Homemade With Love ─ Simple Scratch Cooking from in Jennie's Kitchen

With its delectable recipes and charming girl-next-door tone, Homemade With Love is sure to be a welcome addition to the kitchens of longtime readers of the blog, In Jennie’s Kitchen. Jennifer Perillo has long written on the pleasures and importance of cooking from scratch, buying local, and eating at home. Jennie shares her love for her farmers’ markets and local purveyors while dishing out a hearty dose of practical culinary know-how for the working parent?or any busy cook.

Jennie has been writing online since 2006, and developing recipes for more than 15 years, even after the sudden death of her young husband, Mikey, in 2011. Gathering her family together around the table was her recipe for healing; though many things about her life have changed, her commitment to eating for nourishment?physical and spiritual?has not. A seasoned recipe developer and personal chef, Jennie has crafted shortcuts (like two homemade all-purpose baking mixes, used as a base for baked goods such as breads, muffins, and cupcakes) to make good eating just a little easier. Try recipes like Orange-Scented Waffles, Carrot Fennel Soup, Lentil Ricotta Meatballs, Drop Biscuit Chicken Pot Pie, Strawberry Blender Sherbet, and Lemon Buttermilk Doughnuts. Simple, soulful recipes for every meal of the day emphasize farm-fresh produce and whole foods. Jennie’s distinctive voice is an evangelist for eating close to home, lingering around the table.

Jennifer Perillo is the food editor at Working Mother magazine, contributes to the Food Network blog, and worked in notable New York restaurants Gramercy Tavern and Alain Ducasse at the Essex House. Her recipes have appeared in Parenting, Kiwi, and Relish magazines, and she publishes In Jennie’s Kitchen, a food and lifestyle blog dedicated to from-scratch cooking, one recipe at a time. She lives with her two daughters in Brooklyn, New York.

Q&A with Jennifer Perillo

I wrote Homemade with Love to show that there’s a great cook inside all of us. Too often, people tell me that they’re not a good in the kitchen. The first question I ask them is what do they mean by “good”. Usually they respond by saying they cook the same few meals all the time. I then ask them if they’re friends and family like what they cook, to which the answer is almost always “yes.”

So, really, they’re doing a great job, they just need help learning new techniques to expand their comfort zone in the kitchen. That’s where Homemade with Love comes in—it’s all about sharing easy to understand techniques that everyone can use to cook from scratch with minimal fuss and maximum flavor.

Every recipe in the book is a favorite; they were included for a reason. The ones I am most proud of, though, are the All-Purpose Baking MixandWhole-Grain Baking Mix. You can make everything from pancakes to cupcakes with them! Baking is intimidating for many home cooks, so they rely on store-bought mixes to get the job done. Reading those labels can be scary—they need ingredients you can’t pronounce to make them last in warehouses and on supermarket shelves. My All-Purpose Baking Mix comes together with five simple ingredients—flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. I bet you were able to pronounce all of them, too.

Let’s look closer at one of the easiest recipes in the book, as an example. Whole Roasted Branzino sounds complicated, right? I mean, most home cooks are used to filets. Once you read the recipe, you realize it only needs seven ingredients. Most of the complicated work, cleaning and scaling the fish, is done by the fish market. Once you get it home, all you need to do is stuff it with some garlic, lemon and parsley. Add a drizzle of olive oil, some salt & pepper, and you’ll be ready to sit down to a fine dining quality meal in 25 minutes.

Kids love baking, and mine are no different. The muffin and scone recipes in Homemade with Love are especially fun because you don’t need any special tools. In fact, this is one of those times when kids get to play with their food, as they use their fingers to rub the butter into the flour mixture to make the dough.

The All-Purpose Baking Mix (I told you I really love this one) also makes it super quick and easy for kids to make breakfast—all by themselves! That’s a big plus, with Mother’s Day right around the corner.