Twenty Dinners

A photographer (who happens to be an ex-restaurant cook) and an indie rock star (who happens to be an avid home cook) show you how to slow down your life by cooking beautiful, straightforward, but sophisticated, food for--and with--friends.
When he's on tour with his band, Grizzly Bear, what Chris Taylor misses most about home is the kitchen and the company. With his friend Ithai Schori, he cooks dinner parties for four to forty, using skills Chris learned from his mom and Ithai picked up working at high-end restaurants. Their food is full of smart techniques that make everything taste just a little better than you thought possible--like toasting nuts in browned butter or charring apples for a complex applesauce--but their style is laid-back and unhurried. This is about cooking not just for, but with, your friends, and so the authors enlisted their favorite pastry chef, mixologist, sommelier, and baristas to write detailed material on wine, desserts, stocking a home bar, mixing drinks, and buying and brewing fantastic coffee. Through more than 100 seasonally arranged recipes and gorgeous, evocative photographs of their gatherings you fall into their world, where you and your friends have all day to put food on the table, and where there's always time for another cocktail in a mason jar before dinner.

My thoughts: This is such a fun cookbook for entertaining! I love a lot of their ideas on menus (though, I'm not into drinks containing alcohol, so I didn't really care for their beverage ideas), since there is a fun collection of diverse dishes. My favorite is probably the recipe for Lillie's Sticky Toffee Pudding (a favorite dessert of mine!), though I also quite enjoy their recipes for vegetables, since I usually lack creativity in that area.
Over all, this cook book is a fun addition to my kitchen! I look forward to planning parties with the recipes included!
I received this book from Blogging for Books in exchange for my honest review.