flavors in the book come from the sorbetto recipes. A sorbetto, made from a simple syrup (water simmered with sugar) and, usually, fruit, will be perfect for the fat-phobic, but it’s more than a diet dessert. Its depth of color—from raspberries, strawberries, mangoes, watermelon—foretells the flavor to follow. And sorbetto doesn’t have to be fruity; try the chocolate, made in a flash by melting dark chocolate in the sugar syrup, adding cocoa and a smidgen of rum and vanilla, then chilling overnight—good enough to explain a bowlful out of the churn at 9 A.M.

The book ends with a few suggestions for getting fancy, including gelato “truffles” and gelato cakes and sandwiches, all of which provide inspiration for experimentation. But the focus isn’t on tarted-up desserts, just recipes with a straight shot to summer happiness—just in time.

This review first appeared online at the New York Journal of Books.

Written by the pastry chef for two of Douglas Rodriguez’s restaurants, Dulce: Desserts in the Latin-American Tradition (Rizzoli, May 2010)  gives bakers classic Latin-American desserts and interesting variations of them, such as a classic tres leches cake and another flavored with coffee and topped with a chocolate-kirsch sauce. Like so many of the recipes in the book, the ingredient list for the coffee cake is not for the faint of heart (or the clogged of arteries). Granted, the recipe serves 18 to 24 people. But with 10 eggs, 1 cup sugar, 2 cans evaporated milk, 1 can sweetened condensed milk, 2 cups cream, 1 cup coffee liqueur, and a sauce that uses 2 cups of chocolate chips and another cup of cream, you’ve only just begun. Yes, you could stop there, but the recommended accompaniments include cherry ice cream (milk, cream, sugar, cherries) and chocolate tuiles (butter, sugar, corn syrup).

It does help to consider the portion sizes when your eyes start to bug out at the ingredient lists. Most of the flans and puddings serve 8 to 12 people; a chocolate mousse with rum serves 16. Still, 18 brownies (from a 9-by-13-inch pan) seems like a skimpy yield from nearly 2 pounds of chocolate, 1 pound of butter, 10 eggs, and 3 cups of sugar. The granitas and fruit desserts come, toward the end of the book, as a welcome change.

Of course, all those ingredients and huge servings could be worth it if the food tastes great. As long as dulce suits you, the recipes generally will satisfy.

The author’s (and the region’s) serious sweet tooth shows in nearly every recipe. Even a quinoa pudding, which boasts the nutritional value of high protein and calcium, will set your teeth to aching with evaporated milk, whole milk, sweetened condensed milk—and some sugar for good measure. Although it took significantly longer to thicken than the 8 to 10 minutes the recipe specifies, the pudding did prove tasty in small portions.

Then there’s the recipe for dulce de leche. This, too, produces an intensely sweet caramel, but it skips the can of sweetened condensed milk most recipes use for a from-scratch version. Milk, sugar, vanilla, and corn syrup bubble for up to three hours to produce a thick, golden sauce. Unfortunately, a cook needs to be close by for the entire three hours, stirring often to keep the mixture from scorching, but patience has its rewards. On low heat, carefully watched, the dulce de leche produces an intense filling for alfajores, classic butter cookie sandwiches.

A cheese flan, reminiscent of cheesecake, took far less time and effort. Creamy and less eggy than standard flans, this version, with cream cheese and the ubiquitous sweetened condensed milk (and, for some reason, a extra tablespoon of sugar to go with the sweet milk), requires making the usual caramel for flan, but the rest of the ingredients need just a quick whirl in a blender. As tested, the recipe made more caramel than necessary, but with some cream, the leftovers made a great caramel sauce.

A simple, quick confit of pineapple offers the unusual combination of smoked paprika, vanilla, and cardamom; again, it is tongue-twistingly sweet. The lime ice cream inspired by a drink called “To Die Dreaming” packs a powerful lime punch, although it is more sherbet than ice cream, with ¼ cup cream to 2 ½ cups milk.

