In The (Newlywed) Kitchen With Lorna Yee {video post}

I recently had the great pleasure to receive a review copy of the stunning new cookbook, The Newlywed Kitchen by Lorna Yee and Ali Basye. You don’t have to be a newlywed to enjoy the colorful recipes contained herein, as there really is a little something for everyone inside. The book does a magnificient job demystifying the culinary world. There are snapshots into the lives of esteemed food industry professionals detailing both how their love stories started and how they incorporate a passion for food into marriage.  Each recipe makes two portions, which I love because it’s always easier for me to scale up, yet more often than not I find myself scaling down giant pans of lasagna and the like. The book is diverse in the sense that you’ll find classic comfort food like an award-winning recipe for mac n cheese on the one hand versus Taiwanese beef noodle soup on the other. Just like what every good marriage needs, the book keeps things new, different, spicy and innovative.

I realize I am blessed to live in Seattle and therefore have no problem finding the ingredients needed for some of the more esoteric recipes in the book, which has been a criticism by some. To that point, in this day and age so-called specialty items are available by one-click ordering online and require only a little advance planning. Also, farmer’s markets are springing up across the country and this book can be used as a guideline wherein you may substitute locally-produced ingredients of your choice as I have done in with the pea shoots in place of arugula in the recipe Lorna and I make together in the video below. One final point on sourcing ingredients: as we’ve learned with FOOD Inc and other great educational sources on the unveiling of the true nature of the food industry in this country, supply comes with demand. Consumers have the power to access what they want in this country and I suggest we use this power to make seemingly unusual ingredients more commonplace. Ten years ago almost no one owned a mobile phone. Nowadays you’d be hard pressed to find someone without one. Wouldn’t it be great if we could do the same thing with high-quality, humanely-produced food?

Another aspect of this book I’d like to address is the fact that “newlywed” does not mean “beginner” any more than it means “virgin.” The vast majority of us don’t go into a marriage entirely unskilled in the arts of the bedroom, so I don’t understand why some critics of this book expect that the “newlyweds” reading it should be neophytes in the kitchen as well. Sure, you may require a working knowledge of the difference between a microplaner and microgreens but there’s nothing in the book that is too-difficult for an average home chef to prepare. Back to my bedroom analogy, to spice up a new marriage you’d be better off reading The Kamasutra than Where Do Babies Come From.

The recipes in The Newlywed Kitchen are created from Lorna’s fine palate and exacting standards. To that end, she has taken all the work out of achieving excellence so that you can make the recipe and bask in the inevitable complements you’ll receive serving it. If you really want to impress someone, cook from The Newlywed Kitchen. I could revisit the sexy bedroom analogy yet again here, but I think you get the point without me having to border on vulgarity. Suffice it to say that The Newlywed Kitchen is like an aphrodisiac in the kitchen- use it wisely and use it often and you won’t have any trouble keeping your life spicy. I invited Lorna to give my readers a firsthand look at what it’s like to cook from The Newlywed Kitchen, so I’d like to leave you with this one-take video of Lorna and I preparing Mediterranean-Style Tuna for our hardworking husbands. I hope it gives you an indication of just how easy and delicious the recipes from this book will be in your own kitchen.