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Cookbooks
‘Kitchen Remix’ Is for This Moment
A new cookbook inspires us to be creative with the ingredients in our pantry
Charlotte Druckman has good timing. Following Women on Food — an anthology that debuted alongside the #MeToo movement — she‘s released her second book in six months: Kitchen Remix: 75 Recipes for Making the Most of Your Ingredients — just as we’re stuck at home cooking through what we have on hand.
Lucky for us, Kitchen Remix inspires creativity with pantry items, through 25 sets of three ingredients — each set followed by three recipes, along with options for spinoffs. So, the section on cannellini beans, garlic, and chili features one recipe for a pot of beans, then another for recooked beans — “if you try it this way, you’ll strengthen the comparison that’s often made between this dish and mashed potatoes.” The third recipe of the set is Fool’s ful, the Egyptian dish that she says “won’t pass for the real thing,” but she’s hoping you’ll appreciate the riffs. Great with eggs and pita for breakfast, it’s the recipe that, four years after she wrote it, she goes back to again and again.
“It feels timely because people are so interested in Middle Eastern food now,” she says, “and tahini has become a pantry staple across the country.” It has “this little bit of elegance,” with the homemade chili oil — “but you could also buy it.” Of the dish, she says, “It’s just so bright. And so fresh. And so easy.”
Kitchen Remix follows her debut cookbook from 2016, Stir, Sizzle, Bake: Recipes for Your Cast-Iron Skillet, also from Clarkson Potter. And though she finished Remix a couple of years ago, the book was on hold while the publisher fast-tracked other gadget-focused cookbooks that showcased items like the Instant Pot — and she prioritized her anthology. Which brings us to the present: As it turns out, this evergreen cookbook couldn’t be more apropos.
I caught up with Druckman to find out a few more details about her newest cookbook. Here are the highlights.
