Make Every Dish Delicious

Make Every Dish Delicious is a cookbook by Lesley Chesterman, a new Canadian cookbook author and former pastry chef who is well-known in the province of Québec as a prominent restaurant reviewer for the Montreal Gazette for twenty years.

This cookbook offers an array of recipes - from appetizers and side dishes to main dishes and sweet treats - and I enjoyed how Chesterman starts at the beginning of the cooking process with tips, kitchen essentials (tools and pantry staples) detailing how to set up your home kitchen for success.

The instructions for the recipes are easy to follow and I'm sure the novice home cook could make many of the recipes. Chesterman introduces basic recipes like boiling the perfect egg, basic tomato sauce, buttermilk pancakes and Saturday Scones (which made with ingredients I was sent from the publisher along with this cookbook - which included delicious blueberry preserves). 

Readers will enjoy the stunning colour photos which are included for some of the recipes, but unfortunately the majority do not have an accompanying, inspirational photo of what the finished dish should look like.

This is a delicious collection for your inner foodie, but there are quite a few recipes that feel like they'd be a better fit for home cooks with a bit more experience in the kitchen. Some of the recipes feel a bit posh (whole sea bass, a casserole with mussels, a soufflé) and even the well-intentioned pantry/gadget essentials (like the blow torch for crème brûlée) may seem a bit formidable to some new home cooks. But Chesterman balances some of the posher recipes with tried-and-true classics like chocolate chip cooks, roasted chicken and the potato lover that I am loved the chapter dedicated to the 'humble but heavenly' spud. 

Within the pages of this beautiful cookbook, Chesterman provides a nice balance of inspiration for new home cooks and a bit of a challenge for those who are more seasoned and want to give their cooking muscles a bit of a workout. This 380+ page cookbook is jam-packed with foodie inspiration, and I look forward to trying more of Lesley Chesterman's recipes in the future.

Disclaimer: My sincere thanks to Simon and Schuster Canada for my complimentary copy of this cookbook (and the ingredients for the scones) which were provided in exchange for my honest review.

My Rating: 4 stars

Author: Lesley Chesterman

Genre: Cookbook

Type and Source: Hardcover from publisher

Publisher: Simon and Schuster Canada

First Published: October 18, 2022

Book Description from GoodReads: Recipes, perfected. A repertoire of reliable, classic recipes and fundamental techniques that deliver gorgeous results, every time, for cooks of every ability, in the tradition of Genius Recipes and Barefoot Contessa Foolproof.

Stop searching the web for what to cook for dinner. From the best roast chicken to the most sumptuous brownie, Lesley Chesterman’s perfected recipes have you covered—tonight, and always.

When Montreal’s favorite food critic, Lesley Chesterman, was approached ten years ago to write a cookbook, she laughed and said: “The last thing the world needs is another recipe for carbonara.” She never forgot the editor’s reply: “True. But I think they might like your recipe for carbonara.” That comment resonated, because carbonara, like so many dishes, is a recipe Lesley has worked tirelessly to get just right. Returning again and again to recipes and making small tweaks or big overhauls is what Lesley loves to do. And the result of a lifetime of tinkering is Make Every Dish Delicious, a cookbook that offers a repertoire of foolproof modern classics and a wealth of cooking knowledge to give everyone a helping hand in the kitchen.

Make Every Dish Delicious begins with deeply informative chapters on how to set up your kitchen and pantry, and how to work with fundamental ingredients and basics such as eggs, butter, stocks, and vinaigrettes. Lesley effortlessly demystifies multiple technical challenges (how to make an omelet, how to deep fry without fear, how to use—and not misuse—the all-important salt, and many more). From there, she takes you on a savoury and sweet journey of recipes encompassing modern classics such as her super simple carbonara, perfect pain de campagne​, show-stopping salt-baked bass, crowd-pleasing standing rib roast, stunning black forest cake, and gorgeous Gascogne apple tart.

Every recipe here is reliable, repeatable, and irresistible. Homemade no-knead bread and pizza dough? Yes, you can! Chicken Kiev (the easy way)? Of course! Cote de boeuf for two? Why not? Chocolate megamousse for a dessert sensation? Lesley’s got you. These are dishes to cook with total confidence for friends and family, every day. Let Lesley’s collection of perfected recipes become your very own.