Flipping through some cookbooks can feel like an escape into a reality show, with recipes accompanied by glossy photographs of carefully stylized food and immaculately groomed diners gathered around artfully arranged tablescapes.
Those images can entice and inspire us. But they can also present a narrow vision of an outcome that feels out of reach.
This is what Ruby Tandoh set out to avoid in writing “Cook as You Are: Recipes for Real Life, Hungry Cooks and Messy Kitchens” (Knopf, $35).
Her aim is to teach us to judge our success according to our own senses and standards — “not by whether it matches up with a photo of a meal staged by a food stylist for a cookbook photo shoot.”
It’s a daunting task, but Tandoh, a former Great British Bake-Off finalist and author of several acclaimed books on food and the pleasures of eating, proves herself up for the job. The six chapters focus on flexible, mostly low-effort, daily cooking, with charming illustrations of various down-to-earth home settings interspersed throughout (no photos).
The recipes she shares are the ones she personally enjoys, prefaced with vivid explanations of their origins (including the wide-ranging books that inspired them) and insight into her own background (she’s British with West African family ties and a multicultural circle of food-minded friends).
Most recipes lean heavily on pantry staples and familiar ingredients presented in a fresh light (Roasted Five-Spice Carrots with Brown Butter and Sesame; Potato, Caraway and Sauerkraut Soup; Roast Chicken Thighs with Spiced Cauliflower, Cranberries and Herbs; Peanut Cookie Dough Bites).
Each comes with suggestions for adjusting to a dietary need, a physical limitation, or whatever time or ingredients you have to work with. As Tandoh makes clear, “sometimes good cooking is knowing which corners you can cut.”
Susan Puckett is a cookbook author and former food editor of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Follow her at susanpuckett.com.
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