Dinner : Changing the Game (Hardcover) (Melissa Clark)

About the Book

"Each recipe in [this book] is meant to be dinner--one ... dish that ... can stand alone or be paired with a simple salad or fresh bread on the side ... Dinner is all about options: inventive, unfussy food with unexpected flavor. Clark's mission is to help anyone--whether a novice with just a single pan or the experienced home cook--figure out what to make any night of the week without settling on fallbacks"--Amazon.com.

Book Synopsis

200+ inventive yet straightforward recipes that will make anyone a better and more confident cook, from a James Beard Award-winning chef

"Everything I want for my dinner--dishes which are familiar but fresh, approachable but exciting."--Yotam Ottolenghi

Dinner has the range and authority--and Melissa Clark's trademark warmth--of an instant classic. With more than 200 all-new recipes, Dinner is about options: inherently simple recipes that you can make any night of the week.

Each recipe in this book is meant to be dinner--one fantastic dish that is so satisfying and flavor-forward it can stand alone--maybe with a little salad or some bread on the side. This is what Melissa Clark means by changing the game. Organized by main ingredient--chicken, meat, fish and seafood, eggs, pasta and noodles, tofu, vegetable dinners, grains, pizza, soups, and salads that mean it--Dinner covers an astonishing breadth of ideas about just what dinner can be. There is something for every mood, season, and the amount of time you have: sheet pan chicken laced with spicy harissa, burgers amped with chorizo, curried lentils with poached eggs, to name just a few dishes in this indispensable collection. Here, too, are easy flourishes that make dinner exceptional: stir charred lemon into pasta, toss creamy Caesar-like dressing on a grain bowl.

Melissa Clark's mission is to help anyone, whether a novice or an experienced home cook, figure out what to have for dinner without ever settling on fallbacks.

Review Quotes

"The recipes in Melissa Clark's Dinner are everything I want for my dinner. Dishes which are familiar but fresh, approachable but exciting. The tone of the book is also just the sort of company I'd want around my table: Melissa is experienced enough in the kitchen to know that being relaxed is the only way to approach the evening meal. It should be fun, it should be easy, it should be delicious."--Yoam Ottolenghi

"Melissa Clark has an extrasensory ability to divine what we want to eat and a secret knowledge of how to take a familiar dish and make it just a little more interesting. In following her lead, dinner gets more delicious and we become better cooks."--Peter Meehan

"Dinner is an expertly useful tool for the home cook. Melissa Clark has stripped away fussiness and pretension and replaced it with sensibility and flavor. This is food that you will absolutely crave!--Michael Solomonov

"Brilliant, vibrant, doable ideas that will change the way you think about dinner. You'll cook out of this book for years. Empowering."--Diana Henry

"Melissa Clark will take your tired dinner repertoire, shake it out, and give it a transfusion of enthusiasm, flavor, and whip-smart efficiency. In Dinner, she takes the timeless task of cooking pleasing yet inspiring dinners and waves away the challenge. Dinner won't get Melissa --or you--down. She had me dreaming of kofte and kimchi pork chops, coconut rice noodles and green aioli chicken salad."--Amands Hesser

"Melissa Clark, cooking columnist at The New York Times, [has] become the culinary equivalent of Walter Cronkite: the most trusted name in America. In our kitchen, the pages of her newest book, Dinner: Changing The Game, has already been splattered with several years' worth of sauce and oil--and the book was just published in March. It is, stated baldly, a terrific and terrifically practical book, with dishes that span global influences, unabashed about its bold spicing, with a one-baking-sheet ethos that advocates for both convenience and melding of pan juices."--Kevin Pang

"Clark's book--shot by Eric Wolfinger, the LeBron James of food photography -- seems to solve every dinner problem from the rote 'It's 6:00--what do I make for the kids?' to the head-scratching 'What do I make for my fancy friends?' Here's the crazy thing, though: Often the answer to both questions is the same recipe."--The New York Times

"Over 200 why-didn't-I-think-of-that recipes that could be on a table near you in under an hour."--Bon Appétit

"[Clark] wants to empower home cooks to tinker with her recipes, not just follow them."--Food & Wine

"The New York Times's superstar wants you to know that killer single-pot meals are dead simple."--Esquire

"Unlike her contemporaries, Clark has a good pulse on the cooking techniques du jour."--Eater

"With Clark as mentor, the dinner game has changed--and you're the winner."--Bookpage

"A stellar collection of low-effort, high-impact meals."--Library Journal

About The Author

Melissa Clark is a staff writer for the New York Times, where she writes the Food section's popular column, "A Good Appetite" and stars in a weekly complementary video series. The recipient of both IACP and James Beard awards, Clark appears frequently on "Today" and on public radio. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and daughter.