Cornerstone Cooking: Learn to love your leftovers. [Paperback]

Nick Evans (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 16, 2012

Cornerstone cooking is a book dedicated to teaching you how to plan meals better and use leftovers to your advantage.
The book is centered around eight cornerstone dishes. These dishes are meals that are great on their own, but can also be used as the backbone for other great meals. Each chapter includes a cornerstone dish and then 10-12 supporting recipes that include the cornerstone dish.
Here are a few examples of how you can use this book:

• Use leftover roasted chicken to make homemade chicken and dumplings in under an hour.
• Learn why it makes sense to bake a dozen baked potatoes at once.
• Learn how to finally use up that extra stale bread that's in your fridge.

Below is the full list of cornerstone dishes presented in the book. Each of these comes with 10-12 supporting recipes that are simple to make once you have made the cornerstone dish.

• Simple Roast Chicken
• Spicy Black Beans
• Grilled Flank Steak
• Homemade No knead Bread
• Baked Potatoes
• Lentils
• Slow Cooked Marinara Sauce
• Vanilla Ice Cream

For more information on Cornerstone Cooking, as well as more ideas for cornerstone dishes and supporting recipes, be sure to check out www.cornerstonecooking.com, a dedicated (and free) community setup just for cornerstone cooks!

Editorial Reviews

Review

"I fell hard for [Cornerstone Cooking] and I think it will be motivating my meals for many months to come." - Marisa, foodinjars.com

"Of course, leave it to a blogger to come up with the first cookbook I've seen in eons that is actually useful." - Endlesssimmer.com

"I have never seen a cookbook laid out in such a unique yet totally logical way." -Dan, thefoodinmybeard.com

Product Details

• Paperback: 156 pages
• Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform (March 16, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1469966662
• ISBN-13: 978-1469966663
• Product Dimensions: 9.9 x 7.9 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,081,520 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Nick has been writing about cooking and inspiring people to cook more at home for the last three years through his popular cooking blog, Macheesmo.com.

Nick grew up in Wyoming and graduated from Yale University with a degree in philosophy. His current philosophy is that homemade food is best, and he is passionate about teaching people how to make cooking at home an enjoyable and worthwhile activity. In short, he gets people to put down the menus and pick up the spatulas!

Nick lives in Colorado now with his wife and official taste-tester, Betsy, their dog, Porter, and their cat, Tipsy.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Good, but tending too close to tradition April 12, 2012

By True Axiom

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

I keep three cookbooks on my shelf: Alton Brown's two titles and The Joy of Cooking. The first two taught me how to cook, and Joy is there for quick reference. "Does this contain eggs?" "Nope! No eggs!" In general I find my recipes on cooking blogs, like the author's own Macheesmo, and Alton Brown teaches me methods.

Cornerstone Cooking comes close to being a method book. It's built around a core idea--using your leftovers for new dishes--but it devolves into a normal cookbook too quickly. What you get is a few pages on the concept, followed by eight "examples": master ingredients that produce copious leftovers easily appropriated into other dishes. Let's get practical for a moment: I've made about a half-dozen of these recipes, and they work. They're of the quality you expect if you've ever made anything from the blog. If you haven't, they're good recipes: creative, easy to understand, well written. There's a slight lack of pictures. Not every recipe gets one. This is a sadness: I am 86% more likely to make a recipe that comes with a picture.

The chicken and dumplings, in particular, is spectacular. People were declaring it the best thing they'd ever eaten.

That said, I was looking for a bit more philosophy. I was looking for the author to do more with the concept: leftovers. I know, it's got a blog and forum associated with it, designed to accomplish this, but I missed it in the book. Eight cornerstones are extrapolated upon, and that's great, but I wanted suggestions of other things that could apply to this method. I also wish more of them were immediately useful: flank steak, one of the cornerstones, is ludicrously expensive in my parts, and ice cream is cheaper to buy than make most weeks.

I'd recommend the book, all told, though, because it's teaching a valuable skill: how to make things from other things. It's a modular method of cooking, and this really helps you pinch the pennies.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Cookbook for actual people March 27, 2012

By Not necessary

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

Written and photographed in great style by the amazing food blogger Nick Evans, this is a great addition to any practical chef's bookshelf. The book has a unique focus in that rather than just assuming you have all the ingredients you need it builds out from central dishes anyone can make. I've followed his blog for years and loved the recipes I've made from it.

I'll be pulling this out regularly from now on, including tonight!

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars simple, easy, step by step cooking March 29, 2012

By Dawn C. Finicane

Format:Paperback

simple, easy, step by step cooking with meals you want to eat.
helps you LEARN to use your leftovers without all the fuss
love the curried mashed potatoes.
love the notes/tips at the bottom of each recipe.
dawn-- vanillasugarblog.com