Cook This Book: CBOM Intro

Cook this Book by Molly Baz came out several months ago, and it’s sat on my shelf waiting for me to get the drive back to try another Cookbook of the Month. I even posted a picture of it on my facebook once claiming it’d be coming the next month. It didn’t, nor did it come the month after that. Only now, September 2021, and I sitting down to write an introductory article to a cookbook that I already have some mixed feelings about.

Molly Baz, famous for her time at Bon Appetit, has been one of the personalities on their youtube channel at the time that I didn’t know how I felt about them. I thought she could get annoying. I thought she was a little bougie for my midwestern sensibilities. Then the scandal with Adam Rapoport happened. She so rarely did any videos without that asshole there, and I realized that maybe he was the problem.

After the Rapoport scandal and the reveal that the BIPOC chefs on staff were not being paid for equal screen time on the youtube channel, Molly was one of the first to leave in solidarity with her coworkers. She now runs a patreon subscription only video service to teach viewers how to cook. I’m not invested enough in her development to subscribe to it while many of her fellow former Bon App staffers have gone to free platforms and collaborated with established youtubers. I did, however, buy her cookbook.

No cooking has been done yet, but I am reminded of her bougieness in moments when several recipes have unnecessarily shortened words for ingredients in the titles. Ants on a Log Cel Sal, for example. What the hell is that? A celery salad, as the attached picture and further context clues will teach you. Sal is a salad shortening regularly featured in her other recipes prior to the book. I don’t enjoy that style choice, but it is a personalization that made sense with her established brand after Bon Appetit.

You can purchase Cook the Book at Amazon or your local bookstores to join our cooking adventures this month. The first recipe comes from her noodles section: Oricchiette with Bacon, snap peas, and Ricotta. You might get lucky and find some late season peas at the farmer’s markets, depending on where you are in the world.

These recipe reviews will be part of our weekly content going forward as I begin writing for Nosh Green Bay this month as well. This is an exciting opportunity that I hope will bring more attention to the food and the people cooking it in Northeast Wisconsin. Please join me over there each month and say hello.

Thanks for reading, and let’s get cooking.
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