I stumbled across Linda Griffith’s Nuts: Recipes from Around the World That Feature Nature’s Perfect Ingredient completely by accident while looking for some other cookbook in the stacks at the library, the spine jumped out at me. I flipped through a few pages and, noting the high ratio of vegetatian to meat recipes, was surprised I’d never come across any recipes from Nuts online.

Oddly enough, there really aren’t any recipes from Nuts online. I always search for cookbook recipes online before giving in and typing them out myself for my recipe binders. The only results for any of the recipes I selected from Griffith’s book were in Google books, so I’m glad I stumbled across this copy in the library. Otherwise I may not have come across such intriguing recipes as “Savory Cheesecake with Basil & Walnuts”, “Cornmeal & Chestnut Griddle Cakes”, and “Pistachio Corn Cakes”. Those are a few of the highlights, another one of which is the notion of a Hazelnut Sauce which Griffith puts on a pizza with fontina & truffle oil but I’ll be filing on it’s own under sauces to serve with gnocchi, ravioli, or really, just about anything that wants a sauce (I’m thinking about using it as a gravy the next time I make chickpea cutlets).

I love Italian food, but don’t like to eat simple carbs like pasta and rice too often so my options as a vegetarian at Italian restaurants are usually pretty limited. So when I saw Marcella Hazan’s Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking mentioned as THE Italian cookbook, it quickly made it’s way onto my short list of books to check out from the library.

Hazan’s vegetable recipes are very simple, more notions of how to cook the vegetable in question than recipes, but sometimes I save recipes just to be reminded to make things. There are lots of simple preparations of various veggies topped with butter, breadcrumbs, parmesan that are often the best way to serve a vegetable, but when you’re like me and have binders full of recipes to try, you often forget the simple basic ways. I bookmarked several of these quick savory vegetable recipes.

Some other notable recipes:

I never save recipes for soups with rice in them, but the Rice & Smothered Cabbage Soup recipe somehow appeals to me.

The recipe for Acquacotta - Tuscan Peasant Soup with Cabbage & Beans looks like a fantastic way to use up the celery sitting in my fridge, I may make this on Monday if I have time (the cooking time is over 3 hours, not active thankfully).

As I mentioned above, since we avoid simple carbs I couldn’t excuse a pasta machine even though though there are many ravioli recipes I would love to make (and rolling pins are my nemesis). Hazan includes a huge chapter on pastas and sauces of course, including how to make various pastas. The one pasta that I bookmarked is actually in the soups section and calls for a food mill - Passatelli Egg & Parmesan Strands in Broth, I’m going to try to make it like spaetzle with my ricer.

Speaking of soup, I’ve never found minestrone to be very interesting, but I am intrigued by Hazan’s recipe for Paniscia which marries risotto with leftover bean & veggie soup. Another rice dish that I’ll try is Boiled Rice with Parmesan, Mozzarella, and Basil - it’s a bit unhealthy with all that cheese but I think I’ll pair with with kale & capers to cut the fat.

I recently grabed 1080 Recipes from the library as I had seen it described as the “Spanish Joy of Cooking”. For some reason the idea of Spanish food always sounds so appealing to me even though it tends to be full of things I can’t eat.

This was no exception, I flagged 10 of the 1080 recipes.

There were some inspiring ideas - it had never occured to me to make a vegetable mousse, 1080 offers recipes for asparagus and leek versions, which seems to be the oposite of a soufflee (using yolks instead of whites). I was also reminded to make semolina gnocchi, which I’ve actually had a recipe for sitting around for quite a while now, semolina flour is just not an ingredient that I have on hand for any other reason.

Other recipes that I flagged for future experimentation:

Baked Swiss chard ribs with garlic & parsley
Cardoon in garlic & vingear sauce (I’d never heard of cardoons, a relative of the artichoke, I wonder if they are available here)
Green asparagus with sauce (the addition of eggs at the end intrigues me)
Fava beans with milk & egg yolks (see a trend here?)
Souffle omelet with parsley or cheese

Desserts:
Walnut Log
Sable pastry for tarts (involves lemon zest)
Filled walnuts

The best part of 1080 Recipes, and what makes it a gorgeous cookbook despite the majority of recipes onvolving meat, was the illustrations:

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