The Everlasting Meal Cookbook: Leftovers A-Z

by Tamar Adler, Caitlin Winner (Illustrator)

Overview

* A James Beard Award Nominee *

* A National Bestseller * Named a Best Book of the Year by Financial Times, Los Angeles Times, Wired, Smithsonian, Publishers Weekly, and more *

Award-winning author Tamar Adler’s inspiring, money-saving, environmentally responsible, A-to-Z collection of simple recipes that utilize all leftovers—perfect for solo meals or for feeding the whole family.

Food waste is a serious issue—nearly forty percent of the food we buy gets tossed out. Most of us look around the kitchen and struggle to use everything we buy, and when it comes to leftovers we’re stuck. Tamar Adler can help—her area of culinary expertise is finding delicious destinies for leftovers. Whether it’s extra potatoes or meat, citrus peels or cold rice, a few final olives in a jar or the end of a piece of cheese, she has an appetizing solution.

The Everlasting Meal Cookbook offers more than 1,500 easy and creative ideas for nearly every kind of leftover. Now you can easily transform a leftover burrito into a lunch of fried rice, or stale breakfast donuts into bread pudding. These inspiring and tasty recipes don’t require any precise measurements, making this cookbook a go-to resource for when your kitchen seems full of meal endings with no clear meal beginnings. From applesauce to truffles, potato chip crumbs to cabbage—this comprehensive guide makes it easy to find a use for all everything.

Sensible, frugal, and consistently delicious, the recipes in The Everlasting Meal Cookbook allow you to prepare meals with economy and grace, making this a vital resource for every home cook.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781476799667
Publisher:	Scribner
Publication date:	03/14/2023
Pages:	560
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.70(d)

About the Author

Tamar Adler is the James Beard and IACP Award–winning author of An Everlasting Meal; Something Old, Something New; and the bestselling The Everlasting Meal Cookbook. She is a contributing editor at Vogue and has been a New York Times Magazine columnist. She has cooked at Chez Panisse, and lives in Hudson, New York.

Editorial Reviews

★ 03/20/2023

James Beard Award winner Adler presents an impressive encyclopedia of recipes for elevated but frugal and environmentally friendly eating. Building on her 2012 essay collection An Everlasting Meal, she offers more than 1,500 recipes intended to reduce food waste by giving new life to everything from wilted cucumbers and old garlic to leftover escargot. For Adler, unused ingredients and remainders are an opportunity, and her philosophy proves infectious. Cores and leaves of cabbages and cauliflowers, for example, are not to be squandered; instead prepare an “any vegetable” sabzi or minestra. Cube leftover Halloumi and fry with olives, chili flakes, and herbs. Rewarm fried oysters and add them to a Remoulade-sauced omelet. What to do with leftover guanciale ends? Make classic pasta All’Amatriciana. And for something sweet, stale cookie crumbles get a chocolate-covered makeover as “cookie clusters.” Recipes run the gamut in international flavor profiles, techniques, and sophistication, occasionally requiring some harder-to-source ingredients (fenugreek, eel, pokeberries). There are also plenty of practical, family-friendly options, and it’s this range that really sets the book apart. Adler’s thorough guide will inspire all levels of cooks to say goodbye to waste and embrace the ABCs of leftovers. Agent: Kari Stuart, CAA. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

"This is the book I’ve been waiting for all my life... a rejuvenating approach to using up odd ends and making the most of your ingredients, even ones you normally wouldn’t think twice about tossing.... Adler’s conversational tone feels like a friend cheering you on as you rummage through your fridge for dinner." —Bon Appetit

"Where the average home cook might see stray puzzle pieces that don’t fit together, Adler sees delicious possibilities... Drawn from her restaurant experience, kitchen experimentation, and global cookbook collection, Adler’s diverse recommendations range from practical to reassuring to unexpected." —Saveur

"Steeped in culinary practicality, mixing vibrant ideas with sharp real-world strategies... her tone is generous." —The Wall Street Journal

"I love the elegant honesty of Tamar’s writing, the sureness of her direction and the range of her ideas. It’s the kind of book that makes you feel more capable just by opening it." —Emily Weinstein, NYT Cooking

"Adler helps jump-start your creative process with easy ideas for even the most specific bits and bobs." —Real Simple

"A seemingly endless encyclopedia of recipes that rely on what's left after we finish the initial meal. Adler gives new life to the foods that many of us leave in the fridge to waste away... . The way she sees it, by making something new, you're honoring and extending the labor you put in the first time around." —NPR.org

"Breathes new life into every last leftover and scrap... very persuasive... there’s something about Adler's confidence as both cook and writer that is reminiscent of M.F.K. Fisher." —Tejal Rao, The New York Times

"A comprehensive, beautifully illustrated and gracefully written resource... a no-waste ethos permeates these many pages with goodwill, humor, and hope. As with all things Adler, the writing is fantastic: expert and unfailingly elegant." —Vogue

“One of the year’s best recipe books... Adler is economical. You trust her because of it.” —Financial Times

“This should join the reference shelf in your kitchen as a comprehensive guide to assembling any mismatched array of food into something artful and memorable.” —Christian Science Monitor

