My Family Table

A Passionate Plea for Home Cooking

by John Besh

2012 IACP Award Winner in the Children, Youth and Family category

2012 James Beard Award Nominee

Price: $35.00
ISBN-13: 9781449407872
ISBN-10: 1449407870
Format: Hardcover
Size: 9 1/4 x 11 in.
Page Count: 272 pages

“At first bite this book is a mouthful – I want to gulp it all in and dive for seconds. Chef John Besh remembers a time of organic preparation: cooking for our own families and enjoying the intimacy that each chop, stir, bite inspired. He dices up one amazing legacy in his newest addition, including stunning photographic images of his own family and the meals that are prepared with them in mind and at hand.” ––San Francisco Book Review http://bit.ly/xae4q1

“My Family Table: A Passionate Plea for Home Cooking, the follow-up book to Besh’s 2009 tome, My New Orleans, presents a convincing argument for making family time as special as possible by crafting and sitting down to meals together at home. By breaking bread around the table with those you love, he says, your bonds can’t help but strengthen, particularly if you eschew packaged, instant foods and drive-through fare. “I urge you to set aside manufactured convenience and to cook real food instead. You’ll be amazed at what this elemental act does — not only for the people you feed, but for you, as well,” Besh writes. Full of spectacular photography, the 265-page book brings to life the markets Besh frequents, as well as the family of six — including four young sons — that he feeds, all while juggling work at seven restaurants. Far from complex, the food and its preparation keeps accessibility and approachability in mind, with dishes ranging from Simple Meat Ragout for Any Pasta and Stuffed French Toast, to Roast Goose with Yukon Gold Potato Dumplings.” ––Dallas News http://dallasne.ws/ySHX3l

“Of the recently published books by gourmet chefs on home cooking (e.g., Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s Home Cooking with Jean-Georges and Rick Tramonto’s Steak with Friends), James Beard Award-winning Louisiana chef John Besh’s latest is easily the most beautiful. This stunning volume is filled with intimate photographs of the Besh family in the kitchen, at the table, and outdoors with friends. Recipes like Risotto of Almost Anything and Whole Roasted Sole with Brown Butter reinforce Besh’s Jamie Oliver-like argument that practical home cooking does not require reliance on processed products. Includes some excellent holiday recipes. Highly recommended.” –Library Journal

“New Orleans chef/restaurateur John Besh has followed up his award-winning My New Orleans with a book dedicated to home cooking, and he definitely has another winner on his hands. Besh is a devoted family man, and the book is lushly illustrated with photos of the Besh clan in the kitchen, at the dinner table, entertaining friends, and cooking outdoors at a hunting and fishing camp. The photos are the first clue that this is not a ridiculously complex cookbook with recipes calling for esoteric ingredients and an entire brigade of prep cooks; it’s a work created to actually encourage home cooking, and that it does.” ––The Austin Chronicle http://bit.ly/svCJ0t

“The lavish photographs in John Besh’s MY FAMILY TABLE: A Passionate Plea for Home Cooking (Andrews McMeel, $35) are the opposite of Blumenthal’s, teeming with picturesque children and the telegenic father who cooks with them. Besh takes an opening shot at his modernist brethren: “So many of us chefs spend way too much of our time overmanipulating foods, attempting to turn them into things they inherently are not.” Many of his recipes, written in his warm, natural voice, are easy. Yet some are more special-occasion than the title might imply. The most useful section provides the dishes his wife challenged him to create when he “made the mistake” of questioning her “about what she was feeding our children” on weeknights, when he’s “almost never around.” So he came up with some recipes kids will eat and distracted, time-pressed cooks can make: cauliflower mac and cheese, sloppy Joe sliders, tomato soup with grilled ham and cheese. (You’ll want to stock pepper jelly, which he likes with almost everything.) These, and building-block recipes like a chicken fricassee open to endless variations and a roast chicken that can be reused throughout the week, are the ones family cooks will turn to.” ––The New York Times Book Review

Even a seasoned chef like John Besh can get in a rut when it comes to making dinner seven nights a week, so he came up with a collection of meals to remind you (and himself!) to embrace mealtime in his new book My Family Table: A Passionate Plea for Home Cooking. Since he is here during the Celebrity Potluck Party, John brings one of the book’s meals to Rach, and you can try it too - get his recipe for Tender Slow-Cooked Beef Brisket Baked Beans! ––Rachel Ray

“While home cooking may not be the key to world peace, [John Besh] convincingly argues that eating — and preparing meals — together can go a long way toward curing what ails our society. And then he offers strategies and 140 recipes that will inspire you to be part of the solution.” ––OregonLive.com http://bit.ly/sgFI8Y

