common senses cooking

Lindsey Baruch thinks about food a lot. It’s her job. As Lindsey Eats online, she develops recipes and shares them with readers, encouraging them to use all their senses as they cook. It’s how she learned to cook, by using sight, smell, taste, feel, and hearing to stay present in the moment as she cooks and to find the ways to make the most of her ingredients.

Baruch draws on her family’s time living as Baghdadi Jews, her husband’s Persian heritage, growing up in America with a large extended family, and her travels to create dishes that are packed with flavor. Whether you’re looking for a Smash Burger with Secret Sauce or a Roasted Shwarma-Spiced Whole Cauliflower with Garlicky Tahini and Quick-Pickled Onions, then you can find them in Something Delicious.

She focuses on how being present in the kitchen makes the act of cooking more enjoyable and makes the food taste better. If you focus your senses on the cooking, then you can listen to the sizzle of the meat hitting the hot pan, smell when the nuts are perfectly roasted, touch bread to feel if it’s done, see the golden brown of perfectly roasted chicken, and taste to balance the salt and heat. Paying attention to the process is calming, and the results demonstrate how paying close attention can make all the difference in the details.

There are several recipes to help beginners get started, like how to make the perfect pot of rice or roast chicken. There are a wide variety of recipes, snacks, appetizers, breads, salads, pastas, soups, and sides. There are recipes for fish, chicken, and meats, as well as desserts and drinks. So if you want to make Danny’s Sicilian Pizza with Garlicky Oil, Cream of Broccolini and Smoked Gouda Soup, Spicy Peanut Noodles with Snap Peas and Scallions, Auntie Nina’s Spicy Slow-Braised Beef Chitanni, Tahini Chocolate Chip Cookies with Toasted Sesame Seeds, or Grandpa’s Piping Hot Chai, you’ll find all those and more.

Baruch has created these 100 recipes to bring the focus on cooking for family. Her desire to bring people to the kitchen and for them to cook by their senses is coupled with a love of food. She expresses herself with warmth and confidence, which drew me into her world and made me want to try her recipes. I thought this was a really enjoyable cookbook to spend time with, and I can’t wait to try that Sicilian pizza recipe myself.

Ten Speed Press provided me with a free copy of Something Delicious, with many thanks, but the opinions are my own.