Knife Drop: Creative Recipes Anyone Can Cook

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DiGiovanni: Absolutely. My mom certainly could use a crash course — she'd be upset to hear this — on how to treat your leftovers well. My dad, too, makes a lot of jokes about the leftovers we had growing up, but at the same time, it's one of those things that made me appreciate food every time we had it. Now, that makes me so conscious about all this stuff. Carbona(ra)men- Dude asks you to cook 8 pieces of bacon, remove the bacon and leave ALL the hot fat, and dump 2 cups of water into it. I explained the chemistry behind this to my son before doing it for the review and, as predicted, hot grease exploded all over my kitchen. This book is written for young inexperienced cooks. Will someone be burned? I think so. The food itself was a chore to eat. Way too much bacon. One note flavor. DiGiovanni: It is interesting. It's been interesting for me also — and I'm sure [for] many people — to watch how the whole space is evolving. What do you think about all of it, the fact that TV is not fizzling away, but it's different than it used to be?

DiGiovanni: Mine would often be dinner — cooking dinner or making the meals, which everyone was very happy about. Eventually, most people in my family caught on to the fact that it didn't feel like a chore for me, and then I would get looped into the garbage and looped into cleaning the dog's bed out and that kind of thing, but that was great for a while. I got away with that being my chore. For the sandwich: Place the tomato slices in a single layer on a work surface and season with salt and pepper to taste. Using a pastry brush, lightly coat one side of each slice of bread with mayonnaise, about 1/2 tablespoon per slice. Thiessen: I like the stories that go along with the food. You can see I have rooms of cookbooks all throughout my house; it's not just in the kitchen. I love buying cookbooks, because they're almost like coffee table books to me, to a certain degree, but also, I like reading the stories of where the food or the recipe came from. I read them like a normal book. I do know there's a lot of people out there — I know they're not all like that — but that's what cookbooks do for me.As for the recipes themselves, I’m quite pleased to report that the vast majority of them look like something I’d actually like to cook and/or eat. Obviously everyone’s tastes are different so no cookbook ever manages to be 100% for anyone (except perhaps its own author), but this one is closer aligned to my tastes than most. And I particularly like a book that combines some sophisticated classy recipes with some that are more comfort food. And I have to admit, what really caught my eye is that this book even includes a recipe to make your own home-made dino nuggies. I’m pretty sure that means this is an author who knows what his audience wants. Tuna Melt- The tuna was runny from too much mayo and pink from so much paprika. Also it called for sharp cheddar but the cheese in the picture was white. The finished product was super bland. Thiessen: Was that your first love of getting into cooking — the chore that you had to actually cook? Admittedly, some of the recipes live up to that promise a bit better than others. To be sure, there are several recipes in here that look just as impressive as anything you might find in a Michelin-starred restaurant, but with relatively simple ingredients and techniques accessible to home chefs. But there are also a couple that don’t quite hit that “impressive” mark or which might be a bit more intimidating to the home cook.

But that’s not to say those recipes are necessarily bad or failures by any means. And despite a couple maybe not quite hitting the same theme as the rest of the book, I consider the book on the whole quite a success. It was a teaching to my children and also my husband, because he always had this analogy of "leftovers are gross," and I wanted to show him that they're not. You can do really cool things with leftovers. That's the gist of the book, showing how many things you can do with buttermilk, how many things you can do with the bottom of the pretzel bag. [If] there's a little bit left, you can do something with it, and I can show you how to do it.

Finally, a Good BLT

DiGiovanni: Absolutely. Well, we were talking about social media, and there's all these young, new people writing books now. And now with the internet as big as it is, why would anyone want to go buy a cookbook? But having those ... You have that intense personal touch on it, where the recipes in both of our books have so much more love than some random recipe that you look up online ... Food is all about those little nuances and those little extra touches. Place the sheet in the oven and bake for about 12 minutes or until the sugar has started to caramelize. Flip the bacon, brush with the remaining maple syrup, and sprinkle with the remaining brown sugar. Bake for 12 to 15 minutes more, depending on your desired crispness. Tip:You should always bake your bacon. It makes for a far better final product. No more stovetop bacon please, unless absolutely necessary.

On that note of speaking to his audience, this might also be the perfect cookbook for the social media age because not only is the author apparently a social media cooking star of some sort, but he’s also included QR codes throughout the book leading the reader to videos demonstrating how to prepare some (not all) of the recipes. The author is apparently some kind of social media star, delivering cooking videos to legions of fans. I admit, I didn’t know his work prior to reading this book. But when I stumbled across the book itself, I found it rather intriguing. The theme here seems to be interesting, creative, restaurant-quality types of dishes, but which can be (relatively) easily prepared by home cooks in a home kitchen.