“There aren’t enough superlatives to describe My Family Table. In a season of exceptional cookbooks, My Family Table stands above a dazzling crowd. The recipes are among the best to be found: clearly written and without fuss, their simplicity is based on good ingredients and techniques honed by a master chef who also loves to cook at home. Besh’s recipes are not ones that rely on a line-up of bottles, jars and cans. They are comforting, just as home food should be, but they are elegant. John Besh is a class act: in My Family Table he does not patronize home cooking, he lifts and celebrates it. Besh has also penned stories from his own cooking memories. They are compelling, because they are authentic celebrations of the home cooks who inspired him.” ––In Mama’s Kitchen http://bit.ly/rDAtf1

““A few years back, I made the mistake of asking my wife about what she was feeding our children,” Besh writes in the book. “She replied that if I was half as concerned about feeding my family as I was about serving my customers, I’d do a better job of helping her with menu ideas that were easy for her to prepare and…something the lads might actually eat. What she said hit me like a ton of bricks.” “It’s not that I didn’t cook at home,” he says. “I’d make these epic ‘me meals.’ I was showing off.” My Family Table is the result of Besh’s repentance—an easygoing homage to Southern home cooking, with some Asian, Spanish and eclectic touches thrown in. This means not one, but two fried chicken recipes, as well as ways to turn one chicken into several meals. “In parts, a chicken might feed six to eight people, but you can get more out of a whole chicken,” Besh says. “Not just the meat, but this great carcass. In the restaurant business, we do not throw out carcasses. Turn that carcass into stock. Freeze the stock in ice-cube trays. Use the roasted meat in chicken noodle panfry or incorporate it into curried anything.” It’s not all school-night food, either. Chapters are devoted to barbecue wisdom, cooking with cast iron and how to cook a fish, among other subjects.” ––Edible Austin http://bit.ly/uoX4z3

“If you are a Food Network fan you are probably familiar with chef John Besh of New Orleans LA. He is a James Beard award-winner and Food TVs Iron Chef champion who takes us into his own kitchen to talk about his passion - the importance of home cooked food for your family. In this new cookbook John Besh shows us how to put healthy meals on the table quickly and easily. He shares some very easy recipes we can use every day of the week to make healthy home cooked meals for our family. Home cooking really is healthier than packaged food. It usually contains more nutrients and has far less sodium than packaged meals. John Besh - My Family Table: A Passionate Plea for Home Cooking is a beautiful hardcover book, part cookbook, part coffee table showpiece. In it John truly shows us how much he cares about preparing fresh food for his own family and shares many of his family’s favorite recipes.” ––Cooking Nook http://bit.ly/vpGgjY

“My Family Table is by a chef — John Besh (August, Lüke, etc.), but it’s decidedly not cheffy. Its subtitle is “A Passionate Plea for Home Cooking,” and the recipes reflect the way Besh likes to cook at home. The book is boldly organized, starting with a few very useful-looking master recipes (”Creamy Any Vegetable Soup,” “Curried Anything,” “Warm Any Fruit Crumble”). It then offers themed chapters (”Sunday Supper,” “Dinner from a Cast-Iron Pot,” “School Nights,” “How to Cook a Fish,” etc.). ” ––The Dallas Morning News Blogs http://bit.ly/runkgV

“As chefs consider the home cook, they’re making their ingredient lists less esoteric and their instructions more accessible. Even their language has become softer, more encouraging. That’s the tone John Besh takes in his new cookbook My Family Table. Besh, the chef of numerous New Orleans restaurants, including Restaurant August, Luke, and Domenica, has urgently subtitled his book as “A Passionate Plea for Home Cooking.” With this new mantra in mind, Besh’s new book is often more approachable than his 2009 My New Orleans. He populates the pages dressed down in jeans and Saints T-shirts, joined by his wife and four sons, showing you how to make perfect scrambled eggs (a shot or two of whole milk and gentle stirring), roasting sole with just six ingredients, and divulging the secret to his grandmother’s fried chicken. Besh shares slightly more complex recipes, too, like how he tackles roast goose or southern BBQ, but there’s rarely a recipe where the challenge outweighs the final product.” ––Blogs.MensHealth.com http://bit.ly/vz1kZJ

“It was an innocent question but it hit a raw nerve. John Besh asked his wife a few years back what she was feeding their four boys and got a response he didn’t expect: “She immediately replied that if I was half as concerned about feeding my family as I was about serving my customers, I’d do a better job of helping her with menu ideas that were easy for her to prepare and also happened to be something the lads might actually eat,” the James Beard Award-winning chef recalled. It was a response that was an eye-opener, said the chef of some of New Orleans’ most popular restaurants (as well as Luke in San Antonio). True: He would go to great lengths to source foods for his restaurant customers but wasn’t giving his own family’s weekday meals much consideration. He realized he had to change. He had to start thinking like everyday Americans concerned about getting a fresh, healthy meal on the table, and reconnecting with the family kitchen. The result is My Family Table: A Passionate Plea for Home Cooking. The new cookbook, which features 140 recipes, is based on a newfound consideration for a return to the kitchen and re-evaluation of the food we’re feeding our families.” ––Chron.com http://bit.ly/rVztZ9

