"Home Cooked: Essential Recipes for a New Way to Cook" by Anya Fernald and Jessica Battilana--down-to-earth, informative, and provides much food for thought--inspires us to take a second look at how we eat and manage our food

Home Cooked: Essential Recipes for a New Way to Cook
by Anya Fernald and Jessica Battilana

A recipe collection and how-to guide for preparing base ingredients that can be used to make simple, weeknight meals, while also teaching skills like building and cooking over a fire, and preserving meat and produce, written by a sustainable food expert and founder of Belcampo Meat Co.

Anya Fernald’s approach to cooking is anything but timid; rich sauces, meaty ragus, perfectly charred vegetables. And her execution is unfussy, with the singular goal of making delicious, exuberantly flavored, unpretentious food with the best ingredients. Inspired by the humble traditions of cucina povera, the frugal cooking of Italian peasants, Anya brings a forgotten pragmatism to home cooking; making use of seasonal bounty by canning and preserving fruits and vegetables, salt curing fish, simmering flavorful broths with leftover bones, and transforming tough cuts of meat into supple stews and sauces with long cooking. These building blocks become the basis for a kitchen repertoire that is inspired, thrifty, environmentally sound, and most importantly, bursting with flavor. Recipes like Red Pepper and Walnut Crema, Green Tomato and Caper Salad, Chickpea Torte, Cracked Crab
with Lemon-Chile Vinaigrette, Veal Meatballs, Anise-Seed Breakfast Cookies, and Ligurian Sangria will add dimension and excitement to both weeknight meals and parties.

We all want to be better, more intuitive, more relaxed cooks—not just for the occasional dinner party, but every day. Punctuated by essays on the author’s approach to entertaining, cooking with cast-iron, and a primer on buying and cooking steak, Home Cooked is an antidote to the chef and restaurant books that leave you no roadmap for tonight’s dinner. With Home Cooked, Anya gives you the confidence, and the recipes, to love cooking again.

NY REVIEW:  Making the most of what’s in season, locally grown, and supports the farming economy just makes good sense. Sustainable use of food resources when they are used fresh or are preserved by time-tested traditions tweaked by modern methods is a win-win situation for the consumer, the economy, and the environment. With “Home Cooked”, author and food visionary Anya Fernald, along with food writer Jessica Battilana, provides the inspiration to take a second look at how we eat and manage our food. Due to the strictures and pressures of today’s lifestyle, many of us have long since gravitated away from growing our own food, seeking out the freshest ingredients, cooking ahead, “putting up” food, and turning scraps and leftovers into little bits of recipe revivers. “Home Cooked” is down-to-earth, informative, and provides much food for thought. Both the text and the photography are unfussy—warm in content and tone, with the rich, deep colors of sunrise and sunset inviting to turn the pages and try the many delicious dishes. The influences of the author’s time abroad blended with her life in California give her own special spin to the food she produces and the meals she creates. You are cordially invited to try: “Bright & Fresh Tomato Soup”; “Blistered Green Beans”; “Cornmeal Spoonbread”; “Trotter Beans”; “Tallow Fries”; “Asado Potatoes”; “Blood Orange Salad”; “Chicken Braised in Vinegar & Aromatics”; “The Greatest Pork Spareribs”; “Wine-Braised Brisket”; “Roast Beef with Horseradish-Walnut Sauce”; “Honey Nougat”; “Buttermilk Panna Cotta”; “Jam Tartlets”; “Buttermilk Pie”; “Walnut Tart”; and “Savory-Sweet Ricotta Cheesecake”. Many of the recipes are Italian-themed with Italian titles, so looking at the photo and reading the recipe ingredients will make them easier to understand. Anya Fernald is the co-founder and CEO of the Belcampo Meat Co, the world’s largest sustainable meat company, with more than 20,000 acres of farmland in California and seven butcher shops and restaurants in the San Francisco and Los Angeles areas. Anya lived in Italy for many years working with Slow Food, and upon returning to the United States, launched Slow Food Nation and the Eat Real festival. Anya has been a regular judge on the Food Network’s Iron Chef since 2009, and also serves as the founding board chair of the Food Craft Institute. She lives in Oakland, California. Jessica Battilana is a food writer whose work has appeared in Martha Stewart Living, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Gastronomica, Saveur, Sunset, and the Best Food Writing Anthology 2008. She is the coauthor of three cookbooks: Vietnamese Home Cooking with Charles Phan, Tartine Book 3 with Chad Robertson, and Sausage Making with Ryan Farr. She is also the author of Short Stack Editions Volume 10: Corn. She lives in San Francisco, California.

Book Copy Gratis Ten Speed Press via Blogging for Books

About the Author

Anya Fernald is the co-founder and CEO of the Belcampo Meat Co, the world’s largest sustainable meat company, with more than 20,000 acres of farmland in California and seven butcher shops and restaurants in the San Francisco and Los Angeles areas. Anya lived in Italy for many years working with Slow Food, and upon returning to the United States, launched Slow Food Nation and the Eat Real festival. Anya has been a regular judge on the Food Network’s Iron Chef since 2009, and also serves as the founding board chair of the Food Craft Institute. She lives in Oakland, California.

Jessica Battilana is a food writer whose work has appeared in Martha Stewart Living, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Gastronomica, Saveur, Sunset, and the Best Food Writing Anthology 2008. She is the coauthor of three cookbooks: Vietnamese Home Cooking with Charles Phan, Tartine Book 3 with Chad Robertson, and Sausage Making with Ryan Farr. She is also the author of Short Stack Editions Volume 10: Corn. She lives in San Francisco, California.