Home Cooking with Kate McDermott

James Beard Award nominee McDermott (Art of the Pie) shares quick, satisfying, and dependable recipes. Fans of her pie recipes will find some savory options, but this cookbook is largely easy, one-dish meals and salads, running the gamut from simple breakfasts and light lunches to hardier comfort foods, including snacks and sweets. As a home gardener, the author uses an abundance of homegrown herbs, vegetables, and dry beans but explains with warmth and understanding that canned beans and substitutions are fine. Beginners will find her unpretentious style ingratiating as she encourages making notations in the margins and provides tips. Recipes are given in standard and metric measurements with clear, enumerated steps. As in her previous book, McDermott includes tantalizing full-page photos and short anecdotes about her Santa Barbara, CA, childhood and adulthood in the rural Pacific Northwest, making readers feel like they're listening to McDermott around her table in much the same way the stories in Anne Willian's From My Chateau Kitchen transported readers to France.