The recipe that flopped in testing was, oddly, that pictured on the book’s cover: churros with a chocolate dipping sauce. Again, the sauce made far more than necessary, but, spiked with allspice, cloves, and vanilla, it made great leftovers for ice cream or hot chocolate. The bigger problem was with the churros themselves, which start out like a choux paste batter (in which flour is cooked in butter and water in a saucepan). Unlike choux paste, the recipe calls for no eggs, so a cook is left with an extremely stiff batter to pipe through a pastry tip into hot oil. Even if your hands can push the dough out, the lack of eggs means the churros don’t puff during frying, and don’t have much flavor, even when rolled in a cinnamon-sugar mix.

Some of the recipes needed a tighter copyedit. For example, some of the granita recipes refer to another recipe that explains the freezing process, but two leave out those details. Walnut cookies are made as drop cookies, but then the recipe talks, without explanation, about pre-rolling the dough, freezing it, and cutting it into shapes. The quinoa pudding makes no mention of the need to rinse quinoa thoroughly before using, though a quinoa bread pudding recipe does. And oatmeal guava bars call for an “11-by-7-inch half-sheet pan” that presumably should be an 11-by-17-inch pan (it would be hard to fit cookies with the four sticks of butter used here into an 11-by-7 pan).

Those are troubles that will discourage a brand-new baker. For discerning bakers, though, Dulce offers a reasonable introduction to Latin-American sweets.

This review first appeared online at the New York Journal of Books.

Reader warning: If the mere mention of lard sets you to shaking, don’t buy this book. Villas gives recipes for lean pork chops and tenderloin, but the recipes give more love to bacon, sausage, pork butt, shoulder, and ham. And the sausage is one you make yourself, using a pound of pork fat to two pounds of butt.

Those unfamiliar with pork cuts will appreciate Villas’ quick pig primer and glossary, along with an explanation of barbecue and Southern bulk sausage. From there, chapters cover appetizers and salads, soups, stews, casseroles, chops, burgers, hashes, meatloaves, roasts, ham, sausage, bacon, ribs, variety meats, and pork-infused sides and breads.

Inexperienced bakers should skip the bread chapter, as these aren’t Villas’ best recipes. Unless bakers can understand in advance where to make adjustments, they’re bound to be disappointed. A recipe for yeast rolls flavored with bacon and herbs produced bread on the dry side without strong flavor. The roll dough went on top of poppy seeds, which were sprinkled into muffin tins, but when the rolls were turned out, too many of the seeds stayed behind.

A recipe for pimento cheese bread with bacon called for making a roux, adding milk, and cooking until thick and smooth. The recipe says this takes ten minutes, but two minutes was plenty. And step one calls for bacon to be cooked and crumbled, but the bacon never appears again (in a recipe test, it was added at the end of kneading). Otherwise, the bread turned out fairly well, and with a few tweaks, such as more bacon and pimentos, could be quite good.

Bacon-wrapped meat loaf, on the other hand, needed nearly no tweaking to be rich and fabulous. The loaf, made with half beef chuck and half pork, was well-seasoned and smooth, covered in crisp strips of bacon. A spicy sausage and vegetable pie, made with corn and tomatoes and using Villas’ homemade sausage recipe, added up to more than the sum of its ingredients, especially when made ahead and reheated. In a test, using crisp panko for the breadcrumb topping, the crustless pie delivered full flavor and crunch with little effort.

Villas’ bulk sausage recipe is simple and classic, and it should make any sausage novice feel at ease. The sausage made with pork, bacon, and fennel seeds from the Blue Ridge mountains also turned out well, though it needs a more aggressive hand with seasoning.

That’s a problem with many of Villas’ recipes: They’re often underseasoned. His cream gravy, for example, needs a very healthy dose of pepper, and the accompanying biscuits, made with shortening and milk rather than at least some butter and/or buttermilk, are extremely bland.

Additionally, while Villas clearly doesn’t assume his readers are complete novices at the stove, he also doesn’t think they’re experienced at such recipes as homemade sausage. Given that, why write “salt and pepper to taste” in recipes that a cook cannot taste until the recipe is finished, such as the bacon meatloaf? For sausage, a cook should season it, then fry a small bit to test the seasoning—but not only does Villas not suggest that in the Blue Ridge recipe, he doesn’t even give a starting point, such as “1 teaspoon salt, or more to taste.”

