This month is the beginning of our rating system. You will find the actual ratings at the bottom of the article. Please let me know if this format works for you, or we can move them to the top. If you told me a month ago that my favorite bread recipe of all time would come out of a cookbook that I considered at first glance to be the book for a specialist, I might have laughed at you. Here we are, a month into Japanese Home Cooking by Sonoko Sakai, and I can safely say that Milk Bread may be my favorite type of bread in the history of baking. This is, of course, not a book devoted solely to the creation of milk bread, so we have to look at the whole before we consider how to score our first rated cookbook on Eating Normal. I’ll admit that I didn’t do a ton of actual cooking-cooking from this cookbook right out the gate. I used the milk bread and the dashi for my own concoctions rather than turning to a lot of the prepared recipes once I got past the kitchen essentials portion of the cookbook. That being said, I felt that I learned a lot from those very early portions of the book that I did not already know about Japanese cooking. This cookbook became a tome of knowledge for me instead of a recipe reference, really.
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It wasn’t all that long ago that I picked up Dining in by Alison Roman and regarded it as one of my favorite cookbooks of all time. During the great cookbook release of October 2019, she dropped another cookbook on me in my most trying time: Nothing Fancy. I couldn’t get it. I waited patiently until I started a new job, and here we are, visiting Alison Roman for another cookbook of the month: Nothing Fancy. April won’t be anything fancy, that’s for sure. A little over a year ago, I wrote an article about how the labor of cooking is an act of love when faced with the passing of my husband’s grandfather. Today, I was informed that I have been furloughed from my job indefinitely in the face of COVID-19. I got off the phone with my boss, I cried, and then I looked to the rest of the world for positivity. It’s incredible how much light is still out there in the restaurants of our communities. Big name Chefs all over the country are going out of their way to turn their kitchens into relief sites for their own employees and others impacted by the crisis currently facing our country. Edward Lee, a chef whose cookbook we reviewed here, Smoke and Pickles, with the help of Maker’s Mark turned every restaurant he owns into relief kitchens for his employees. While he could no longer pay them, he could certainly feed them, and his example is one of many that led to the movement currently sweeping the country. This article was written before the COVID-19 pandemic began to spread aggressively within the United States. Please keep that in mind while reading. Japanese Home Cooking relies upon a number of essential preparations that often need to be done ahead of your actual cook time, not the least of these is the quintessential Japanese stock, dashi. Sonoko Sakai discusses having these ready before you begin cooking, and I could not agree more with this statement after having had them available for my use during the regular weekday. As of writing this particular article, I’ve done nothing from this book but make milk bread and get these pantry ingredients ready. What I have already taken from the book, however, has made an abundant difference in my cooking. This article was written before the COVID-19 pandemic began to spread aggressively within the United States. Please keep that in mind while reading. The small grocery stores like the ones described in this article need our support the most right now. Northeast Wisconsin is blessed with a large Asian immigrant community. Within a six block radius, there are a TON of Asian markets to explore. Chief of these is Asian Taste Supermarket, where my husband took me on March 1st to go hunting for ingredients we need for the Cookbook of the Month, Japanese Home Cooking. He has been on walkabout in the neighborhood more than once, taking stock of a few of these markets by my request when I’ve stayed home to clean or something. This one, he told me, was probably his favorite. Despite the very cramped front aisles, I could see why he would feel that way about Asian Taste. You’re welcomed by an aisle of sweets, and from there on, you can find a variety of spices, noodles, canned goods, and even fresh ingredients. I saw a durian with my own eyes for the first time in their produce section. I smelled it too. Even before it’s opened, I can’t say I recommend the smell |
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