Milk Street: The New Rules: Recipes That Will Change the Way You Cook

This clever collection of savory dishes illustrates 75 rules, such as using copious amounts of herbs to amp up flavor or incorporating mashed potatoes into dough for a tender crumb. Each rule is illustrated by at least one recipe, and Kimball, founder of food media company Milk Street, offers dishes that feel modern and international, such as stir-fried Malaysian noodles and shrimp in spicy tomato sauce from the Kerkennah Islands off of Tunisia. Most of the rules are sensible and useful: for example, use baking powder for a lighter frittata, and chill meatballs so they retain their shape. Some rules, however, overlap or contradict each other: readers are instructed to sauce a Peruvian-style chicken dish rather than to marinate the meat in order to add flavor, and then to sauce previously marinated meat in Japanese-style ginger pork for the same reason. But this is a quibble in an otherwise generous and accessible volume. Additional two-page “Milk Street Pantry” spreads are loaded with information on ingredients, such as info on pomegranate molasses, and countless useful tips (to wake up bland tomatoes, roast, pickle, or simmer them). Plenty of I-never-thought-of-that moments fill this enticing and instructive book. (Oct.)