It’s been nearly a year since my last cookbook roundup, so in the interest of getting something up this month, here are the cook­books I have checked out the library since then.  None of these are really recommended⁠—I’ll present them in order from “meh” (= “that was disappointing”) to “meh” (= “oh, not too bad, I suppose”).

The fact that no one wanted to take credit for this says it all, no?  My notes indicate that while some of the meals I made turned out okay, it was only after I had doctored them significantly, adding spices and sometimes ingredients that changed the whole complexion of the dish (e.g., a potato side that I added a load of Swiss cheese to).  Without my meddling, the recipes generally came out as less than the sum of their parts.  One thing that threw me for a loop was that the book placed asparagus and artichokes, those quintessential signs that spring has arrived, in the “early summer” chapter.  Where on earth do asparagus and artichokes not show up until the summer?  Then it occurred to me to turn to the indicia, and sure enough, this is British.

This one caught my eye because, hey, I’ve heard of that guy: Floyd Cardoz was the chef behind Tabla, an Indian fusion res­taurant that I went to a few times when I lived in New York circa 2001.  I checked this out quite some time ago and didn’t remember it very well, so I went to my notes for a quick refresher.  Line after line said the same thing: “Forgettable.” “Forgettable.” “Forgettable.”  So apparently my forgetfulness wasn’t that surprising.  It looks like the top dish was “upma polenta with mushrooms”, which received the rave review of “pretty good”.

“1000 RECIPES”, says the cover, and within this tome of gossamer-thin, color-coded pages I hoped to find a world of recipes that went beyond the standard fare at Indian restaurants hereabouts.  I did, but not too many that I wanted to try.  There was a recipe for chana dal with coconut that was pretty good.  I didn’t like the paneer jaipuri, but Ellie thought it was okay⁠—she said that the seasoning was basically identical to the “pumpkin spice” that takes over American chain stores in September.  But she didn’t like the paneer makhani or the cauliflower with oranges, and at that point she vetoed any further role for Pushpesh Pant on our dinner table.

Now we’re getting into the ones with a few recipes I’d give a thumbs-up.  After I tried the mildly bitter but otherwise flavorless bok choy with tofu, I had low expectations, but there turned out to be an eggplant and mushroom dish that turned out well, and a carrot and cashew curry that I didn’t mind.  There’s also, oddly, a recipe for spaghetti with a broccoli topping that doesn’t have any Japanese flavors that I could discern, and I liked that one quite a bit.

But, more or less by default, this is the winner from this batch.  It certainly didn’t look like it was going to be at the start: the broccoli dish with miso and orange was a loser, as was the roasted romanesco with spiced yogurt.  But eventually I happened across some dishes that were the best things on this page: a charred zucchini and fennel number, a cauliflower steak with cashews, a Napa cabbage stir-fry… even the potatoes and green beans, which sound very ordinary, turned out to be more than satisfactory.

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