Justine Cooks: A Cookbook: Recipes (Mostly Plants) for Finding Your Way in the Kitchen

by Justine Doiron

Overview

Find and refine your cooking style through 110 approachable and innovative plant-forward recipes from popular blogger and social media storyteller Justine Doiron.

“Justine Cooks is like your culinary buddy, encouraging you to try those daring flavor combos or master techniques you thought were out of reach. It’s an indispensable guide for both seasoned chefs and home cooking enthusiasts alike.”—Carla Hall, chef personality and author of Carla Hall’s Soul Food

Justine Doiron is known for approachable, inventive cooking that surprises with its unexpected flavor and ingredient pairings, as well as her love of vegetables, beans, bread, and farmers’ markets. She is also known on social media for her funny, inspiring, validating stories about the ways we connect through food. Here she shares 110 plant-forward recipes for salads, snacks, vegetables, seafood, and tofu plus beans, breads (as well as things to eat on or with bread), and dessert.
 
Recipes include Baked Kale Salad with Chili Quinoa, Breaded Beans with Nutty Skhug, Whitefish Peperonata, and Crispy Rice in Sungold-Miso Broth, plus simple breads like Sweet Potato Focaccia and Ripple Bread. The desserts chapter tempts with recipes like Tiny Salted Tiramisu Cookies and Butternut Squash Cake with Cinnamon Whipped Cream. With tips and techniques as well as kitchen wisdom she’s picked up on her cooking journey, Justine Cooks is a delicious invitation to explore your own cooking style and creativity.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780593582305
Publisher:	Clarkson Potter/Ten Speed
Publication date:	10/29/2024
Pages:	288
Sales rank:	2,348
Product dimensions:	8.20(w) x 10.20(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Justine Doiron is the recipe developer and food creator behind Justine_Snacks. Known for her simple, inventive recipes across Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube, Justine specializes in comfortable, cookable food with a focus on seasonality and approachable ingredients. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, Bon Appétit, The Washington Post, Good Morning America, The Rachael Ray Show, and more. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Read an Excerpt

Introduction

It was an Italian-style salsa verde that changed me.

I realize that it’s a kind of choice to start my book by talking about a condiment, but in this case, it’s fitting. That’s because, as I was trying to pinpoint the exact moment when I fell in love with food, I kept going back to a single recipe—parsley, capers, shallot, garlic, lemon, and olive oil. Taste, season, adjust, and repeat.

For context, I’m a person who didn’t grow up in a food family. We enjoyed food, but it wasn’t a part of us. I never had a fresh herb until my twenties, because before then? Well, it sure seemed like a frivolous way to run up a grocery bill. So, when I started to learn more about food—its history, the cultures that surround it, and the many different methods of preparing it—it opened up a whole new (and delicious) world.

And the salsa verde? Well, that zesty little Italian sauce came into my life after combing through one too many cookbooks (which okay, yes, there’s no such thing) and seeing that my favorite authors all included a salsa verde in their pages. At first, I couldn’t understand the hype. Salsa/gremolata/relish: They all felt the same to me. But then . . . then, one day I made it.

That one small sauce was the tipping point. Before that, I had been looking at food like a science. I was forcing recipes into rules, strict and precise. But as simple as this recipe was, it was the first flavor combination that showed me how expansive food could be: how an ingredient that felt boring becomes completely transformed when partnered with a few others; how different recipes and methods build beautiful flavors over time; and also, when it’s made in my kitchen, how non-formulaic everything becomes. Every ingredient has a story, a pairing, and a way to manipulate and master it. Food became electric, food became comforting, and it was food that took a girl (ahem, me) who didn’t have a cooking background and gave her a way to feel at home.

I started cooking online using the jokey name of atJustine_Snacks, sharing what I knew, what I was learning, and why food and eating were so important to me. I talked about how food made me feel as if I were building my own sense of belonging. Along the way, I heard from many people who felt the same way. Cooking bonded us. And while I loved my online name, deep down I knew it was always more than just “snacks.”

