Bones


 

"Influenced by the traditional cooking of France, where she lives for part of each year, by the roast-joint-and-three-veg Sunday lunches she grew up on, and by a particular plate of tall roasted marrow bones she ate in Paris Ms. McLagan has produced a work of refreshingly old-fashioned sensibility about food."

— New York Times

"McLagan tends to balance her flavors neatly…..McLagan’s personable prose is leavened with bone miscellanea and bone quotations. This debut volume is nearly everything a cookbook should be: wise, stylish, and delicious."

— The Boston Globe

Jennifer McLagan has a bone to pick: too often, people opt for boneless chicken breasts, fish fillets, and cutlets, when good cooks know that anything cooked on the bone has more flavor – from chicken or spareribs to a rib roast and whole fish. In this book she offers a collection of recipes for cooking beef, veal, pork, lamb, poultry, fish, and game on their bones.

Chicken, steak, and fish all taste better when cooked on the bone, but we’ve sacrificed flavor for speed and convenience, forgetting how bones can enhance the taste, texture, and presentation of good food – think of rack of lamb, T-bone steak, chicken noodle soup, and baked ham. In her simple, bare-bones style, Jennifer teaches home cooks the secrets to cooking with bones. Each chapter includes stocks, soups, ribs, legs, and extremities and many of the recipes are simple, with the inherent flavors of the bones doing most of the work.

In addition to the recipes, Bones includes a wealth of information on a wide range of bone-related topics, including the differences among cuts of meat, as well as the history, tradition and lore of bones.