Christopher Kimball's Milk Street: The New Home Cooking

This book is filled with delicious, homey, globally inspired recipes. Once you have all the ingredients prepped and in place, the dishes are very easy and relaxing to pull together, so I turned up my kitchen radio. I was surprised that there’s an uncharacteristically large amount of chiles and garlic in for Christopher Kimball, but nothing we’ve tried yet has been spicy enough to set off my youngest’s chile alarm. Fun, tasty book. Recommend.Pictured below:1) Chicken Tagine with Apricots, Butternut Squash, and Spinach – p 184. Very fragrant and flavorful dish. There’s a ton of produce in this one. It calls for 2 cups of butternut squash. Mine was small and produced about 3 cups. I didn’t want the extra cup to go into the refrigerator and be forgotten, so it all went in.2-3) Spicy Stir Fried Cumin Beef – p 128. Delicious. It’s not as spicy as it looks. The mild spiciness takes a back seat to the cumin, garlic, onions, sesame, soy, rice vinegar, and cilantro. It’s supposed to be served over steamed white rice, but I was in a mashed potato mood. Delicious stuff.4-5) Curry Braised Eggs – p 28. Yum. We’ve always loved Eggs in Purgatory and Shakshuka. This is another fantastic one.6) Shrimp in Chipotle Sauce – p 163. Super yummy and easy peasy.7) Japanese Fried Chicken – p 150 and Sweet-and-Spicy Ginger Green Beans – p 82. We loved this dinner, especially my teenagers. It’s got a lovely crisp, delicate coating. The recipe instructs to fry at 375. I have a deep fryer, and it was browning too quickly at that temp. I lowered it to 350, and it worked perfectly.8) Turkish Meatballs with Lime-Yogurt Sauce – p 136. It’s ground beef, but my youngest was sure it was lamb because of the spice profile.9) Caramel Oranges – p 222. This dessert is so bright and fresh, and positively lickable. The recipe makes no mention of the cream or pistachios, but they were in the photo, so I added them in, too.10) Brown Butter Cardamom Banana Bread – p 203. Great banana bread. The whisper of sugar on top gives it a lovely finish.11-13) Israeli Hummus with Spiced Beef Topping – p 140 & 140 and Lebenese-Style Tabbouleh – p 57. Darn good tabbouleh and hummus. I’d never seen the spiced meat added on as a topping, and it’s fantastic. I put 2/3 of it underneath, or you wouldn’t see the hummus, and that’s the main player here. I'm crushing a clove or two of garlic into the hummus next time.14) Chili-Pineapple Margarita - p 159. I made these for New Year's Eve to go with a big Cuban dinner. Great margarita!Some others I have flagged to try: Baked Persian Herb Omelet – p 27 * Spanish-Style Eggs with Garlicky Crumbs and Chorizo – p 31 *Georgian Chicken Soup – p 45 * Spanish Garlic Soup – p 51 * Kale Salad with Smoked Almonds and Picada Crumbs – p 63 * Skillet-Charred Brussels Sprouts with Garlic, Anchovy, and Chili – p 70 * Sweet Potato Gratin with Vanilla Bean and Bay Leaves – p 78 * Herb and Pistachio Couscous – p 99 * Punjabi Chickpeas with Potato – p 104 * Cuban Style Pork Shoulder with Mojo Sauce – p 156 * Thai Beef Salad – p 160 * Vietnamese Caramel Fish – p 171 * Caramelized Pork with Orange and Sage – p 176 * Potato and Herb Focaccia – p 196 * Tahini Swirl Brownies – p 207 * Rye on Rye Sticky Toffee Pudding – p 237I’ll update this as I play in the book more.

Christopher Kimball taught me to cook. I've spent almost 20 years reading, re-reading, absorbing, and cooking from his previous publications, and I've become a very serious home cook over time following his guidance and good sense. His writing about food, his no-nonsense approach to ingredients and equipment and technique, his generous philosophy of sharing great meals with others are all part of the way I look at and approach food, and I am already in love with this new collection. These aren't "the best" version of things you already make. These are "the best" version of little gems from around the world that you might not have thought to try at home, and so far, all have been a revelation in flavor and texture. I made the Thai Fried Rice (substituting smoked pork belly for the pancetta, since that was in the original recipe he referenced) yesterday, and my husband said it was one of the best things he'd ever eaten....and I literally just made it again today. It was crave-able and intense and delicious and worth cooking two days in a row. I feel like this is just the shot in the arm my cooking needed--I've become pretty good at many of the traditional stand-bys, and I'm ready to up my game with some new, bold, amazing flavors. But, as always with Kimball, that doesn't mean ordering dozens of fussy exotic spices or investing in all new trendy equipment. It just means new combinations, new techniques, and amazing results. So glad he is sharing this new direction in home cooking with his fans!

Nice varied recipe book. Will help you learn how to cook good food from around the globe. In the same light as Test Kitchen they adjust classic recipes to their audience. This with Kenji-Alt-Lopez 'Food Lab' will give you tons of insight and knowledge for cooking.

I passed on subscribing to Milk Street Magazine when it first came out, thinking the recipes seemed too exotic and/or time consuming. However, when the Milk Street TV show started airing, I realized that couldn't be further from the truth. A lot of these recipes are much simpler than Kimball's ATK/Cook's Illustrated recipes, and every single one I have made so far has been a huge hit in my house. While ATK's sciencey approach often adds steps (or extra dishes to wash) to recipes, the philosophy here is big flavors from ingredients that you probably don't use all of the time--but not crazy exotic ones that you can't find. White miso, for example, or fish sauce, which are readily available in most supermarkets these days, but something not used often by the average American home cook. My most recent success from this book was the soba noodles and asparagus, which are tossed with a mix of salted butter, white miso, grated ginger, and scallions. Easy and delicious!

The recipes are great and instructions are printed with how long they should take.They’ve been fantastic recipes and they’re meant to be quick

I absolutely LOVE MILK STREET COOKBOOKS!!!! Great explanations of why things work. Also, I greatly appreciate the suggestions of easy, available, ingredients. Wonderful recipes, too! Beautiful, hard back book. Would make a terrific gift.

I pretty much have all the Cooks Illustrated and Cooks Country Annual Issues from America's Test Kitchen. However, these are becoming repetitive since they are generally dealing with traditional recipes mostly from North America. After all these years, I understand Christopher Kimball to take this 90 degrees shift to a whole new set of recipes taken from all around the world and this is refreshing. He also simplified the making of these recipes.Great book from someone who dedicated his life to make excellent cooking simple and to educate us on the how and why their recipes are so good.

As a long time Americas Test Kitchen fan, reading that Christopher Kimball was off to start up a more international venture was pleasing. I love the explanation he always gives - not just "stir it this way", but "stir it this way, because when we stirred it these ways, this happened". ATK was great, but aimed toward a more traditional American menu - Milk Street is still American slanted, but with much more of a contemporary, international bias.

I eagerly awaited this cookbook, having loved Christopher Kimball's work so far. Extremely dissapointed that I get to the contents page to see a typo that is repeated in the book ... vegatables ... I feal disappointed and somehow a little dirty.

Lovely cook book my wife loved it

Great cookbook - I have already made a couple of recipes from it.Worth the $$