Friday Night Dinners
(Random House) ISBN 978-0307356758 0307356752
Bonnie Stern shares 170 recipes and menu suggestions for family dinners, barbecues and special occasions with friends, relatives and coworkers. Friday Night Dinners contains 310 pages of easy comfort food recipes with tips, make-ahead hints, variations and serving suggestions. The Bonnie Stern recipes range from fast food to vegetarian. Some of the menus feature ethnic food, such as Middle Eastern and Israeli. Other menus celebrate special events, like graduations and Rosh Hashanah.
Hummos with cilantro pesto. Grilled pita with za'atar. Lemon basil martinis. Spiced cranberry port sauce. Chicken tagine with honeyed tomatoes and chickpeas. Potato gnocchi. Matboucha (Moroccan cooked tomato salad). Fish cakes with cilantro mint chutney. Rack of lamb with harissa and charmoula. Arugula and almond salad with preserved lemon dressing. No-knead artisanal bread. Date honey.
Bonnie Stern includes favorite family recipes in this cook book, like her mother's apple cake. Readers will also find recipes from Bonnie Stern cooking classes, such as chocolate bark with almond, ginger and orange peel.
Tips, such as slicing goat cheese with dental floss and how to use leftovers, accompany each recipe. For example, Bonnie Stern recommends using leftover challah to make a French toast casserole, which resembles bread pudding. She suggests creative ways to serve dishes, like arranging roasted carrots on a bed of parsley with a garnish of carrot greens.
Friday Night Dinners include Passover dessert recipes with no flour, like clementine cake with chocolate glaze, chocolate meringue kisses and caramel matzah crunch.
Bonnie Stern's recipes and menus make it easy to entertain friends and family and ensure that everyone feels relaxed.
Recipes in Friday Night Dinners include make-ahead dishes and variations. For example, Bonnie Stern's recipe for mashed sweet potatoes, flavored with vanilla and chipotle, can be altered with maple syrup or coconut milk flavors.
Bonnie Stern introduces the menu and recipes in each themed chapter. She also includes cooking techniques like how to make porcini powder to flavor veal chops and how to ripen avocados (put them into a bag or container of uncooked rice).
All recipes in Friday Night Dinners are kosher. The Index lists the ingredients and the recipes that include them.
Color photos by Bonnie Stern's son, Mark Rupert, illustrate family, friends, Friday night dinner dishes, ingredients and table settings.
Bonnie Stern
Bonnie Stern is the author of twelve cookbooks and founder of the Bonnie Stern School of Cooking.