This book goes past where I started online, past my small apartment, where I tore through cookbooks like novels and textbooks rolled into one. I wrote this book to both connect with other home cooks and to share recipes that, frankly, I’m obsessed with—innovative ideas that you can master and transform. The recipes are technique-driven but accessible. They are repeatable, for easy go-tos, but also transformable, so you can make them your own.

I wrote these recipes for people who are deeply in love with food, but I also wrote them to satiate readers who, just like I once was, are learning and growing in their kitchen and looking for a way to make cooking feel uniquely theirs. These are the recipes I wish I had had when I started cooking: innovative and fun, each equipped with new techniques, methods, and small pockets of things to learn. Cooking is like a muscle, and I want this book to help you flex it. But if it does for only one person what that salsa verde did for me, I’ll consider it a success.

Editorial Reviews

I can feel my blood pressure go down every time one of Justine Doiron’s videos comes up on my For You page. I get so focused on cooking better, smarter, and faster that I forget to cook thoughtfully, and absorbing a Justine Cooks video is the culinary version of touching grass. Flipping through her cookbook has the same effect, and I suspect this book will long live next to my stove as a reminder to bring care back into my kitchen.”—Simply Recipes

“As much as Doiron’s recipes are inspired by fresh produce, she relies heavily on repeated pantry ingredients and advocates for humble staples like canned legumes. Her recipes are streamlined and unshowy; Doiron wants them to be foundational, not flashes in the pan.”—Eater

“This cookbook quite literally set my brain whirring and my mouth watering and basically left me unfit for anything other than cooking my way through it immediately, I do not exaggerate. Dates are torn. Harissa eggplant is drippy. Poached eggs are kimchi crusted. The green beans are frizzled, the shallots are sticky, and the tomato beans are hotties (and they know it).”—Daphne Oz, bestselling cookbook author and Emmy award-winning television host

“Justine Cooks is like your culinary buddy, encouraging you to try those daring flavor combos or master techniques you thought were out of reach. It’s an indispensable guide for both seasoned chefs and home cooking enthusiasts alike. Get ready to be inspired.”—Carla Hall, chef personality and author of Carla Hall’s Soul Food

“Justine Doiron’s debut book Justine Cooks is innovative and inspiring. Whether you’re a new or seasoned cook, this book gets you excited to be in the kitchen and Justine is alongside rooting you on.”—Colu Henry, author of Back Pocket Pasta and Colu Cooks: Easy Fancy Food

“Apologies to my mother, who tried very hard, but no one can get me to eat my vegetables like Justine. In Justine Cooks, her plant-forward recipes are intensely crunchy, creamy, crispy, and crave-worthy. Meet me at the farmer’s market, ladies, it’s go time!”—Dan Pelosi, author of Let’s Eat

“Whether you’ve been following and loving on Justine Snacks for years (hi, that’s me!) or are just discovering her here, you are in for a gorgeous and delicious cornucopia of genius cooking tips, flavor combos, recipes, and more. For me, it was the ‘obsessive chocolate chip cookie behavior’ spread that confirmed Justine and I are indeed soul snack sisters.”—Jessie Sheehan, author of Salty, Cheesy, Herby, Crispy Snackable Bakes
 
“Justine’s recipes are pure comfort food with a daring side, and this combo immediately gets me excited for what I’m going to cook. I love that this cookbook resonates with her humor as well as her calm reverence for exceptional ingredients and beans, always beans.”—Samantha Brown, host of Samantha Brown’s Places to Love
 
“Not only is this book beautiful, but Justine’s approach to cooking makes me crave vegetables in ways I never knew I could. These recipes are flavor bombs with thoughtful steps to make ordinary ingredients shine in a way that meat would only play second fiddle to. I imagine finding this book dog-eared and stained in my kitchen for years to come.”—Nini Nguyen, chef and author of Đặc Biệt: An Extra-Special Vietnamese Cookbook

From the Publisher