I always have my ear to the ground when it comes to what home cooks – particularly the ones who are cooking for a family – want from their cookbooks. Since my daughter started school many years ago, I love talking to other parents about what they’re making for lunches or cooking for dinner. There’s always such variety – some people meal plan and grocery shop accordingly, some people (like me) make meals based on the ingredients they have in the moment, and some people pay for services like Hello Fresh. And it’s with cookbooks like the Love & Lemons series (review here, and here) by Jeanine Donofrio that focus on helping home cooks find approachable vegetarian and vegan recipes to nourish their families. With Donofrio’s latest book, Love & Lemons: Simple Feel Good Food, she provides recipes and inspiration for what she sees as the two main types of home cooks: the ones who prep in advance and the ones who are more spontaneous.
The cookbook is organized into 5 chapters – 1) Breakfast, 2) Salads, 3) Soups, 4) Dinner, and 5) Dessert. From there, each chapter has two sections – At the Ready recipes which can be made with a small list of ingredients in 45 minutes or less, and In Advance recipes with components that can be made ahead of time to be assembled later or meals that can freeze well, and recipes that share ingredients creating a more streamlined process. I appreciated the dishes where she gave a little background on the recipe. For instance, Donofrio’s recipe for Southwestern Veggie Hash was inspired by her time spent living in Austin. Or how her version of the classic Spanish dish, Romesco, differs from the original. When I saw the recipe for Savory Vegetable Cabbage Pancakes, I recognized one of my all-time favourite Japanese dishes: okonomiyaki. It’s here that I wished she talked more about her inspiration or even named the dish with its cultural name, as she does with a north African dish in the breakfast chapter: Shakshuka. I feel that we can all benefit from learning more about where our food originates from and what inspires authors.
While I’m a person who likes to cook in-the-moment and don’t often plan out my meals, using Donofrio’s book, I could see the wisdom behind prepping things ahead of time. For example, in the section, A Pot of Beans, she maps out the trajectory of a few recipes that all begin with cooking a pot of great northern beans from scratch. After making the beans, I used some of the bean cooking broth, along with the beans to make her recipe for White Bean Orzo Soup. This soup is perfect for autumn – full of carrots, kale, beans, pasta, and red pepper. Extra flavour is added through the use of fresh herbs (parsley and tarragon) as well as with a squeeze of lemon juice. On the subsequent nights, I used the remaining beans in salads and in a spread. Even though making beans from scratch can be time consuming, here Donofrio shows home cooks that it is time well invested considering that the beans can be eaten over several meals. Since I had some orzo left over, I decided to try her recipe for Creamy Orzo w/ Asparagus and Peas. In her recipe notes, she compares orzo to risotto in terms of their textures with orzo being cooked in a fraction of the time. A useful distinction when getting supper ready in a short amount of time. My family enjoyed the flavourful combination of garlic, leeks, fresh herbs, lemon, microgreens, peas, and asparagus.
We are a family of unabashed broccoli lovers! And I was able to find a couple of recipes to satisfy our cravings. I adore a combination of roasted and fresh vegetables in a salad because the flavours and textures are multiplied, which was the case with the recipe for Roasted Broccoli Salad w/ Curry Vinaigrette. The broccoli is roasted then combined with dates, spinach, sliced pear, pepitas and topped with a luscious vinaigrette comprised of blended dates. Another broccoli-centric recipe we enjoyed was the Broccoli Frittata w/ Everything Left. I appreciate how this recipe makes excellent use of the broccoli stems too. As in the book, I served slices of frittata garnished with microgreens.
Love & Lemons: Simple Feel Good Food offers home cooks a variety of ways to get meals on the table. Whether you like to meal plan and prep ahead of time, or you like to cook in the now, Donofrio has organized her cookbook to satisfy both types of home cooks. And, as with all of her cookbooks, her recipes focus on vegetarian and vegan meals.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank Penguin Canada for providing me with a free, review copy of this book. I did not receive monetary compensation for my post, and all thoughts and opinions expressed are my own.
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