A cookbook meant to bring into the grocery store

After working all day, do you find yourself wandering the aisles of Trader Joe’s, trying to figure out what products to put together to make dinner? Wander no longer. The authors of “Cooking with All Things Trader Joe’s” feel your pain, and they are doing their part to ease your confusion.

“The Trader Joe’s Companion,” by Deana Gunn and Wona Miniati, is just a bit bigger than a Zagat’s guide. And if that’s too big for pocket or purse, it can live in the reusable shopping bags that sit in your car. (Of course, you have to do the work of remembering to bring them into the store.)

And while the book is geared toward what’s sold in one particular grocery store chain, you could use it elsewhere, though in some cases you’d have to adjust the products a little.

The authors are not associated with the company; they call themselves “very devoted” fans with busy lives who use many of Trader Joe’s prepared sauces, precut vegetables and other products. For instance, their black bean soup uses canned beans, frozen crushed garlic, jarred salsa and bagged diced onions, among other ingredients.

The book also has a handy bunch of blank pages in the back for notes.

-- Mary MacVean

(Photo by Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times)

Family dinners, deep-fried cheese sandwiches and endless recipe-testing with Jack Bishop

The reader recipes arrived by the thousands, just as Jack Bishop knew they would. Some were indecipherable. Some were clearly awful. But the majority were family treasures. And not just a tasty recipe for meatloaf or pot roast, but the story behind those recipes as well.

The result -- one of Bishop's latest projects, "Cook's Country Best Lost Suppers" -- is like pulling up a chair to the nation's kitchen tables. But consider yourself warned: Don't pick up this cookbook when you are in a rush to get dinner on the table; it's far too easy to get caught up in the personal stories that grace each page.

Bishop is the editorial director at Chris Kimball's America's Test Kitchen empire, which specializes in testing recipes and bringing readers and viewers along for the ride. He was in town this week to tape a few upcoming segments for Evan Kleiman's "Good Food," KCET and PBS, which broadcasts the TV version of "America's Test Kitchen."

Fortunately for the Daily Dish, Bishop had time for breakfast at Fig in Santa Monica. He had a cappuccino to start, followed by steel-cut oatmeal and a side of fresh seasonal fruit.

The conversation was all over the map: lamenting the loss of Gourmet magazine, his grandmother's 99th birthday, and why his wife, cookbook author and pastry chef Lauren Chattman, just might have one up on Martha Stewart. He also let us in on a little-known secret about the recipes that come out of the Brookline, Mass.-based "America's Test Kitchen" and end up in Cook's Illustrated, a food magazine that bucked convention long ago by rejecting all advertising, and has about a million paying subscribers to show for it. (Its sister publication, Cook's Country, has about 310,000 paying subscribers.)

After the jump: highlights from our conversation and two of his favorite recipes from the new book.

Chocolate chip cookies from 'Ad Hoc at Home'

It may take up to three days to make Thomas Keller's Catalan beef stew, a recipe from his newly published cookbook "Ad Hoc at Home: Family-Style Recipes," written with Ad Hoc chef de cuisine Dave Cruz. But not all recipes require a five-hour confit of onions and tomatoes.

Some are in fact really easy. There are a few that I've already made more than once, such as the chocolate chip cookies (see below for the recipe).

This cookie is slightly thicker than my Platonic ideal of a chocolate chip cookie (crisp and thin with a still-chewy center, made partly with whole-grain flour and lots of really dark chocolate, and at the outer edge it should have wrinkles that form what sort of look like concentric circles ... ), but I digress. Let's just say this one grew on me.

I think part of the reason is that these are perfect cookies for ice cream sandwiches. That's how I've been eating them, inspired by photos of ice cream sandwiches in the dessert chapter of the book. They're crisp on the outside, and chewy and slightly dense on the inside so that they don't crumble or collapse when you bite into the ice cream sandwich. 

VIDEO: Oatmeal crispies and a reader question for the test kitchen

 

A reader, Dot Goldish, wrote to the L.A. Times test kitchen about this recipe for Oatmeal crispies, which comes from the new cookbook, The Pioneer Woman Cooks, by blogger Ree Drummond, and had the following question:

You say to remove the cookies from the baking sheet immediately. Does that really work?... In any event, they're wonderful cookies. I make them often and keep a bag of baked cookies in the freezer.

