Cookbook Review: Everyday Chef

Here’s why Everyday Chef is my new essential cookbook. I cook regularly for myself and my kids, and I have a set of recipes I make on the regular, plus clean-out-the-fridge meals I can make in my sleep (hello, tacos). But even everyday recipes that feed a hungry crowd and make leftovers need a refresh. Daily cooking can become the most tiresome, the most uninspired. I love trying unfamiliar, unusual recipes—but if I try to make them too often, I find myself not enjoying the process and feeling overwhelmed. For weeknight cooking, or for when I want to entertain and keep it simple, I found this cookbook to be exactly what I need.

Most of the recipes in this book are familiar to me and probably will be to many regular cooks—quiche, french toast, white bean stew, roasted rack of lamb, twice-baked potatoes. However, they all have that little extra cheffy something—an ingredient or a technique—that brightens them up and makes me excited to cook them, like mushrooms, shallots, and crème fraiche in the scrambled eggs or ginger mustard and tomato-basil salad to accompany the grilled tuna. In fact, one of my favorite parts of the book comes at the end, where Sewall includes a number of simple how-tos, like cooking eggs in various ways and making tomato sauce from scratch. There were some fun surprises as well: spicy ginger broth with pork meatballs and bok choy; chocolate pots de crème in the short dessert chapter; and a super simple combo of poached eggs, smoked salmon, and salsa verde on toast that I’d just never thought of. 

I also loved the robust sides section, filled with colorful vegetables and hearty dishes like ricotta-filled eggplant rolls. One my favorite recipe styles shows up in the Feeding a Crowd chapter: tacos for a crowd, which blends recipes from other parts of the book (slow-roasted pork shoulder, simple black beans, caraway and cumin rice, and grilled shrimp) with simple toppings and accompaniments for a giant smorgasbord of deliciousness. 

I was excited to try versions of some of my go-to recipes that have gotten to feeling a little flat and tired lately—namely, the riffs on chicken soup and pasta with meatballs—as well as a recipe that lives in the breakfast section but also makes a great weeknight dinner: baked eggs with spiced potatoes, made into a hearty one-pan meal with the addition of ham steak and broccoli rabe, one of my favorite vegetables. This recipe turned out both simple and delicious, and leftovers do make a great breakfast, although I cooked the eggs fresh again rather than reheating. 

Despite my excitement, I couldn’t help but be a little skeptical of the pasta with meatballs and red sauce recipe, which calls for using a stand mixer, sautéing onions, and including ricotta and sour cream. It looked like more work than my usual hand-mixed meatball recipe, but it all turned out to be more than worth it for incredible flavor. I loved using the stand mixer for these—no messy hands and essentially the same amount of cleanup. Using cooked onion rather than minced dried added flavor depth, and I will never again make meatballs without ricotta. I did substitute plain, full-fat, Greek-style yogurt instead of sour cream, which I usually do because it’s a versatile ingredient I always have on hand, and I think that substitution worked well.

Like this recipe, the chicken, vegetable, and orzo soup included what at first seemed to be one or two extra steps—roasting the chicken with celery salt, cooling the orzo on a baking sheet after cooking—but again, I found that this did not add a noticeable amount of extra work or time. I actually used the same baking sheet I’d made the chicken on to cool the orzo, tossing it in the juices from the chicken rather than adding oil. And I made the soup in the same pot as I’d cooked the orzo. I haven’t been a celery salt user in the past, but I really loved the additional flavor on the chicken, as well as the simple additions of fennel and leeks as aromatics. 

One ingredient that stood out to me throughout the book was Spanish onion, which was nowhere to be found at my local grocery stores. I looked up a good substitute and tried a sweet onion, which was successful in every dish.

Reviewing this book also gave me the opportunity to interview The Local Palate Editor in Chief Erin Byers Murray, who consulted with Sewall, about what it’s like to work with someone else’s recipes to produce a cookbook.

The Local Palate Editor-in-Chief Erin Byers Murray cowrote Everyday Chef with Jeremy Sewall. She’s an author of several books herself—Shucked: Life on a New England Oyster Farm; Grits: A Cultural and Culinary Journey Through the South—and has worked with Sewall on his previous cookbook, The New England Kitchen: Fresh Takes on Seasonal Recipes, so I was curious to ask her about what it was like to be the “with” on the byline.

The Local Palate: What’s the process of coauthoring a cookbook with someone else’s recipes?

Erin Byers Murray: In some ways, it’s so different than what I do in books and magazines, because I’m channeling someone else’s voice. It’s really about making sure that everything in the book, from the tone to the way that the recipes are written to the stories that are being told, feels like it’s from the chef and I’m not inserting myself into it. That takes a little bit of finesse. We spend a lot of time on the phone going through the recipes and the stories behind the recipes. Depending on the project, if the chef happens to be a decent writer, which I’m lucky that Jeremy is, he can start by putting something on paper, and then I can make it more concise and really bring out his voice. In general, when it’s a really good partnership and you know this person you’re working with, it flows pretty easily.

TLP: How do you and Jeremy Sewall know each other?

EBM: He came back to Boston to open a restaurant at the same time that I was starting out as a food writer at Boston Magazine, so I interviewed him, and then I would go to him as a source for other stories, and we developed a good rapport. He was coming up as a chef; I was coming up as a food writer. It was really a nice time for us to get to know each other. 

Then I went to work on an oyster farm where he happened to know the farmer, and he was one of the first people I told, and he was so excited. He would bring his team down and I would take them on farm tours. Our paths wove together along the way a lot. 

TLP: You also have a culinary degree—how does that impact how you’re looking at recipes?

EBM: What I learned in culinary school was technique and vocabulary, so when I’m reading recipes, I can intuit what [a chef] might shorthand. Like with braising, you have to start with browning, and then build on that. Culinary school was so instrumental in understanding techniques so that I can translate recipes in a more complete way. And [also] I have to read the recipes like a home cook. When something’s not clear in chef speak, I’m able to translate it.

TLP: Did you have any aha moments working on this book?

EBM: As a home cook, I’m thinking the same thing you are: How can I use fewer dishes? How can I make the cleanup easier? And there’s a step [Jeremy] suggests in a lot of his recipes when it comes to cooking grains—cook them in more water than you need and then drain, as opposed to letting all the water get absorbed. And I kept saying, “But do we have to do that? Can’t the water just get absorbed?” He was like, just trust me. When I do it at home now, it is an extra step, and it does add a little bit of time, but it really is the difference in fluffiness and texture that added this wonderful lightness to the grains that I didn’t even know I was missing.

It’s that very chef-driven technique that home cooks aren’t necessarily thinking about because they want ease and convenience. But when you take a minute to do it and you build it into your routine, it becomes second nature, and it enhances the dishes that you might be so used to making all the time.

TLP: Do you have a favorite recipe in the book?

EBM: That chicken and orzo soup from the cover is a family favorite. The other one that I love is the chicken and dumplings. It wasn’t something I grew up with. But [Jeremy] makes his dumplings with corn flour and baking powder. Dumplings can get really thick and heavy if you’re just using all-purpose flour. The corn flour was another kind of, Aha, I need to play around with other sources of flour.

Baked Eggs with Spiced Potatoes

Chicken, Vegetable, and Orzo Soup

Pasta with Meatballs and Red Sauce

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