The City Cook: Big City, Small Kitchen. Limitless Ingredients, No Time. More than 90 recipes so delicious you'll want to toss your takeout menus

by Kate McDonough

The City Cook is an elegantly simple and eminently practical guide to fitting great cooking into a busy life and a small kitchen, including more than 90 recipes from Kate McDonough, editor and founder of TheCityCook.com.

Taking you from fishmonger to cheese merchant to greenmarket and then back to your own kitchen, The City Cook makes confident, cosmopolitan cooking effortless. You’ll learn how to find the best ingredients at specialty shops and farmers’ markets, how to curate an urban kitchen, and how to entertain in the city. It will be easy to resist takeout and mediocre restaurant meals with satisfying, pulled-from-the-pantry dishes such as Carrot and Chickpea Salad with Lemon Vinaigrette or Spaghetti with Tomato Paste and Garlic. Deceptively simple showstoppers like Green Beans with Tomatoes and Prosciutto, Salmon Cakes with Spicy Sriracha Mayonnaise, Broiled Black Cod with Miso, and Seared Duck Breasts with Port-Shallot Pan Sauce give you exciting weeknight options. Recipes for Bloody Mary Sorbet with Crab Salad Brioche, Simple Oven-Roasted Whole Duck, and Grand Marnier Soufflé give you an excuse to host a sumptuous supper for your friends.

Genres: Cookbooks, Cooking, Nonfiction, Adult

288 pages, Hardcover

First published November 16, 2010

Reviews

[Richard Oosse · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm one of those freaks of nature that reads cookbooks cover to cover and as such, I expect certain things from them: Does it have it's own personality and how often does the author's voice shine through? Does this collection of recipes have a reason to be bundled together and is the book supported by one strong coherent theme? Presentation - attractive as a coffee table art book or as unspectacular as a bunch of black and white inkjet printouts?

"The City Cook" gets pretty high marks in most of those categories. It's central idea - that city dwellers have smaller kitchens and less mobility when using public transportation - is a realistic modern day niche and is taken into consideration in every recipe. The key, McDonough stresses, is to keep a well-stocked pantry so one only has to pick up one or two items on the way home from work.

There's lots of text here surrounding each recipe. Strategies, shopping lists of must-have pantry ingredients and cooking equipment, questions you should ask every merchant and backgrounds and approved variations on every recipe here (more than 90) are just some of the topics mentioned throughout this book.

On the debit side, there are no food photos anywhere in this cookbook. I found that surprising but considering this sturdy hardcover is only $20, I guess some kind of trade off had to be made. Regardless, I found this book just so damn readable that I'd still recommend it as one of the best in its class.

[Blog on Books · Rating 3 out of 5]

Environment seems to be a theme of several recent books, including “The City Cook” by Kate McDonough. McDonough, a Manhattanite who has slowly learned cooking through both classes and practical experience, advocates the creation of an alternative urban culinary style that doesn’t avoid restaurants and take-out, but instead creates viable alternatives to outsourcing one’s food supply. The City Cook understands the needs of urban dwellers (small kitchens, hectic schedules, etc.) and offers templates for organizing one’s meal planning, first by quality stocking – from utensils to pantries – and then by learning two types of meals; perfecting a variety of old standbys as well as allowing time for experimentation and learning new menus. (Though one drawback is that the book seems particularly skewed to NYC that unlike most urban zones has particularly small apartments and a lack of personal vehicles that most urban areas do not suffer in the same way.) It is that last part that is “the City Cook’s” main focus. Some ninety plus meals are presented here, but the real benefit is in the author’s addressing the limitations of the big city/small apartment chef and the focus on tips and resources including the new spate of urban farmer’s markets. The book is partnered with her website, thecityguide.com.

[Andrea James · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this book more and I did read it cover to cover (which I probably wouldn't have done for a 1-star book). I almost had to remind myself that 2 stars on Goodreads means "it's okay" and 3 stars is "I liked it". I felt 2 is a little harsh but I didn't actually like it... so 2.5 perhaps.

It wasn't clear who exactly this book was written for. Is it for city people with hectic schedules? The introduction seems to suggest that it is. If so, there are no clear indications of how long the recipes take to prepare or cook, which one would have thought would be a useful feature for people flipping through the book looking for inspiration.

The formatting also doesn't make it easy for city dweller types (which I am) to read quickly and/or make notes.

"In my many years of cooking for company I've learned that everyone loves salad, and I've never served a more popular first course than a colourful variety of them."

I had a little chuckle, in (slightly unfair) mockery of Scottish friends, thinking, "*everyone* loves salad, really?" :) And I've definitely served more popular first courses than salad - scallops with a blood orange sauce for instance has been very popular with friends.

(It's worth noting that the book is a little more helpful for American city dwellers than European ones).

[celia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rather disappointing... I found this book because I was looking for inspiration for things to do with my CSA. Although I found a lot of the recommendations and general information in the preface to be useful/interesting, a lot of the recipes were too complex and would serve more people than what I was looking for. I'm not wanting to have dinner parties, I want to feed myself!

Maybe I just didn't know what I was getting myself into when I found this book, but how it was advertised to me was not at all like what I found within its covers.

[TBML · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this cookbook. Although the toppic is city cooking, it accurately describes the need for easy access with limited ingredients and time. This book also speaks to those with a sophisticated pallete but the ingredients are spare in many recipes and the concentration is on being a good shopper and proper preparation. The print is large and easy to read. I enjoyed this book! Louanne

http://tinyurl.com/4n9x2hd

[Margery · Rating 4 out of 5]

Her subtitle is actually: "Limitless Ingredients, No time". Loving this cookbook! My rule is that if I mark 10 or more recipes, then I need to purchase it. 12 recipes marked by pg. 200. Yay!