What the F*@# Should I Make for Dinner?: The Answers to Life’s Everyday Question by Zach Golden
My rating: 3/5 cats
i love cooking, cursing, and novelty cookbooks.
this should really be a slam-dunk five-star cat book. it is much better than the website: whatthefuckshouldimakefordinner.com, because the site just links you to different recipes that are good, but traditionally-worded, and the book-recipes use salty talk (and not that wishy-washy @!$% on the cover – good honest sailor talk) and are borderline abusive, and i like being slapped around by a cookbook. Your reverse Midas touch turns everything to shit, but how about trying not to fuck up some fucking pork loin with peach compote?? yes, cookbook, sir! only a cookbook could talk to me this way and get away with it.
the book employs the same “choose-your-own -adventure” type format as the website: at the bottom of each page are listed two options: Don’t fucking like that?… turn to page… and Don’t fucking eat meat?… or Not a fucking vegetarian?…turn to page… which i think works better on the website, where you have an infinite possible number of recipes. in a book, it is a cute idea, but not awfully practical.
and while the sentence It’s not cute when kids say ‘pasghetti,’ so teach them to say, make, and eat some fucking bucatini with tomato, mozzarella, and basil is entirely true, the recipe itself is ho-hum. many of them are. do we need two different salads with watermelon and cheese?? probably not, although they both sound good. and what is with the kale obsession, dude?
and yet, for every weakness i see in this book, there will be a moment like the recipe for Steamed Lobster with Saffron Butter which, while it seems pretty basic, is presented as This shit is classy and easy as fuck.
how am i supposed to argue with that and not fall in love a little? i looove shit that is classy and easy as fuck!
and because i am still not sick of grilled cheese, i have to love the recipe for (fucking) sage grilled cheese that uses fontina, my new favorite cheese. scratch that – my new favorite affordable cheese. and the beet salad makes me want it, too.
so – mixed feelings. this isn’t as fun to me as cooking with coolio in the novelty-cookbook department, but any book that inquires, It’s a party in your mouth, and everybody’s coming, so why don’t you cook up some fucking pasta carbonara? is a book i want to own, even if fucking pasta carbonara isn’t an earth-shattering recipe. so i own it.
and from now on, i will be cooking all my pasta in “balls-salty” water, thank you very much…
