it's a hundred good things
After all these years that Martha Stewart has been teaching us how to cook, entertain, bake, decorate, clean, organize, garden, and reinvent ourselves, the time has finally come. It’s time for her 100th cookbook. For Martha: The Cookbook, she has curated 100 of her favorite recipes, a mix of timeless favorites, classic home dishes, menu items from her restaurant The Bedford in Las Vegas, and a few showstoppers perfect for entertaining.
With an emphasis on high quality ingredients and the most successful techniques, Martha has written a variety of recipes for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and desserts, including hors d’oeuvres and cocktails. From how to make the perfect omelet to her Paella, from Martha-tinis to Herb Roasted Chickens, from her Tomato Tart to the Brown Sugar Angel Food Cake, these recipes come from generations of cooking and happy experiments in the kitchen. The Beet Soup is based on her Polish mother’s recipes, brought to America. But the Roasted Turkey in Parchment with Brioche Stuffing came from her and her Martha Stewart Living trying new recipes for the holidays.
Along with these favorite recipes are old family photos and stories and memories of Martha and her family. She talks about how she first went to Paris at 17 as a model and discovered a multitude of foods she’d never dreamed of. Later, she cooked her way through the entire first volume of Mastering the Art of French Cooking. She had a child. She worked on Wall Street, and later opened a small specialty food market that lead to her catering events. Through this book, we get to see and hear about bits and pieces of these moments, as well as her time hosting her television show and creating her magazine.
Her recipes span from more recent trends like Green Juice and Kale Caesar Salad, recipes she ;earned from other cooks like the Miso Eggplant from Nobu or the Steamed Eggs from J. Kenji Lopez-Alt, to the time-honored Potato Pierogi or a classic Strawberry Shortcake. There is something for everyone in Martha: The Cookbook, and longtime fans of Martha Stewart will definitely appreciate how it’s all packaged together into one beautiful book.
That being said, it may not be possible to replicate these recipes as precisely as she does. She is known for sourcing the best possible ingredients, the freshest seafoods, the finest olive oils. She has a large garden with vegetables and herbs grown from seeds she’s been collecting for years. She has her own fruit trees. She has chickens that lay fresh eggs every day, cows that give fresh milk. She can buy expensive cheeses, truffles, caviar. She bought a machine to help her make homemade puff pastry (although she did master it by hand before buying the machine). A lot of readers won’t have the same access or resources. I’m sure the recipes will still create delicious dishes, but they are not all accessible for a home cook.
That being said, there are still a lot of recipes that will work well for a home cook. Martha offers ideas for how to make things more flavorful or easier (like how to prep some potato dishes, like her Scalloped Potatoes, early without the potatoes oxidizing). She calls out her favorite kitchen equipment and alcohols by name, and several of the desserts aren’t too difficult but would be perfect for a large family gathering like a holiday. She gives tips preparing eggs to make them easier to peel while cooking them perfectly, and good ideas for preparing seafood and a variety of vegetables. And of course, the photography is beautiful throughout. Martha fans will treasure this cookbook, and those wanting a place to start with her many cookbooks, magazines, and television series will find Martha: The Cookbook the perfect place to find a curated list of her favorite and best recipes along with some of her history and her personality. It’s a good thing.
A copy of Martha: The Cookbook was provided by Clarkson Potter, with many thanks, but the opinions are my own.
