This Will Make It Taste Good: A New Path to Simple Cooking Hardcover – October 20, 2020

Honestly, I thought that Vivian would be hard pressed to top her last incredible book.I mean, if your first book is an expansive ode to Eastern North Carolina (and one that weighs around the same as a small car) and that locale is where your inspiration hails from, then where do you go from there?In the introduction to This Will Make it Taste Good, Vivian confides in us that she did struggle with that issue for a long time before finally landing on the concept of how to cook delicious, fast, simple, every day dishes at home without sacrificing big flavor and she has succeeded in that, BIG time!I LOVE how this book provides ten piquant “hero recipes” complete with substitutions and then gives each hero an entire chapter to explore each one fully, via some wonderful sounding recipes for mains, snacks, drinks, salads, smoothies, desserts, glazes the list goes on.In addition to the recipes themselves she also provides a heap of other ideas on how to use each hero recipe, so that you can imagine yourself stockpiling it and reaching for it time and time again to amp up everything you cook!This book is 1950’s rollicking, with truly great, quirky, super cute pics of Vivian, funny recipe names, every food photo looks delicious – some are ugly delicious because we are not sacrificing flavor for a delicately garnished plate here, and every dish looks like something I want to eat immediately. From Where's My Medal Grits and Chicken, Fried Chicken Finally, Mussels Will Work For You, This is 40 Fettuccine (with fried zucchini and herbdacious sauce), Gingered Cabbage in a Quirky Cream, Little Bit Scrappy Little Bit Rock n Roll Parfait. I haven’t even tried to list the ones I want to cook, because I actually want to cook everything in this book. Seriously.There is something for everyone, from healthy sides, to cheese dip. From Glazed Ribs to Hippie Burritos it’s got it all!Vivans book is divided into the following chapters, and I have described the hero recipe for each chapter below:Little Green Dress – a briny herbaceous bright and vinegary condiment with olives, capers, garlic, shallots, parsley, mint, lemon, anchovy (you can omit this) hot sauce.R-Rated Onions – you guessed it caramelized onionsCan-do Kraut – a simple cabbage and cucumber krautRed Weapons – Tomatoes and Jalapenos in Brine with olive oil (and Vivian uses these four components as four separate ingredients!Citrus Shine – preserved citrusCommunity Organizer – similar to a sofrito but more vinegary and sweeter, using tomatoes, onion, garlic, bell peppers, red wine vinegar and brown sugar.Herbdacious – a pesto with garlic confit, basil, parsley, scallions and another soft herb of your choice.Quirky Furki – a punched up version of furikake using salt and vinegar chips (sign me up!)V’s Nuts- caramelized, spicy, umami toasted nuts. Yes to all of that!Sweet Potential - fruit preserves. Vivian gives a single recipe with a description of many different fruits and how to handle them for this simple recipe.So there you have it. Ten flavor bombs. Ten different chapters.To give you an idea of how extensive a chapter on a single flavor bomb is, I will go through the Sweet Potential chapter as that chapter gives us a broad selection of sweet, savory and drinks options.Sweet Potential Recipes:The Sweet Potential preserved fruit recipeRoasted BrusselsFruit Spinach Smoothie(it sounds really good)Chicken salad wrap with pumped up flavor courtesy of the Sweet Potential, and apples and grapes and goat cheese.Glazed Grilled Side of Salmon (we are told we can also try the same method on chicken wings, duck, pork)Four different pan sauces for porkA Bubbly Hot Sweet/Savory Cheese DipFour CocktailsGlazed Baby Back RibsA cake that is hard to describe so I will leave that to Vivian “its quick, its gooey, it’s sweet and tangy, it’s like tres leches cake and corn muffins had a messy casserole baby” and it looks delicious.A bread pudding breakfast BakeAll of the above recipes are made using the preserved fruit recipe that is provided. However, the variations don’t stop there, as Vivian goes through the following fruits as being suitable for the main hero recipe, Sweet Potential: Apples and Pears, berries of all kinds, figs, peaches, cherries, nectarines and apricots, grapes (all kinds) watermelon, citrus, and she also discusses the inclusion of spices.You could actually make all of the recipes above using dozens of different versions of Sweet Potential (using the same Sweet Potential formula) for a completely different flavor profile each time! The really cool thing here is that once you have know your way around a particular recipe, you can switch it up by giving the hero recipe seasonal variations.Confession time, I regularly make a delicious component for a dish and have leftovers of the condiment, or dressing or sauce etc. Often the recipe tells me how long it keeps in the fridge but fails to give me any ideas on what to do with it, besides the one recipe.It is a particular gripe of mine and one that generally hasn’t been addressed in any of my other cookbooks. At least not in any concerted way.A chef often gives an amazing sauce recipe and ONE recipe using it, or a couple of vague “also good with pork” wishy washy lofty, dismissive hand waving, its easy, type comments, and then says “make double or triple, it will keep in the fridge for two weeks” yeah but what to do with it exactly? How to use it before you have to toss it?That’s one of those conundrums that seems easy to a chef, right? Vivian knows that we mere mortals struggle with this, and here she gives us all the tools to riff like a chef in our own kitchens.This is a tour de force. This is brilliant. I love the concept, the recipes for each hero AND the recipes using each hero. I am thrilled, I can’t wait to cook my way through this book and I heartily recommend it to anyone who loves punched up flavors, simple delicious recipes and who has the desire to riff like we know what’s goin’ on!If this review was helpful to you, would you please click the helpful button? It always gives me a huge kick to see that my reviews were helpful to other like minded cooks. You might also be interested in my other cookbook and ingredient reviews and my ideas lists of kitchen tools etc. On my profile I also have an "ideas list" containing all of the books that I have reviewed previously. You may be interested in reading some of those also.Happy cooking!

