One of the world’s fastest growing cooking websites, Good Bite brings together the Internet’s best food bloggers and gives them a platform to showcase delicious, everyday recipes in short, entertaining videos. Now, Good Bite Weeknight Meals compiles 140 recipes for quick and delicious family dinners from the site’s most popular contributors. With recipes from well-known bloggers like Jaden Hair from Steamy Kitchen and Catherine McCord of Weelicious—along with mouthwatering full-color photographs from Matt Armendariz of Matt Bites—Good Bite Weeknight Meals brings the blog world’s very best into your home kitchen. Try fast Grilled Chicken Tacos from Rachel Rappaport or Jenny Flake’s Caramelized Onion & Sweet Pepper Turkey Burgers. Kate Jones’s glazed Korean Barbecue Beef Skewers are surprisingly simple, and Julie Van Rosendaal’s long-simmered Curried Lamb and Lentils offers amazing flavor with minimal effort. For gluten-free cooks, Shauna James Ahern and Daniel Ahern of Gluten-Free Girl offer Pork Medallions with Shallots, Dried Cherries & Spinach. Lori Lange’s recipe for Salmon Wellington Puff Pastry Squares with Creamy Parmesan Sauce sounds complicated but really isn’t, and for a vegetarian option, Kath Younger’s Mexican Polenta Casserole offers gooey, cheesy comfort. So no matter what your taste, you’ll find plenty of quick and tasty dinner ideas inside.
With this cookbook feature and recipe highlight, we’re very excited to welcome Bev Weidner as a new Cooks&Books&Recipes Featured Cook. The motto for her blog Bev Cooks—”Creative Home Cooking with a Foodie Flair”—fits perfectly with my love for cooking that is simple yet also distinctive. Right now I’m craving this: Prosciutto-Wrapped Chicken Stuffed with Basil and Cheese. In addition to her cooking and photography skills, Bev’s other characteristics I admire and envy are her boundless energy (Bev, please send me some!) and her zany humor (as you’ll discover in her reviews). Enjoy!
Featured Recipe: Wild Mushroom Soup
Recipe creator Kath Younger, Kath Eats Real Food (KERF)
This recipe looks fancy, but it is so easy to make! The hardest part is foraging for wild mushrooms—or you can just pick up a few varieties at the grocery store. Be bold and move beyond the button mushroom—try cremini, oyster, or even enoki mushrooms for rich and varied earthy flavors. You can use drained canned navy beans instead of cooking them from scratch.
Photo credit: Bev Weidner
Cooks&Books&Recipes Featured Cook Bev:
I’m kind of in love with mushrooms. Like, to the point that if there was a Sadie Hawkins dance tailored specifically for women and vittles, I’d totally ask mushrooms to go with me. And I’d wear a cute denim mini skirt and penny loafers with tassels, and I’d opt out of room spray as my go-to scent for the night.
I mean business, you guys.
Photo credit: Bev Weidner
Sadly, life doesn’t work that way. There will never be a Sadie Hawkins dance tailored specifically for women and vittles. I’ll never get the chance to ask mushrooms to go with me. I’ll never own (or admit to owning) a denim mini skirt and penny loafers with tassels, and I’ll always wear room spray as my default scent.
I think I can actually hear a violin in the distance.
I was given Good Bites Weeknight Meals to review a couple of weeks ago. This cookbook made me a little squealy because it features a lot of food bloggers that I regularly read, some that I talk to, and others that I stalk on Twitter. OH YOU DO, TOO. Flipping through every page of this cookbook — from the descriptions to the photos to the diversity in the recipes — it truly rated OMG.
Choosing just one recipe was absolute torture. However, magical rays of heaven shone down upon me when I landed on a wild mushroom soup recipe, by Kath Younger. I stopped, wept, danced, and jumped in the car to pick up the ingredients needed for this little darling of a dish.
Kath’s technique in making this soup is simple and straight-forward, which, uh, is genius. It took no time at all, and the result had me moaning in the kitchen. I had my windows closed. It’s cool.
Photo credit: Bev Weidner
Photo credit: Bev Weidner
The soup’s creamy texture is comforting. The chunks of real mushrooms are instantly satisfying. And the flavor is “wildly” (get it? HAR) complex and almost rustic, but not overbearing. It’s divine. Seriously, it’s freaking delicious. As a matter of fact, I’ll think I’ll have my 429th helping right now.
Yes, yes I will.
Read Reviews/Comments
Wild Mushroom Soup
Serves 4
- 2 teaspoons olive oil
- 2 pounds assorted fresh mushrooms, chopped
- 2 large carrots, peeled and chopped
- 2 large celery stalks, chopped
- 3 garlic cloves, minced
- 2 14-ounce cans low-sodium beef broth
- 2 10.5-ounce cans low-sodium cream of mushroom soup
- 1 cup cooked navy beans
- Chopped walnuts, for garnish
Heat the oil in a large pot over medium heat. Add the mushrooms, carrots, celery, and garlic and cook, stirring, until tender, about 7 minutes. Add the beef broth, soup, and beans, stir, reduce the heat to low, and simmer until the soup is fragrant and thick, 10 to 15 minutes.
Remove the pot from the heat and use an immersion blender to puree the soup, leaving some chunks intact (or cool the soup slightly and puree three-fourths of the soup in a standing blender or food processor before returning it to the pot). Serve immediately, garnished with walnuts.
© 2011 Good Bite
—From Good Bite Weeknight Meals: Delicious Made Easy, by Good Bite (2011)
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