Baker & Taylor Axis 360. - The comfort food mash-up cookbook: 80 delicious recipes for reimagining your favorite dishes

I never set out to become the master of the mash-up, but, like Andy Warhol or the Beastie Boys before me, I have an eye for creative combination. At the beginning of my blogging efforts, I was mashing up recipes, although I never called it that back then. As I improved, it became my calling in the food world. Now, more than ten years later, I have become the go-to guy when the media wants to know more about mash-ups. Mash-up recipes are fun. The appeal stems from taking nostalgic dishes and updating them with a modern twist.

I love connecting with people in this way, and thats why mash-up recipes have become my favorite to create. Im extremely excited to round up my favorite recipes, plus a bunch of awesome new ones, into this new cookbook for you. I break down the source recipes, piece by piece. I think about each ingredient and whats essential to the final dish. How many ingredients can I remove but still call it by its name? I break down both dishes this way and then build them back up together. This makes the final product a true combination of both dishes, with no excess or unnecessary ingredients.

When I wanted to make Fast-Food Burger Stuffing, instead of chopping up a couple of hamburgers and mixing them with stock and eggs, I looked at the flavors and ingredients of a classic fast-food burger and created a stuffing recipe from scratch that employed these flavors. I follow and respect other bloggers who make mash-ups, but many of those over-the-top recipes end up full of processed food. Theyre bold, loud, and aim for the shock factor. Shock-blogger recipes arent something that a family could eat even as an indulgent Sunday supper. Theyre more like 5,000-calorie bombsmore novelty than substance. My mash-ups are made almost entirely from scratch, and I want people to cook them.

So these recipes arent any more challenging than making dinner or more technical than their source recipes. Most arent healthy by any means, but they wont give you instant diabetes either. Just as home cooks can make easy dishes inspired by elaborate tasting menus prepared with tweezers and a sous vide machine, my recipes take inspiration from some of these crazier concoctions, but theyre completely approachable. Recipes generally appear from lighter to heavier order. Similar dishes cluster together, and adjacent recipes often feature overlapping ingredients.

Food is no different. People regularly line up for Dominique Ansels Cronuts in New York City and for Korean tacos in Los Angeles like the launch of limited edition sneakers or their favorite bands farewell tour. This trend might seem new, but its been going on since the Mongol Empire brought noodles from Asia to Europe in the thirteenth century. The following iconic dishes have defined the mash-up trend over time.