Maggie Hoffman

1 week ago | thedinnerplan.substack.com | Maggie Hoffman

Welcome back to a little series called The Recipe Files, where I share all the recipes I’ve been saving for every bit of in-season produce. Lately, we’ve been gorging ourselves on asparagus, but there’s a lot more ground to cover before we get to the tomatoes and corn. I’ll be back later in the week with our regularly scheduled podcast conversation—did you catch the recent episodes with dream guests Noor Murad and Hailee Catalano? Have you heard the one with Melissa Clark?

1 week ago | thedinnerplan.substack.com | Maggie Hoffman

I own around 500 cookbooks, split between a number of rather precarious shelves. It is decidedly enough. But I cannot help myself. Every week when I talk to a cookbook author on The Dinner Plan podcast, I need to hear about their favorites: the most dog-eared cookbooks in their collection, the books they turn to for inspiration, the cookbooks that changed the course of their career paths or taught them something new in the kitchen.

2 weeks ago | thedinnerplan.substack.com | Maggie Hoffman

Meal-prep books and so many new books focused on easy recipes have started to blur together a bit for me. I want more varied flavor. I want recipes that aren’t pulled from the same generic list of commonly-searched terms. But I still want ways to make my cooking life easier. Which is why I feel especially grateful for Salsa Daddy, the new cookbook from Rick Martinez. “A good sauce makes a dish,” Rick tells me in this week’s podcast conversation.

2 weeks ago | thedinnerplan.substack.com | Maggie Hoffman

Some cookbooks are so full of evocative writing that they become treasured bedtime reads. Others take their place immediately in the kitchen, because every dish is calling to you. Lugma, the new cookbook from , really does both. I want to cook Noor’s baked mushroom rice with cinnamon, her white bean and lamb stew, her savory “trifle” of crispy pita, minty yogurt, roasted eggplant, and smoked-paprika-spiced pine nuts.

3 weeks ago | thedinnerplan.substack.com | Maggie Hoffman

I’ve been updating The Dinner Plan’s recipe index, and I’ve noticed that even though I tend to cook seafood at least once a week at home, I haven’t shared many fish recipes so far in these missives. Perhaps it’s not surprising; my weekly guests on the podcast tend to offer up their go-to weeknight comforts. Don’t you crave noodles after a long day?