Readers may also wish Villas would make use of a thermometer in some recipes. Both the meatloaf and a pork butt roast, for example, can be tricky to judge by look, feel, or timing; a temperature check would make even experienced cooks feel better about taking the food out of the oven. When cooked just right, though, the roast, with a pan gravy, makes a wonderfully simple and flavorful meal (and, granted, a pork butt does give a cook good leeway before it’s truly overcooked—it’s more important to be sure to roast until it’s quite tender).

Many of the recipes are equally simple. From gumbo to Cajun spareribs to sausage and grits pie, pork lends itself to easy preparations, and with careful seasoning, these recipes will point cooks toward much of the best of Southern pig.

This review first appeared online at the New York Journal of Books.

In compiling the old recipes, Lebovitz has done some updating (it’s tough for any baker to stop fiddling with a recipe!). A spot check, though, suggests that most of the changes are quite minor. Many of the recipes seem to scream “1990s,” but they’re classics that still suit our palates.

The book’s standard organization makes it easy to use, with an introduction on ingredients and equipment followed by chapters on cakes, pies, puddings, frozen desserts, cookies, candies, and basic sauces and preserves. Few recipes use hard-to-find ingredients, and the straightforward directions for most stick to one page (large pages, it should be noted, as this is a tall book).

Lebovitz, who writes a popular blog, excels at frozen desserts (he also wrote The Perfect Scoop). His lemon frozen yogurt couldn’t be easier, and its pinch of citric acid spikes the flavor just as he promises. A rich chocolate-coconut sherbet shows Lebovitz’s attention to detail. After melting chocolate and liquid together and whisking well, a baker may find the sherbet mixture plenty smooth and skip the step of whirring it in a blender. But trust Lebovitz; this step removes any trace of graininess for an exquisitely smooth, five-ingredient sherbet.

Other recipes will surprise bakers with their simplicity but full flavor, such as croquants. Take a couple of egg whites left from another recipe, and mix them quickly (by hand, no equipment required) with sugar, a touch of flour and salt, and toasted almonds. Scoop and bake for crisp, crunchy, delightful cookies.

Chocolate-cherry biscotti, spiked with a teaspoon of pepper, aren’t quite that easy, but the straightforward recipe delivers depth that chocolate biscotti often lack. Melted butter and a rest period help peanut butter cookies stay chewy.

Lebovitz also makes life easier for bakers with alternatives in storage, and with variations in ingredients and techniques. He’ll tell you, for example, when you can chill and freeze cookie dough, or partially prepare souffles ahead of time. Serving suggestions stay simple; some refer to sauce recipes in the final chapter, but recipes are mostly self-contained, instead of the irritating method of sending bakers rummaging through a book for multiple base recipes.

All the recipes will produce attractive desserts without froufrou, as demonstrated in the photographs. Scoops of sorbet in champagne look gorgeous without much frill. Cakes get simple swirls of whipped cream or mocha frosting. A marmalade tart uses a log dough cut into rounds for an pretty, unfussy top.

The only tested recipe that disappointed was Bahamian Rum Cake, made with coconut milk. The flavors failed to come together, and the coconut milk and rum syrup had an unpleasant bite. Still, it’s a recipe that, with a tweak or two, a baker may want to try again. That’s because even with that disappointment, the recipe worked, producing a tender Bundt cake.

That promise of recipe success, combined with familiar, unintimidating recipes that have just enough twists to stay interesting, will keep bakers coming back to Lebovitz’s book.

This review first appeared online at the New York Journal of Books.

This seems to be one of the dilemmas for the authors of Bromberg Bros. Blue Ribbon Cookbook by Bruce Bromberg, Eric Bromberg and Melissa Clark (Clarson Potter, April 2010), filled with recipes from the brothers’ nine restaurants. A quick first flip through the book may have readers questioning why anyone needs a recipe for sweet potato puree (ingredients: sweet potatoes and butter) or sautéed spinach (spinach, butter, salt and pepper). For readers who do need that basic cooking guidance, what will they make of recipes for beef marrow bones, served with an oxtail marmalade, or a pupu platter that requires grilling ribs, making deep-fried pierogi from scratch, and deep-frying egg rolls and chicken skewers?

To those who love the restaurants, the seeming hodgepodge of recipes will make some sense: They want the book to divulge the secrets of their favorite dishes, no matter their difficulty. For other readers, if they can get past the too-easy or flavor-challenged choices, this book provides a few good recipes.

