No Tweeking Necessary

You must not listen to the people who say you shouldn't buy cookbooks anymore because you can get any recipe you want to from the internet.  Why deny yourself the pleasure of browsing a recipe book for ideas and enjoying good photography?

The Malibu Farm Cookbook by Helene Henderson is a recipe and lifestyle book based on her restaurant of the same name at the end of the pier in Malibu California. 

This farm to table cookbook combines simple recipes with the sumptuous photography of Martin Lof.  Henderson writes a light narrative of her journey from Scandinavia to California and her steps and missteps of buying a farm, and catering private parties on her small farm that turned into hard to come by reservations and the start of her restaurant.  A sampling of chapters includes From the Coop, From the Hive,  From the Sea and Beach and From the Vineyard to name a few.  While the book does follow some eating trends of the day (think KALE) it contains plenty of meat and seafood recipes and uses dairy and butter and grains.

How to best review a cookbook?  Make some of the recipes.  I tried several including Roasted Portobellas with Roasted Red Pepper Pesto, Black Olive Aioli, Salmon and Grainy Mustard Dressing and Malibu Honey Marinade.  None of these recipes required odd ball ingredients or tweeking the recipes in anyway.  Henderson does give substitutions if you are following a dairy free or gluten free diet.  The ingredients worked well together and the directions were clear.

So many cookbooks today seem to be fashion books filled with photos of the author in designer clothes, smiling and pretending to eat the prepared food.  This books shows real people in real clothes working on the farm and in local environs.  And most importantly--some really creative recipes that are straightforward to prepare.

My thanks to Blogging for Books for providing me a review copy of this book.