Three Cheers for Martha!

Martha Stewart's Everyday FOOD is a great magazine. The recipes are straight-forward, the ingredients are readily available, and the results are almost always satisfying. Her new cookbook Everyday FOOD: Fresh Flavor Fast is a collection featuring 250 "easy, delicious recipes for any time of day".

Since space for our ever-expanding cookbook collection is at a premium, I've begun using my library to screen possible additions. It took a couple months to reach the top of the hold list, but it was worth the wait. Over the past couple weeks, I've tried three recipes: a chicken entrée, a vegetarian pasta dish, and a dessert. All were very well-received.

First we tried Peanut-Crusted Chicken Breasts. The recipe called for unsalted peanuts, but I couldn't find them and used unsalted cashews instead. Delicious! This will become one of my 'go to' dishes. The recipe can be found here.

Next up was Farfalle with Arugula and White Beans. Again, I substituted a couple of ingredients - spinach for arugula and pine nuts for walnuts. This dish was very good, but a little bland. The recipe called for a "generous amount" of salt in the pasta cooking water (some reserved water is used in the sauce), but I probably wasn't generous enough. Walnuts may have been a little more flavorful than the pine nuts, too. This recipe is also available online.

Finally, our Mother's Day Dessert...The Lemon-Ricotta Tart was rich, but not too sweet or lemony. You'd never guess such an elegant dessert was so simple to prepare. Margaret plans to make it again for her AP Lang class. This recipe is also available on Martha Stewart's website.

Everyday FOOD: Fresh Flavor Fast is very well done. There is a wide variety of recipes, the directions are clear and concise, and there is a picture of each dish - a big plus in my book! However, since so many of the recipes available online, I doubt I will purchase the book. Instead, I will spend more time browsing Martha Stewart's website.