Books |
Small Victories: Recipes, Advice + Hundreds of Ideas for Home Cooking Triumphs
Julia Turshen
By
Published: Jan 25, 2021
Category:
Food and Wine
In the past year, I haven’t baked a single loaf of bread. And I quickly tired of making meals that took longer than 15 minutes to cook and consume. Now, as if waking from a dream, I think about what I’ll cook and what cookbook I’ll use.
On the small shelf of favorites: Julia Child, Marcella Hazan, Michael Anthony, and Melissa Hamilton and Christopher Hirsheimer. And, as of 2016, a new entry: “Small Victories: Recipes, Advice + Hundreds of Ideas for Home Cooking Triumphs.” It’s the book I’ll be using for the next stage of the winter lockdown.
“Small Victories” is a book that asks to be loved for the best possible reason — it loves you first. Julia Turshen has personality to spare, and she doesn’t hold back. Her book is a collection of the foods she likes to cook, stories about those recipes, life lessons learned from cooking, and “small victories.”
A small victory is a little trick or home truth that makes easy recipes easier and better. For Julia Turshen, it’s more:
“To me, a small victory is like a tip or a technique that you learn while making something that allows you to then make so many other things. I think it really worked as an organizing and teaching principle for the book, but it’s also very much –— and this is cheesy –— how I just look at life. I think we have to celebrate the small victories and celebrate these small moments, but also help to connect these victories with lots of other moments. I think that’s always true, but I think right now that feels especially true.”
Julia Turshen is missionary who came to her mission early. She opened her first “restaurant” at 3 and became known as “Julia the Child.” At 6: “I threw a black-tie Valentine’s Day party for my family and our closest friends. I wrote out a grocery list and a timetable for the evening. My father obligingly put on his tuxedo. My dress was black, white and red, but I was careful not to change into it until I’d set out the platters of butter cookies filled with raspberry jam and cream cheese sandwiches stamped with a heart-shaped cookie cutter.” She had business cards at 13, interned at a food magazine, became a private chef after college and a collaborator of celebrity cookbooks (Mario Batali, Gwyneth Paltrow).
Turshen becomes your new best friend very quickly, mostly because she is so… reassuring. “If you can make spaghetti, you can also make rice, quinoa, or soba noodles,” she writes. “If you know how to grill a hamburger, you know how to grill anything.” And this, above all: “Stress makes food taste bad.”
I’m not the only one thrilled by this book. Amazon named it a Book of the Month for September 2016, Epicurious named it first in a list of The 25 Most Exciting New Cookbooks, and Eater called it one of the Biggest New Cookbooks of 2016. Oh, and the Times said the book is “a clear, complete vision for what modern home cooking should look like: comforting, practical, often vegetable-focused and with a global point of view.” [To buy the book from Amazon, click here. For the Kindle edition, click here.]
Olive oil? For most recipes, she says Trader Joe is just fine. The chicken soup is from her Aunt Renee, who carried fake Vuitton bags. For “Julia’s Caesar” salad, she substitutes a spoonful of mayonnaise for raw egg. She cooks a favorite of Chinese take out: string beans with pork, ginger and red chile. Don’t fry meatballs, bake them. She makes Black Pepper Bloody Marys with my favorite pepper mill. Gluten-free? Turshen has your back. And, at the end, she offers 7 lists of 7 things you can do with chicken, ground meat, pizza dough and seafood.
Some recipes…
ROAST CHICKEN WITH FENNEL, ROSEMARY AND LEMON
serves 4
1 3-pound chicken, removed from refrigerator 2 hours before cooking so it’s at room temperature.
1 lemon
A combination of lemon zest, fennel seeds, chopped fresh rosemary and salt.
Preheat oven to 425.
Crush the salt and herbs in a mortar and pestle, then rub them inside the chicken and on the skin.
Cut the lemon in half, insert it into the chicken.
When the skin is brown and crisp and the temperature inside is 170 degrees, take the bird out and let it rest for 10 minutes.
If there’s any juice in the lemon, squeeze it over the chicken.
Serve with roasted fingerling potatoes and a small salad.
ROASTED SCALLION AND CHIVE DIP RECIPE
Makes 1 cup
24 scallions, white and light green parts only, roughly chopped
2 Tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil
1/4 cup mayonnaise
1/2 cup sour cream
1 tsp. sherry vinegar, plus more to taste
1/4 cup minced fresh chives, plus more for serving
1/2 tsp. ground black pepper, plus more to taste
1 tsp. Kosher salt
Potato chips for serving, preferably plain or salt-and-vinegar
Preheat oven to 425°.
Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
Put scallions on prepared baking sheet, drizzle with oil, and sprinkle with salt. Rub scallions to coat with oil and spread into an even layer. Roast, stirring once, until softened and browned in spots, 15 to 20 minutes. Let cool to room temperature.
In a food processor fitted with a metal blade, pulse scallions, mayonnaise, sour cream, vinegar, chives, and 1/2 tsp. pepper until combined. (Dip should be relatively but not completely smooth.)
Transfer dip to a bowl, top with additional chives, and serve with chips.
Dip will keep in an airtight container in the refrigerator up to 3 days; if serving dip cold, season again before serving, as cold temperatures tend to mute flavors.
