Simon & Schuster The Modern Proper: Simple Dinners for Every Day (A Cookbook)

This cookbook is wonderful and beautiful and most importantly so realistic for people who are busy during the week! The miso skillet chicken is the best chicken I have ever made and I crave it weekly with the arugula salad! You will not regret this purchase!

I follow The Modern Proper on instagram and love their easy yet delicious meals, so decided to purchase book to make cooking easy!

Bottom line up front – get this book now! Follow The Modern Proper on Instagram, bookmark The Modern Proper web page, infuse meal time and kitchen life with these delightful recipes and thoughts on food, cook, learn, have fun, and enjoy the fruits of your labor with family and friends. I am a relatively new fan of The Modern Proper (TMP). I was introduced to their website by a friend with whom I often share weekly meal plans, especially when struggling to develop the meal plans. After trying a few of their recipes, I was hooked. Since then, I’ve experimented with maybe 20 of their recipes. Of all that I have tried, there is only one that I will not make again and my husband disagrees with my decision to not make it again. I had maybe 10 TMP recipes in the queue when I received this cookbook and now there are countless more from the book – beginning with black bean tostadas with avocado-corn salad and sweet cider scallops with wilted spinach. My mouth waters just thinking about it! I exist in many worlds. I am a Gen Xer, my husband is a baby boomer. We are northerners with southern roots. We wear jeans and flip flops when given the choice and suits as senior managers at work. We have been known to drink boxed sangria out of crystal stemware and expensive wine out of stemless wine glasses from Target. Here’s the thing – this book contains recipes that would work well in all of those environments! I would be equally willing to prepare a dish from this cookbook for our colleagues in the C-Suite as I would for my family from a different food culture and my most cherished girlfriends who show up at my house when neither my person nor my home are prepared to entertain. TMP recipes make simple seem fancy and they are always delicious. The cookbook is visually striking with a focus on dinner. Ingredients are readily available, common in kitchens of people who cook, and of average expense. (When I say “cook,” I mean simply preparing some whole foods, not necessarily only whole foods.) Some recipes are truly from scratch, some rely on bottled sauces. Some spice mixes and sauces can be used for multiple dishes. In my experience, TMP recipes are forgiving. Substitutions are possible and mistakes do not necessarily ruin the meal (on one occasion, I left out an ingredient entirely and while my husband and I acknowledged that the ingredient would have made the meal better, it was still good.) I find TMP recipes so easy to follow that I occasionally make them for guests without testing them in advance. The final thought that comes to mind about Holly and Natalie is this. Great cooks are often intimidating. Normally the thought of preparing food for distinguished chefs would be terrifying. I would love to invite Holly and Natalie to dinner at my home. They radiate such a lovely spirit of hospitality that I am convinced we would either enjoy the meal, or trash it and order pizza. Either way, I imagine it would be a fun evening. I think that is what their brand is all about. Cook to enjoy the food and your loved ones, and do not stress.

Probably one of the best cookbooks I’ve come across in many years for this level and type of cooking. The recipes are superb distillations of oftentimes complex dishes, yet no flavor or vitality is lost in their simplification. Beautifully written and laid out with excellent photos which not only enhance the experience of using the book, but also provide realistic visuals on what you can actually expect to come out from the dish. I’ve yet to find a miss or poorly thought through recipe. The ingredients are all easy to find and available year round, plus there are a lot of opportunities within the dishes to experiment or build on if you so desire. They’ve also provided 25 pages of tips and tricks that I’ve spent 25 years learning through trial error. I wish I’d had a cookbook like this much earlier on in my cooking journey as it would have saved a lot of time and effort! I also appreciate the use of real, whole ingredients like EVOO, cream, butter and others, eschewing the far less healthy (and tasty) nonsense we’ve been told are better for us. I can’t recommend this cookbook enough.

Amazing recipes ! Easy to use.