"Tamar Adler's guide to redeeming leftovers is endlessly useful and great fun to browse: it deserves an everlasting place in any kitchen." —Harold McGee, author of On Food and Cooking

"The Everlasting Meal Cookbook is as inspiring as it is essential. Before you even finish reading the introduction, you know you are in good hands. Tamar Adler can teach the most trepidatious person to become a more intuitive and spontaneous cook." —Andy Baraghani, author of The Cook You Want to Be

"Adler helps jump-start your creative process with easy ideas for even the most specific bits and bobs." —Real Simple

"A seemingly endless encyclopedia of recipes that rely on what's left after we finish the initial meal. Adler gives new life to the foods that many of us leave in the fridge to waste away... . The way she sees it, by making something new, you're honoring and extending the labor you put in the first time around." —NPR.org

"Like an artsy genius friend you wish you had in college, Alder has the palate, confidence, and descriptive ease of greats like Alice Waters and Anissa Helou... you'll keep this book within reach and use it often." —Wired, Best Books of 2023

"Comes at a time when food prices are biting, environmentalism urges us not to throw away reusable things, and the pandemic forced us to become better cooks. Adler emphasizes saving time and boosting taste as well." —Associated Press

"Breathes new life into every last leftover and scrap... very persuasive... there’s something about Adler's confidence as both cook and writer that is reminiscent of M.F.K. Fisher." —Tejal Rao, The New York Times

"Adler turns her poetic sensibility towards the noble art of salvaging leftovers and addressing the food waste problem... I got an answer for what to have for dinner tonight... there’s no takeout food or prepared meal that is too obscure for gold-spinning." —Jenny Rosenstrach, Dinner: A Love Story

"Delicious and doable recipes accounting for just about any leftovers you’ve got sitting around, this cookbook will help your kitchen become a no-waste zone." —Simply Recipes

“An impressive encyclopedia of recipes for elevated but frugal and environmentally friendly eating... Adler’s thorough guide will inspire all levels of cooks to say goodbye to waste and embrace the ABCs of leftovers.” —Publishers Weekly *starred review*

“Adler bursts with ideas for an encyclopedia’s worth of leftovers. Her comprehensive approach finds uses for virtually every smidgen of food left from a meal. —Booklist

"An A–Z compendium of recipes and tips to combat food waste by using every part of the ingredients you’re cooking with." —BookRiot

"A comprehensive, beautifully illustrated and gracefully written resource... a no-waste ethos permeates these many pages with goodwill, humor, and hope. As with all things Adler, the writing is fantastic: expert and unfailingly elegant." —Vogue

"This book is gratifying in its pragmatic approach to cooking and reviving what has already been cooked. It's an invaluable resource for home cooks looking to eat more mindfully and deliciously while throwing away less. Better still, it's a pleasurable read." —Stephen Satterfield, Founder of Whetstone Media, Host of "High on the Hog"

"Tamar Adler's guide to redeeming leftovers is endlessly useful and great fun to browse: it deserves an everlasting place in any kitchen." —Harold McGee, author of On Food and Cooking

"The Everlasting Meal Cookbook is as inspiring as it is essential. Before you even finish reading the introduction, you know you are in good hands. Tamar Adler can teach the most trepidatious person to become a more intuitive and spontaneous cook." —Andy Baraghani, author of The Cook You Want to Be

“Tamar Adler's new book is as much about finding excitement in the mundane as it is about giving new life to old ingredients. Instead of feeling intimidating or boring or terribly utilitarian, Adler’s recipes and guiding principles for reinvigorating leftovers are warm and enticing. Flipping through the wisdom within, I found myself wishing I had more almost-forgotten dinners to reimagine.” —Elazar Sontag, restaurant editor, Bon Appetit

"If cooking is a basic adult skill, knowing how to make something imaginative out of leftovers is advanced level adulting. The Everlasting Meal Cookbook shows us how to create desirable, simple meals out of what we have in our cupboards, refrigerators, and freezers. This is a useful, sustainable, and unique cookbook." —Klancy Miller, author of Cooking Solo

From the Publisher

02/01/2023

Adler, who has won both a James Beard and an IACP award and wrote An Everlasting Meal: Cooking with Economy and Grace, uses her cooking philosophy to create a practical guide to utilizing all the ingredients that enter one's kitchen. This encyclopedic approach to leftovers is divided by type of staple, such as beans and rice, dairy, and vegetables. Leaving nothing behind, Adler has recipes for using every leftover dreg, sprinkle, meal, scrap, and peel. Although this work has a formulaic presentation, Adler finds places to weave in her signature prose and to challenge readers to use all of their senses when executing recipes. Fans of her previous writing will love this book, and it will appeal to those who are conscious of kitchen waste. It will also appeal to home cooks who are days out from their weekly shopping trip and looking in the fridge at the odds and ends, leftovers, and wilting veggies, now with a new tool to create a beautiful meal. VERDICT Unique and practical, Adler's title encourages home cooks to achieve what seems impossible: clean out the fridge, not into the garbage but into an appealing meal.—Sarah Tansley

Library Journal