Dinner for Everyone: 100 Iconic Dishes Made 3 Ways—Easy, Vegan, or Perfect for Company

The How to Make Everything author takes 100 dishes and offers three versions of each in this nifty volume: one simple, one complex, and one vegan. The variables that separate the easy recipes from the more difficult are, essentially, the prep time involved and the number and quality of ingredients. For instance, fast pho with tea broth has a dozen ingredients, including tea bags, and takes half an hour to brew, while pho with fresh noodles has more than 20 ingredients and takes three hours to create a fragrant broth spiced with anise, cloves, and peppercorns. Bittman’s vegan options intrigue, such as the wings, where chicken is replaced by battered celery root and blue cheese dressing is replaced by a blend of black bean and tahini. Eggplant parmesan with creamy tofu vodka sauce shines as a vegan option to a quick skillet chicken parmigiana and a more involved version with chicken, pancetta, and red wine. A section called “The Big Reveal” offers three dishes that are unwrapped at the table: chicken meunière under foil, curried tofu flan, and salt-baked whole fish. Diverse in scope and succinct in style, three times is a charm in Bittman’s latest, whether cooking for guests or for oneself. (Feb.)