I love a good cookbook! I love the photos, reading recipes and the history of foods and food culture. I love the vibe that different chefs and home cooks present across the pages. I love vintage recipes and modern ones. I guess you could call me a cookbook nerd. I particularly enjoy a cookbook that contains a collection of recipes from an organization or a community. These usually contain a wide variety of recipes from home cooks from a variety of cultures.
The cookbook I chose to review this month is Open House Recipes and Food Memories. This cookbook is published by The National Alliance to End Homelessness.
The cookbook contains a variety of recipes collected from people of different cultures as well as stories told by the contributors about the place that food has played in their communities and families. Along with these stories are photographs of contributors and families. Some of the recipes are marked to indicate a particular chef contributor has supported organizations to feed and shelter the homeless.
Some of the recipes include:
- Arroz a la Mexicana
- Hawaiian Smoked Sausage
- Cajun Grilled Shrimp
- Emeril’s Seafood Seasoning
- Chicken Nuggets Italienne
- Curry Stir Fry
- Romanian Eggplant Dip
- Sesame Italian Butter Cookies
….and so many more.
The Hot Chicken Salad Recipe is featured on my Meal Prepping for the Week of March 15, 2021 post. I made this recipe because I had enjoyed a hot chicken salad when I had lunch for a Mom’s group i attended with my church. The Hot Chicken Salad was a casserole and this recipe seemed similar. I did NOT like this recipe from this cookbook. It looked like cat food. My son and husband said it was not awful, but they did not want it again.
I have tried other recipes from this cookbook, such as the Romanian Eggplant Dip and the Chicken Nugget Italienne. The Romanian Eggplant Dip was good, but the Chicken Nugget Italienne was only OK. As I work my way through these recipes in this cookbook, I expect they will be hit or miss, so I am not recommending this cookbook as a whole. I only recommend a cookbook if it seems about 90% recipe keepers. So far, this one is not hitting that mark.
