Home Cooking With Jean-Georges: My Favorite Simple Recipes

Home Cooking with Jean-Georges: My Favorite Simple Recipes

One thing to keep in mind when approaching Home Cooking With Jean-Georges is that there is the everyday definition of "simple" – which usually involves an uncomplicated protein, a grain poured from a box into boiling water, and a thrown-together salad if the hungry folks gathered at the dinner table are lucky. And then there is Jean-Georges Vonge­rich­ten's definition of "simple," which is heavily informed by the titular home cook's standing as an internationally renowned French chef who owns 14 restaurants across the globe and assumes that the home in question is a weekend estate in a tony New York hamlet.

This is a "home-cooking" cookbook for the aspirational cook who seeks to broaden his or her repertoire of ingredients and is excited by the prospect of making a wild mushroom pizza with fried eggs for a weeknight dinner, or croque-madame topped with quail eggs that just happen to be in the fridge. Even the hot wings here call for a scratch-made Scotch bonnet sauce and the sliders involve homemade yuzu pickles. But where some of the recipes are inaccessible for the average household, others are indeed quite easy to throw together and are simply adapted. For example, the blueberry crumble cake is a delightful Sunday morning treat, even if you decide to swap out the allspice in the crumble topping in favor of cardamom. John Kernick's photographs lovingly document each artichoke leaf and cracked ciabatta crumb; indeed, if the recipes here don't appeal, Home Cooking With Jean-Georges is so visually striking it could easily double as a coffeetable book and conversation piece.