No Recipe? No Problem!: Pull Together Tasty Meals Every Time with Confidence by Phyllis Good

​I have reviewed a number of digital books, courtesy of NetGalley, a site that sends ebooks to librarians in the lead-up to their publication. The idea is to encourages book reviews and hopefully purchases for our libraries.  This is the first NetGalley book that I ordered a personal copy of before I even finished  reading the galley. No Recipe, No Problem by Phyllis Good does an excellent job of capturing the methods of improvisational cooks like me. (The joke in my house was always, "Any resemblance to the original recipe is purely coincidental.") My choice to buy the book was based on a need to see the photos in color! The Kindle version just wasn't doing it for me.

Phyllis Good was the creator of the "popular Fix-It and Forget-It" cookbook series. She also pulls in a circle of other accomplished improvisational cooks to share their expertise. The book contains a handful of recipes as jumping off points, with plenty of tips on how to use the dressing or sauce in a variety of combinations or how to take it off in a completely different direction by substituting different ingredients. For the most part, however, Good explains how to make soups, salads, egg dishes, sheet pan dinners, roasts, and other main dishes, using what is on hand.

There are enough pro tips thrown in that even an experienced cook will find gems about how to give soups and sauces a bright finish or how to use unexpected flavor combinations.  But another audience for this creative cookbook would young people who are just starting out cooking and who may have followed recipes slavishly with good results and who want to take a more off-the-cuff approach. It would be a good fit too for people focusing on local foods or who have their own garden. The author expects cooks to have a decently stocked pantry, but she also discusses how to use an abundance of specific veggies and how vegetables harvested at the same time of year tend to make for solid flavor combinations. 

The library has purchased a copy and it is available for checkout. Checking out cookbooks can be a way to try one out to see if you too need your own copy, or if it might make a good gift for a wedding shower or graduation. 

No Recipe, No Problem by Phyllis Good was published April 21, 2021 by Story Publishing, LLC. 

---