Home is where the eggs are Farmhouse food for the people you love

Food Network star Yeh (Molly on the Range, 2016) once again pairs expansive flavors and comforting (slyly healthy!) foods in her second cookbook. Fans of Yeh's Girl Meets Farm, now in its eleventh season, will smile at the playful banter and heartfelt meditations on food, home, and family that accompany the more than 100 recipes, while it's hard to imagine any reader who won't find something to enjoy here. Influences from the author's Chinese and Jewish heritage, Chicago roots, North Dakota homestead, the Norwegian American family she married into, and her life as a new mom are all over this book, which isn't devoted to "easy" recipes so much as ones in which efforts are well-spent. For every meal of the day, along with sweets and a few drinks, most recipes are over a page, with narrative instructions. Readers will find everything from a very uninvolved bread dotted with chocolate chips to several exciting versions of hotdish, like a North African-spiced chickpea stunner. And, of course, eggs, in a Persian tahdig-inspired basket of rice, in Chinese street food--style "jianbing-ish" wraps, poached on top of a broccolini soup, scrambled into sweet and savory iterations of matzo brei. Inspiring and undeniably fun fare for foodies.

Since the publication of her first cookbook, the 2016 IACP Award-winning Molly on the Range, a lot has changed for Yeh. She launched her popular Food Network show Girl Meets Farm, renovated her farmhouse in Minnesota, and added a child to her family. Yeh says she wanted her latest cookbook to reflect her new appreciation of "building family traditions and celebrating the everyday." Yet while some things have changed for Yeh, other things remain consistent in the kitchen--including the clever way she incorporates her Chinese and Jewish heritage into her cooking, and her ability to successfully mine her husband's Scandinavian family roots and Upper-Midwest food sensibilities for culinary inspiration. Everything comes together perfectly in this delightfully written cookbook that offers clear and concise instructions for a tasty array of treats (ranging from doughnut matzo brie to classic tot hotdish) as well as a new window into Yeh's life on her Minnesota farm, via entertaining asides. VERDICT If patrons are not already a fan of Yeh's cheerful culinary brand of pun-enriched and sprinkle-championing cooking, this charming paean to joys of farmhouse food and the bucolic life will win them over.--John Charles