Julia Turshen - Small Victories: Recipes, Advice + Hundreds of Ideas for Home Cooking Triumphs

For Grace, who makes sweet even sweeter
(thank you, Mary Oliver), and for my Aunt Debby,
who makes the most delicious reservations.

Text copyright 2016 by Julia Turshen.
Photographs copyright 2016 by Gentl + Hyers.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.

ISBN 9781452148762 (epub, mobi)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data.
Names: Turshen, Julia, author. | Gentl + Hyers, photographer.
Title: Small victories : recipes, advice + hundreds of ideas for home-cooking triumphs / Julia Turshen ; photographs by Gentl + Hyers.
Description: San Francisco : Chronicle Books, [2016] | Includes index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015039651 | ISBN 9781452143095 (hardcover : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Cooking. | LCGFT: Cookbooks.
Classification: LCC TX714 .T88 2016 | DDC 641.5--dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015039651

Designed by Vanessa Dina with contributions from
Doug Turshen and Rochelle Udell
Prop styling by Andrea Gentl
Food styling by Julia Turshen
Typesetting by Howie Severson
Photograph on by Alan Richardson.

The photographers wish to thank Meredith Munn, Monique Baron, Larry Ruhl, and Grace Bonney.

Chronicle Books LLC
680 Second Street
San Francisco, California 94107
www.chroniclebooks.com

I will always remember the first time I met Julia Turshen. She was catering a party for my dearest friends and when she walked into the room, it simply lit up. Im not sure if it was her brilliant smile, infectious laugh, or that gorgeous wild hair but the whole picture is truly memorable. She went on to make an amazingly delicious and earthy dinner for all of us, but it was only later when she and I became friends that I came to really understand Julias special brand of magic.

Julias love of two things come together in this bookher total delight in great food and she adores cooking for people she loves. She spent a decade as a private chef and coauthoring some of the best cookbooks around. But this book is pure Julia; the recipes she makes for Grace and their friends are ones that we all want to make at home. Theyre simple to prepare but have great bold flavors.

Julias book is like herits totally accessible. She explains a few unusual ingredients at the beginning, and everything else is available at the grocery store. I adore her notes for recipes like Dougs meat loaf (Dougs her dad) and ways you can spin-off each recipe into your own. Julia is a cook who not only trusts her recipes but also her readers. I cant wait to cook my way through this amazing new book, and Ill definitely be starting with those raspberry jam buns!

Ina Garten

It began with celery. As a kid obsessed with everything about cooking, I decided I should be able to chop precisely and saut effectively. I convinced my parents to buy me endless bunches of celery to practice with. I spent entire weekends perfecting my dice and heating up a little oil in a skillet in which I would attempt to flip the celery without using a utensil, just like I had seen all of my favorite chefs and teachers do on television. My very supportive family ate more sauted celery than they would probably like to remember. Committing the motions to memory, I eventually grew comfortable with the techniques and continued to build on the celery, turning the saut into a soup, a stir-fry, and more. Teaching myself to cook wasnt a quick process, but along the way I stopped to celebrate each accomplishment and began to consider them small but very worthwhile victories. The day no celery landed on the floor: Small victory!

Cooking went from being a childhood hobby (I opened my first restaurant, called Julias Place, in my parents apartment when I was about three) to a lifelong passion, really the driving force through my everything. I started my first business, Julia Turshen Catering, complete with business cards, at the age of thirteen, right after I started cooking Thanksgiving dinners for my entire family without any assistance. During college, I interned at a food magazine and assisted a cookbook author and a food television producer. At school, I wrote just about every essay I was assigned on the food in whatever book we were reading. Soon after college, I started working with other people on their cookbooks and, in between writing gigs, I worked as a private chef. Both jobs allowed me to travel frequently, but a couple of years ago I traded other folks kitchens for my own, where I happily spend every day testing and developing recipes. If I am not cooking, I am thinking about what Id like to cook, and if you cant find me at the stove, chances are Im out getting groceries. Even when Im eating, I am planning my next meal. Cooking has been the most positive influence on my life. It has made me healthier, happier, more connected to my family and friends, and more aware of and kinder to the environment. Its transported me around the world, sometimes literally and often just through trying out a new spice or recipe. As you can imagine, I highly recommend it.

Celebrating small victories is not only how Ive marked my life (both in and out of the kitchen), but its also a sure way of becoming a comfortable and intuitive, even inventive, cook. Which brings us to this very personal collection of recipes and advice, the goal of which is to demonstrate that cooking doesnt have to be complicated to be satisfying, or over-the-top to be impressive. Each recipe in the pages that follow introduces a small victory (often more than one). They range from not always obvious but very useful tips (e.g., how to get the seeds out of a pomegranate without making a mess) to broader ideas about cooking (e.g., the only thing that stands between you and a tender pork shoulder is time, and patience itself is an important ingredient). Every recipe is also accompanied by a number of spin-offs, which are thoughts on how to turn that small victory into many other things besides the main recipe. In other words, if you cook this thing, you can also cook all of these things.