“New Orleans chef John Besh’s new cookbook, My Family Table, is less a collection of recipes than a system for feeding a large, busy family. Leftovers from Sunday roasts are repurposed for school night dinners; master recipes for Cream of Any Vegetable Soup or Curried Anything will take care of whatever you’ve got in the crisper that Must Be Used Tonight. ” ––Eater http://bit.ly/twVrjF

“With another New Orleans restaurant opening practically every other week, chef John Besh is working hard to create a culinary empire. Luckily for the readers of his popular cookbooks, he loves cooking at home just as much as in one of his many eateries. His latest book, My Family Table: A Passionate Plea for Home Cooking, combines practical recipes with touching personal stories.” ––Punchfork http://bit.ly/v8OvtE

“John Besh‘s My Family Table: A Passionate Plea for Home Cooking with 140 Inspiring Recipes is an ambitious book. …. This smart chef presents a combination stories, recipes, and photographs of his own family meant to extort us to follow his example of cooking for a better life. John Besh is very convincing. Perhaps his own exposure to the Food Network’s The Next Iron Chef have given him a perspective on the excesses of celebrity. And part of what makes his restaurants so good is his very connection to the bayou and the growers and producers who supply him – amply portrayed in My Family Table. Even though the book is full of pictures by Maura McEvoy of his handsome family – he tries hard not to focus on glamour.” ––Super Chef http://bit.ly/uokrUW

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By John Besh

John Besh—New Orleans native, James Beard Award winner, and renowned chef of eight acclaimed restaurants—is known for his dedication to local ingredients and local cuisine. John’s best-selling first cookbook, My New Orleans (Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2009), has become a culinary treasure and attained iconic status as the go-to book on New Orleans cuisine. Now, in his highly anticipated second cookbook, My Family Table: A Passionate Plea for Home Cooking, John moves beyond regional cooking and into the heart of American kitchens everywhere. He reminds us of the importance and necessity of making meals at home, and that by planning ahead and thinking smart, people everywhere can put fresh, healthy meals on their own family tables every day.

John is not only a chef—he is a father and a storyteller. In My Family Table, home cooks will have an intimate look into life at home with his wife and their four boys, as John urges others to get back into the kitchen and to gather around the table with family and friends to slow down and reconnect.

“It occurred to me that if I can help make a difference—by cooking simply and sharing what I love to cook—I can possibly help us all use our passions and skills to make our lives better at almost every meal,” John says.

With more than 150 color photographs and 140 recipes, each of the eleven chapters of MY FAMILY TABLE provides indispensable, accessible dishes for every occasion. The book also includes special cooking tips and sidebars that will help home cooks maximize their ingredients (and their budgets) and plan meals ahead. Some of the chapters include:

• Kitchen Focus, offering Master Recipes like Risotto of Almost Anything, Cream of Any Vegetable Soup, and Cherry Tomato Five-Minute Sauce. An “Essential Pantry” list will help home cooks plan ahead so meals come together easily and beautifully, and help them get the most out of every ingredient they buy.

• In Sunday Suppers, John provides dishes the whole family will love and recipes that will extend into those busy weeknight meals like those included in School Nights. Recipes like Pecan-Baked Ham prepared on a Sunday can be transformed into Carbonara with Sweet Peas & Ham, and Olive-Oil Roasted Cauliflower can be made into everyone’s favorite, Cauliflower Mac & Cheese.

• In chapters like Breakfast with My Boys and Drew Makes a Cake, John shares an early morning breakfast with his sons or a sweet treat to finish off a meal. Recipes like Angel Biscuits, Crab-Boil Home Fries, and Hummingbird Cake are sure to become family classics, as they are in John’s home.

• Dinner from a Cast Iron Pot, How to Cook a Fish, and Barbecue Wisdom offer John’s indispensable advice and techniques from braising to deboning a fish to frying and grilling. Recipes like Duck Stewed with Apples & Turnips, Soy-Braised Sablefish with Coconut Broth, and Dry-Rubbed Pork Ribs are demystified with John’s tips and how-to photos.

My Family Table explores the conviction that the simple act of cooking can change our way of life, and captures the spontaneity, intimacy, and fun of home cooking. It is sure to inspire a national movement back to the family table.