In Mary's Kitchen: Stress-Free Recipes for Every Home CookHardcover (2024)

A GLOBE & MAIL BESTSELLER
One of The National Post's Best Cookbooks of 2023!

Everyone loves Mary! This beloved host of Mary Makes It Easy and The Good Stuff with Mary Berg, who Variety calls "the millennial Ina Garten," is back with a cookbook of 100 all-new recipes guaranteed to become your stress-free sidekick in the kitchen.

The kitchen is Mary's happy place, where worries melt away, a busy mind calms, and time seems to slow down. But she knows that for many people, the exact opposite is true! However you feel about mealtimes, Mary is here to help, with uncomplicated but delicious recipes, packed with tips and tricks, to produce flavorful results--every time.

• It's What You Need: With chapters broken down into their main ingredient to facilitate easy searching, you'll love Mary's ideas for breakfast, veg & starch, pasta, fish, chicken, beef, pork & lamb, and, of course, sweets.
• Make It Easy! It's not just the name of her award-winning TV program, it's her culinary ethos. Mary's recipes look easy because they are easy, and the ones in this book are her most straightforward yet!
• Find the "Why" With notes in the margin of each recipe giving you the reason behind a certain ingredient or technique, you'll learn tips that act as building blocks for all your culinary endeavors. And with call-outs that point to recipes where you can get ahead, build fast flavor, or get more bang for your buck, home cooks of all skill levels will find something to entice.

With every recipe Mary writes, her goal is to show you that cooking for yourself, your friends, and your family doesn't have to be boring, difficult, or stressful. No matter the time of day, or day of the week, with In Mary's Kitchen, you'll find everything you need to make the kitchen your happy place too.

ISBN-13: 9780525611943

Media Type: Hardcover

Publisher: Appetite by Random House

Publication Date: 10-10-2023

Pages: 272

Product Dimensions: 8.20(w) x 10.10(h) x 1.00(d)

Excerpt from the Introduction

At the risk of being obvious, the kitchen is truly my favorite place in the world. It’s the one place where my relatively busy mind calms, where the stresses of life melt away, and time seems to slow down. As I slice shallots, stir a pot of simmering sauce, knead dough into a soft and stretchy pillow, or watch bub­bling butter begin to brown, everything that felt so big before I started cooking just seems to become more manageable.

When I first made the switch from office work to cooking and recipe writing full time, I was nervous that I might lose that spark. Cooking had always been my hobby, that comforting thing I could confidently do no matter how I was feeling on any given day. Luckily, that never went away. Food continues to be my passion.

But according to the scuttlebutt on the street, not everyone feels this (admittedly over-the-top) poetic love for their daily trips to the stove. Apparently, some people even loathe their kitchens with the fieriness of a thousand flambés!

Can you believe it?!

Maybe you can! Maybe you’re even one of those people. Or perhaps you just find the daily trudge of making food humdrum at best. No matter what end of that spectrum you find yourself on, I am here to help.

With pretty much every single recipe I write, my goal is to show you that cooking for yourself, your friends, and your family doesn’t have to be boring, difficult, or stressful. But with my new book, I’m aiming to make your life even easier, with uncom­plicated but delicious recipes packed with tips and tricks that you can carry with you into everything you cook.

As with all my recipes, the food in these pages is made using ingredients that can be easily found at an average grocery store or even in your own pantry. If a specialty ingredient is called for, I’ll either tell you where you can find it and how else to use it, so any leftovers don’t sit forgotten in the back of your fridge, or I’ll provide tips on how to substitute something else. I’ve used basic kitchen equipment throughout because there is nothing more disheart­ening to beginners and seasoned cooks alike than finding a recipe that piques your interest only to realize you don’t have the tools to make it.

As always, cooking and sharing food should be as much about comfort and enjoyment as they are about sustenance and nourishment. Filled with ideas that will take you from breakfast through to dessert in chapters broken down according to their main ingredient to facilitate easy searching, In Mary’s Kitchen is here to share with you the simple pleasure of straightforward, cookable recipes that will hope­fully make the kitchen your happy place too.

Mary