Dot, the cookies will be a bit fragile just out of the oven, but we do remove them immediately using a spatula, where they cool (and continue to crisp) on a rack. Hope this helps.

-- Noelle Carter

RELATED:

O Pioneer! A profile of 'The Pioneer Woman' blogger Ree Drummond

More recipes from the L.A. Times Test Kitchen

Join us on Twitter @latimesfood and Facebook @latimesfood

Cookbook author Paula Wolfert conjures up magic in a clay pot

Food -- almost any food -- always tastes better when cooked in clay.

That's cookbook author Paula Wolfert, a self-confessed clay pot junkie with more than 100 clay pots to her name, including those on display, above, in her Sonoma kitchen. Read on to find out what she does with them -- recipes included.

-- Rene Lynch

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Join us on Twitter @latimesfood and Facebook @latimesfood

Photo: Myung Chun / Los Angeles Times

Sampler Platter: A rave review from Oprah, insane recipes from the Futurist Cookbook and cow brain curry

The most insane cookbook you will ever read, news about Doughboys and cow brains top today's food news roundup.

-- L.A.-based vegan chef Tal Ronnen, author of "The Conscious Cook," makes an appearance on "Oprah" today -- and The O calls him the best vegan chef in America.
-- Welcome to the Futurist Cookbook, featuring battered and deep-fried roses, a chicken stuffed with ball bearings, salami cooked in espresso and then flavored with eau de Cologne. And then it gets weird. “I’m dazzled! Your genius frightens me!” The Smart Set
-- Recipe: butterscotch cashew bars. Why? Because they sound amazing. James Beard Foundation
-- Cow brain curry at Raso Minang in West Covina. Why? Because it sounds amazing. Gourmet Pigs
-- The 99-Cent Chef visits the cornucopia of carts in MacArthur Park.
-- Is your seafood hurting the planet? Greenspace
-- Want to keep up with the latest food recalls? Sign up for Safe Tables' e-alerts.
-- Irvine local Hai Vo wins Brower Youth Award for his efforts to get the UC system to commit to 20% real food procurement by 2020.
-- Per property owner Charlie Jacob, Doughboys is shooting for a Dec. 1 opening. Blackburn + Sweetzer
-- New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg wades into the bagel wars. New York Daily News
-- Just in time for Halloween: Witches' Fingers -- sugar cookies with raspberry jam for cuticles and sliced almonds for fingernails -- from the recently opened Village Bakery and Cafe in Atwater Village.

-- Elina Shatkin

Photo credit: Sue Sawyer

Cookbook author Anna Thomas on the power of soup (plus a recipe for roasted kabocha soup)

"I've been really thinking about this a lot. Soup is the portal to home cooking," says Anna Thomas, author of the "Love Soup" cookbook. "You cannot make too terrible a mistake with soup. Don't we want to know how to take care of ourselves a little?"

Though she's hardly a familiar name today, Thomas is the one who in the early 1970s lured many a hungry idealist rebelling against a meat-and-potatoes childhood into the kitchen with "The Vegetarian Epicure," a seminal book that came out of nowhere to sell more than 1 million copies.

More than 30 years later, she has another new cookbook, "Love Soup," a collection of 100 soups and dishes to eat with them, that she hopes will lure a new generation into the kitchen in much the same way her first book did. Like so many cooks, she worries that people are losing touch with an essential skill and is determined to do her part to halt the decline. 

Click here to read more and to get the recipe for Thomas' roasted kabocha squash and celery root soup with maple syrup and brown butter. 

Photo credit: Lawrence K. Ho/Los Angeles Times

Pioneer Woman Ree Drummond answers a delicate question

Ree Drummond, a.k.a. the Pioneer Woman, was a colorful interview. Self-effacing, funny, quick-witted and with a country twang to her voice, she comes across like she could be your bestest girlfriend. And lots of people feel the same, judging by the traffic generated by her blog, and the hot interest in her new cookbook. (It's not due out for another month, yet it's already at No. 1 on Amazon.com's pre-order list in the Cooking, Food & Wine category.)

