Culinary delights for the discerning time-traveler

I know that cookbooks are for using, not really for reading cover to cover, and I can assure you that I have been using it, too, but I also have spent some time off and on over the past year or so reading the Outlander Kitchen cookbook all the way through. Some of this is because it's just really pretty, but some of it was also to make sure I read every recipe so that I knew what was in there and how difficult they seemed. 

 

While some of the recipes are probably too advanced or require equipment I don't have, and therefore I won't be using them (the pulled pork recipe in particular looks delicious, but I will be sticking with recipes I can do in a crockpot since I don't have access to a grill I can use for seven hours), there are a good number of remarkably easy recipes that are nonetheless delightful and make people really impressed that you made them (which is, after all, the whole point of cooking something). Mom and I tried a number of the bread recipes this summer; the oatmeal scones in particular have rapidly become a favorite of mine since they're really easy and taste amazing. 

 

In proper Fandom Cookbook style, each recipe starts off with a few lines excerpted from the Outlander novel in which the recipe -- or whatever inspired it -- appears. I've only read the first four Outlander novels, so a lot of the excerpts were familiar to me, but not all of them. The full-color photographs are gorgeous, and the "notes" sections, which contain technical tips, possible substitutions and variations, and serving suggestions, are extremely useful (Mom and I would never have made the nettle rolls if we had to actually go find nettles somewhere -- making them with spinach instead wouldn't have occurred to us, but they were delicious!). Author Theresa Carle-Sanders is a super helpful, super friendly guide to dealing with recipes that are like 90% oatmeal and cream, and then suddenly veer off into weird historical shit nobody's eaten in a hundred years, like beef tea (I have not actually made the beef tea, and I hope I never am sick enough to be tempted to make the beef tea, but reading about it was quite a ride). 

 

I might make ginger-nut biscuits tonight just because they look easy and fuck it, it's Friday. Mom and I are planning on trying our hands at the meat bridies next weekend, since we have a pound of frozen stew meat to use up and it's not really beef and Guinness stew season anymore. 

 

In terms of being both lovely and useful and hugely nerdy, Outlander Kitchen ranks right up there with A Feast of Ice and Fire. Possibly the only thing that makes Feast win out is its penchant for giving two recipes for everything (one modern and one old-timey), especially since I frequently have enjoyed the older recipes more than the modern ones. But they are both definitely top-of-the-line nerd shit and I expect to continue using both heavily for many years to come, until the spilled cream and smudged chocolate renders my copies unreadable.