Vivian Howard just opened a new restaurant in Duck, NC and was available to sign it for me. The book is full of tips and tricks to build products to elevate your cooking at home

Great buy

What has18 chapters, 331 pages and leaves you drooling, a Vivian Howard cookbook! She has outdone herself again. Her first cookbook! Deep Run Roots is an award winning cookbook, and it also won Vivian many kudos. This cookbook is similar in one way, Vivian tells the story of the recipe or how this cooking has impacted her life. This cookbook makes simple cooking exciting and accessible. You start out by reading this as you would any book, the stories of the food.There are 18 chapters and 10 chapters dedicated to the food and recipes. The photos are simply luscious, the photographer is Dexter Miller, and he knows how to glorify the food. Everything about this cookbook is exquisite and yet simple. Each chapter and recipe has an unusual and eye catching name. Hippie Burritos, Rock Me Don’t Shake Me Lemon Pie, Tomato Gravy To Me, and Caesar Me Convinced, are just but a few of these quirky recipe names. What fun must have been had thinking up these names.The point, of course, is that this is food for everyday. A simple addition that makes everything taste better. The side dishes often bring the food alive. Little Green Dish is a dish that is the most famous, a combination of olives, Shallots, fresh herbs, a particular vinegar, anchovies, capers and olive oil that can be kept in a jar in the fridge for up to a few weeks. Good luck making it last that long. This side dish is delicious on baked potatoes, chicken, steak, a filling with grilled cheese and even on pizza. This is the kind of food that brings back memories of good times and families. A really fun page is a list of things Vivian would do with food or her recipes. You will have to read it for yourself. This book is more than a cookbook, it is a lesson on family, life and how it all comes together.Recommended. prisrob 10-21-2020

Vivian always does a great job with all the items she cooks. This book has each dish focus on a particular 'mixture' added to each dish. We seldom whip up the 'mixture' and use our own to make them, and she does an excellent job describing preparation and instructions.

The title of my journal entry tonight is, "Why I Love Vivian Howard." And among many other reasons, whether you watch her shows, read her books, or cook her recipes, what is true of Vivian Howard is: "This Will Make it Taste Good."This is such a generous cookbook, from the art, to the range of suggestions with what to do with the flavor heroes, to the flavor heroes themselves. It does feel very personal, it's so fun to read, and it's a great extension of Vivian Howard's accomplishments, but the bottom line is that all of the flavor heroes in this book will literally make anything you cook taste good.I've watched many of her Zoom demos to promote the book on her FB page, and was inspired to make the R-Rated onions before the book even arrived on my doorstep. Like she says, she's developed the recipes in a way that you can hit or miss the mark by 10 degrees and still get a delicious result. Scrambled eggs have never looked so fancy, but these onions will elevate soups, stews, breads, pizza, and just about anything else.I'm excited to next try 'Red Weapons." I bought a small batch of these from her online store, and OMG. I don't know how else to describe them. They're a condiment like you've never known, and they serve so many purposes. I made my roomate nearly cry in joy when I threw them last-minute into some seared scallops. She thought I'd reached the 'next level' as a home cook, and all it took was a spoon in a jar.This book is a gift, Vivian Howard is a gift. Watch all of her shows, buy all of her books, live a more satisfying life.