Cookbook Profile: Bones

Bones
Recipes, History, and Lore

by Jennifer McLagan

Bones

Top food stylist and food writer Jennifer McLagan has a bone to pick: too often, people opt for boneless chicken breasts, fish fillets, and cutlets, when good cooks know that anything cooked on the bone has more flavor—from chicken or spareribs to a rib roast or a whole fish. In Bones, Jennifer offers a collection of recipes for cooking beef, veal, pork, lamb, poultry, fish, and game on their bones.

Chicken, steak, and fish all taste better when cooked on the bone, but we've sacrificed flavor for speed and convenience, forgetting how bones can enhance the taste, texture, and presentation of good food—think of rack of lamb, T-bone steak, chicken noodle soup, and baked ham. In her simple, bare-bones style, Jennifer teaches home cooks the secrets to cooking with bones.

Each chapter of Bones includes stocks, soups, ribs, legs, and extremities (except for whole fish—they don't have any). Many of the recipes are simple, with the inherent flavors of the bones doing most of the work. There are traditional, elegant dishes, such as Roasted Marrow Bones with Parsley Salad, Olive-Crusted Lamb Racks, and Crown Roast of Pork, as well as new takes on homestyle favorites, such as Maple Tomato Glazed Ribs, Coconut Chicken Curry, and Halibut Steaks with Orange Cream Sauce. Stunning, full-color photographs of dishes like Rabbit in Saffron Sauce with Spring Vegetables; Grilled Quail with Sage Butter; and Duck Legs with Cumin, Turnips, and Green Olives are sure to inspire.

In addition to the recipes, Bones includes a wealth of information on a wide range of bone-related topics, including the differences among cuts of meat, as well as the history and lore of bones.

About the Author

Jennifer McLagan has more than twenty-five years of experience in the food world. She has worked as a chef in her native Australia, as well as in London and Paris. Now based in Toronto, she survives the frozen north by escaping as often as possible to Paris with her husband, Haralds. She is very friendly with her butchers on both sides of the Atlantic and they put their best bones aside for her.

Buy the Book!

Bones
Recipes, History, and Lore
by Jennifer McLagan
Morrow Cookbooks
Hardcover; 272 pages; $34.95
ISBN: 0060585374
Information provided by the publisher.