I saved the most important question for last:

Why aren't you fat?

Drummond laughed, and laughed, and then insisted that she is not exactly skinny. Maybe she is not skinny by that hollow, emaciated, Hollywood standard. But look at these pictures. And then look at her blog posting on making tres leches cake.

I mean, I gained tres pounds just reading that.

Drummond conceded that she has gained about 5 to 10 pounds cooking, testing and crafting recipes for the new cookbook. Her saving grace, she said, is that she has mastered the art of tasting everything -- while not inhaling everything. She joked that someone should have warned her way back when about how sedentary a job blogging can be. Then, add cooking and eating on top of that ... the pounds can really add up. Luckily, Drummond said, blogging is just one of her jobs. Her other job is a full-time calorie-blaster: She also helps run a working ranch with 4,000 head of cattle and 2,000 wild horses, home-schools four kids between the ages of 5 and 12, keeps the Marlboro Man fed and happy, and shoos away those pesky cows that love to wander up to the back door.

(As we talked this week, she was lamenting the fact that a cow at that very moment was standing in her back yard experiencing ... how do we say this ... intestinal distress.)

"Wanna trade places?" she quipped.

-- Rene Lynch

Photo: Shane Bevel / For The Times

  

Tour of Southeast Asian cuisine via eclectic cookbooks

The culinary tag "Southeast Asian" has cachet in American foodie circles even though it has not yet achieved the all-purpose buzzword status of "Mediterranean."

Books about the food of this vast and complex region are multiplying fast. Four current works on the subject all present their own trade-offs. Do you want the book that covers the largest number of countries (Michael Freeman’s "Ricelands"; Reaktion Books, $35), or that has the largest number of recipes (Rosemary Brissenden’s "Southeast Asian Food"; Periplus Editions, $30)?

The one that charges at the subject with the most irrepressible energy (Robert Danhi’s "Southeast Asian Flavors"; Mortar & Press, $45), or that gives cooks the most careful guidance (James Oseland’s "Cradle of Flavor"; W.W. Norton & Co., $35)? Each is bound to meet some expectations and thwart others. Read more here:

Photo credit: Reaktion Books

Julia Child has a bestseller, but her recipes may be tweaked by a health-conscious populace

The New York Times ran an interesting story Sunday that is still topping its most e-mailed list. It's titled, "After 48 Years, Julia Child Has a Big Best Seller, Butter and All." It explores the Julia mania that has struck the country since the release of the film "Julie & Julia." Apparently, hordes of people are leaving theaters and running to bookstores to buy copies of Child's 48-year-old cookbook, "Mastering the Art of French Cooking."

The book will debut at No. 1 on the New York Times' Aug. 30 bestseller list in the advice and how-to category:

Amazing not just because the book is almost half a century old, costs $40 and contains 752 pages of labor-intensive and time-consuming recipes — the art of French cooking is indeed hard to master — but also for what those recipes contain.

In a decade when cookbooks promise 20-minute dinners that are light on calories, Ms. Child’s recipes feature instructions like “thin out with more spoonfuls of cream” (Veau Prince Orloff, or veal with onions and mushrooms, pages 355-7) or “sauté the bacon in the butter for several minutes” (Navets à la Champenoise, or turnip casserole, pages 488-9). And for a generation raised to believe that Jell-O should have marshmallows in it, there is plenty of aspic — the kind made with meat.

The story contains a particularly humorous anecdote from a shocked reader, Melissah Bruce-Weiner, who simply couldn't bring herself to make Child's boeuf bourguignon recipe as it was written. Instead of using pork fat, she used a can of cream of mushroom soup, a can of French onion soup and a can of red wine and called her creation “beef fauxguignon.”

“Yes, Julia Child rolled over in her grave when I opened the cream of mushroom soup, I’m pretty sure of that. But you know what? That’s our world," said Bruce-Weiner.

Maybe some saucy young writer will now come along and blog about modifying every single recipe in Child's seminal book. That might make for a good sequel -- even if for some Child fans it would seem more like a horror film.

-- Jessica Gelt

Photo: Associated Press / Knopf