There is a lot to skip: Recipes for hummus, cream of tomato soup, profiteroles, strawberry sundaes, and almonds roasted with cumin offer little new inspiration. And a few recipes don’t make sense, such as the Braised Beef Short Ribs with Succotash. The short ribs, as the authors rightly note, would be perfect for a cold winter night. Where, though, on that chilly evening would a home cook find fresh fava beans and ears of corn worth cooking for a summery succotash?

Some recipe details seem off. Directions in the scookies recipe (a cookie-like scone) call for forming dough into a 2-inch-thick circle that should be 8 inches in diameter. At best, this amount of dough yields a 6-inch round that’s 1 inch thick. (The recipe also called for a surprisingly large range in baking time, from 15 to 25 minutes.) The fried chicken recipe calls for 6 cups of oil, to measure 3 inches deep in a large pot. Without calling for a specific pot, this is tricky; better to call for a range of oil (a test of the recipe took 8 cups and still wasn’t 3 inches deep, but it was enough to fry). And the egg roll recipe calls for wonton wrappers. Typical wonton skins are too small; these needed egg roll wrappers.

Some recipes, though they worked, left diners wanting more. Those egg rolls desperately needed a vegetable to lighten the chicken filling, along with more than ½ tablespoon each of hoisin sauce and sesame oil for flavor. (This recipe also called for 2 tablespoons of chopped celery leaves; are average cooks really going to buy a bunch–or two–of celery just for that?) Their pupu-platter partner, chicken skewers, cried out for flavor. A brushing of underwhelming barbecue sauce just didn’t do it, despite the beer, ketchup, maple syrup and honey in the sauce. (And again, the sauce called for ¼ cup cola. Does a cook really need to buy a can of Coke just for that? Its contribution to the taste seemed scant at best.)

An eggplant and asparagus salad provided more punch, but from an overly oily dressing. The fried chicken, which uses matzo meal for crunch, proved somewhat better, though the dried spices sprinkled on after frying, tasted raw and were tough to distribute evenly (cooks will have a hard time “coating” eight chicken pieces with 1 teaspoon of seasoning). The buttermilk pancakes don’t break any new ground, but they worked fine.

After so many recipe let-downs, the baklava came as a happy success. Kataifi (finely shredded phyllo) gave a crunch that standard phyllo sheets can’t, and the citrus-scented honey syrup finally provided full flavor, without baklava’s usual toothache-inducing sweetness.

With more than 100 recipes, this book will work best for experienced cooks who can skip the easiest recipes and adjust others to their liking. Everyone else may want to stick to eating at the restaurants.

This review first appeared online at the New York Journal of Books.

Following its subtitle promise of “creative comfort food for the resourceful cook,” the book offers some useful recipes. Its soup of chickpeas and smoked paprika provides a solid example of making something substantial and tasty from inexpensive pantry staples.  Likewise, a dessert called “General satisfaction” has 15 ladyfingers as its most exotic ingredient, and it offers nursery comfort food at its finest.

But I doubt many American readers will find much usefulness (or cost savings) in such recipes as “Pheasant braised with endive, white wine, and crème fraîche” or a cake of bay, honey and lemon that calls for Marcona almonds, unrefined superfine vanilla sugar, organic eggs, organic lemons, chestnut honey and lemon curd.

Even in the less-pricey recipes, readers will have to get past some of the ingredient requirements uncommon in the United States (such as that vanilla sugar), and they may choose to ignore all the requirements for organic and specialty items to stay on a budget.

They’ll also want to mark pages that interest them, as the book’s organization doesn’t ease the way to finding recipes quickly, with such chapters as “Happy Food,” “The Saturday Bake,” “Supper for a Song,” and “How to Cook a Chicken . . . Again and Again,” which indeed covers chicken but then moves on to meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and chickpeas.

That said, for experienced cooks looking for inspiration, Day-Lewis (yes, Daniel’s sister) does offer some ideas. Turning leftover mashed potatoes into a potato apple cake for dessert comes as a surprise, as does the combination of lamb with orange, turmeric, rice, Greek yogurt, and chickpeas—a new way to put together familiar elements. I especially liked the recipe for salmon with smoked eggplant polenta and hot cucumbers, easily made and unusual (more people should learn the joys of briefly sautéed or braised cucumbers).

