To the Last Bite: Recipes and Ideas for Making the Most of Your Ingredients

Recipe developer deBoschnek, of BuzzFeed Tasty’s Chef out of Water, delivers delectable ways to reduce waste and the “strain it puts on the food chain” in her clever debut. Leveraging her experience working in test kitchens, she advises readers on “small steps” to shop and cook more consciously—“stick to a grocery list rather than impulse buying”—and offers a set of resourceful recipes that aim to maximize every ingredient (down to the tops of leeks). Vegetables figure prominently, but dishes run the gamut from “showstopping dinners” to simple pantry-based recipes, all big on flavor. Olive tapenaude creates “an umami bomb of savory flavor” for a tantalizing snack, a Green Goddess salad utilizes tender herbs that can be “regrow[n]” at home in a glass of water, and a medley of roasted root vegetables shine in a pot pie. Dishes can sometimes be labor intensive, requiring marinating or multiple elements for prep, but deBoschnek’s recipes ingeniously repeat ingredients to utilize leftovers: the rest of the yogurt for a chilled green soup, for instance, can be saved for a chive flatbread, while the thyme from ricotta salata with cracked spices can later be tossed into the marinade for decadent butter-basted lamb chops. Even the scraps sing in this inspiring and innovative collection. (Apr.)