And the book’s British sensibility may pull readers in new directions. The simple recipe for potato bread (or farls, in Ireland, a combination of just mashed potatoes and flour) made a tasty side to the chickpea soup. Cooks in a rut who can find and afford such ingredients as chestnuts, quince, oxtail, and guinea hens will be in for new adventures.

By the end, readers will appreciate the book’s emphasis on planning ahead with ingredients to avoid waste and returning to the basics of cooking. They may also, however, get the sense that this book is best suited for cooks who do want to economize—just not too much.

This review first appeared online at the New York Journal of Books.

No matter how terrible that which came before, dessert has the power to make my guests leave happy.

I’m always surprised how baking terrifies people who consider themselves good cooks. And for new cooks, choosing a dessert seems overwhelming. If it’s easy, it’s probably not fancy enough. But fancy’s frightening, or it requires last-minute work that needs steadier nerves than yours.

A few tricks, though, can make fancy work out of little effort. Almost anything looks more impressive in an individual serving, and ramekins may be the easiest and cheapest way to accomplish this. I used to buy mine for about a dollar apiece at Pier 1 Imports; they’re about 4 inches across and 1 3/4 inches high. These work for molded desserts served in or popped out of the ramekins, as well as for savory flans or a simple cheese grits or rice mold (just pack cooked grits or rice into a slightly wet mold and invert it onto a plate).

Then dress up your dessert with ganache, a simple mixture of cream and chocolate, and maybe some macerated berries (that is, berries with sugar stirred in and left to sit for a bit), and you look like a pro.

Panna cotta (cooked cream in Italian) may be one of the easiest fancy desserts around. It’s not trendy anymore, but it’s still simple and delicious; a few minutes of cooking and it’s done, barely heating up the kitchen. My version calls for buttermilk in place of much of the cream, making it significantly less decadent but still delicious. If you want the richness, you can replace some or all of the buttermilk with cream, being sure to bring all the cream to a boil as called for in the recipe.

To dress it up a bit, I give the panna cotta a ganache base made easily with chocolate chips, and reserve a bit of the ganache to drizzle over the top. I like to flavor it with a touch of dried lavender (look for it with spices sold in bulk), though it’s tasty without it. Stop there, or spoon onto the plate some sliced strawberries, blueberries or kiwi tossed with a spoonful or two of sugar (depending on how sweet and juicy the fruit is to start) about 15 minutes before serving.

Recipe: Buttermilk Panna Cotta

2 teaspoons unflavored gelatin (from 1 packet)
2 tablespoons cold water
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/3 cup heavy cream
Pinch of salt
2 1/3 cups lowfat buttermilk
Ganache:
1/3 cup heavy cream
3/4 teaspoon dried lavender flowers (optional)
3/4 cup semisweet chocolate chips
Garnish: sliced strawberries, blueberries or kiwi tossed with sugar (optional)

Rinse and shake out, but do not dry, 6 ramekins measuring about 4 inches across, and place on a rimmed baking sheet or in a 9-by-13 inch pan.

In a small saucepan, sprinkle gelatin over water and let stand about 5 minutes to soften the gelatin. Whisk in sugar, cream and salt, and over medium heat bring just to a boil (bubbling in the center, not just around the edge), whisking to dissolve gelatin and sugar. Remove from heat and gently stir in buttermilk (try not to create a lot of foam). Divide mixture among ramekins, stretch plastic wrap across the top to cover without touching the cream, and chill until firm, about 2 hours.

Make ganache: In a small saucepan over medium-high heat, bring cream and lavender to a boil. Remove from heat. Pour cream through a strainer over chips (without lavender, there’s no need to strain). Let stand a minute, then whisk until chocolate is melted and smooth. Let cool about 10 minutes until warm but still pourable; scoop out and set aside 1/4 cup. Gently spoon remaining ganache over chilled panna cottas; chill until set, about 15 minutes.
To serve, gently run a thin knife around the edge of the ramekins; invert each panna cotta onto a serving plate. Reheat reserved ganache, gently over very low heat or for a few seconds in microwave, until pourable. Drizzle over panna cotta. Surround with strawberries and serve.

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