Cooking Methods
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That Sounds So Good: 100 Real-Life Recipes for Every Day of the Week: A Cookbook
Recipes to match every mood, situation, and vibe from the James Beard Award–winning author of Where Cooking Begins
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST COOKBOOKS OF THE YEAR BY TIME OUT AND TASTE OF HOME
Great food is an achievable part of every day, no matter how busy you are; the key is to have go-to recipes for every situation and for whatever you have on hand. The recipes in That Sounds So Good are split between weekday and weekend cooking. When time is short, turn to quick stovetop suppers, one-pot meals, and dinner salads. And for the weekend, lean into lazy lunches, simmered stews, and hands-off roasts.
Carla’s dishes are as inviting and get-your-attention-good as ever. All the recipes—such as Fat Noodles with Pan-Roasted Mushrooms and Crushed Herb Sauce or Chicken Legs with Warm Spices—come with multiple ingredient swaps and suggestions, so you can make each one your own. That Sounds So Good shows Carla at her effortless best, and shows how you can be, too.
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST COOKBOOKS OF THE YEAR BY TIME OUT AND TASTE OF HOME
Great food is an achievable part of every day, no matter how busy you are; the key is to have go-to recipes for every situation and for whatever you have on hand. The recipes in That Sounds So Good are split between weekday and weekend cooking. When time is short, turn to quick stovetop suppers, one-pot meals, and dinner salads. And for the weekend, lean into lazy lunches, simmered stews, and hands-off roasts.
Carla’s dishes are as inviting and get-your-attention-good as ever. All the recipes—such as Fat Noodles with Pan-Roasted Mushrooms and Crushed Herb Sauce or Chicken Legs with Warm Spices—come with multiple ingredient swaps and suggestions, so you can make each one your own. That Sounds So Good shows Carla at her effortless best, and shows how you can be, too.
Editorial Reviews
"Bursting with flavor and potential, these everyday recipes are far from everyday."-Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"That Sounds So Good will encourage even the most harried home cook to think more flexibly-and more than any one thing to eat, being confident and adaptable in the kitchen is what sounds so good right now."-Eater
"That Sounds So Good will encourage even the most harried home cook to think more flexibly-and more than any one thing to eat, being confident and adaptable in the kitchen is what sounds so good right now."-Eater
Readers Top Reviews
Alison H.
Full disclosure: I've only tackled 2 of the 100 "real-life" recipes in Carla Lalli Music's That Sounds So Good but both were SO GOOD! If the rest of the collection is anything like her sheet pan chicken with tomatoes and chickpeas or sautéed Brussels with sesame, I'm in for a treat! And the fact that there's a section dedicated to "Day Drinking & Lazy Lunches" guarantees it's a winner in my book. That Sounds So Good has something for everyone – and Carla makes it easy to find the perfect dish to suit your needs or mood. Pressured to prepare a meal, stat? Choose a "Stovetop Supper" or "Big Salad" from Chapters 3 or 4. Want to linger in the kitchen? Skip to Chapter 8, where you'll find entrées that take more time (but not necessarily more effort). The recipes are inventive yet approachable (i.e., they don't require a long list of ingredients) and the instructions are easy to follow. And Carla includes "Spin It" tips to help utilize items in your fridge and pantry. Kudos to Carla on the stunning and functional book! I've received a free copy from Clarkson Potter in exchange for a free and unbiased review.
Tan
"That Sound So Good" is Carla Lalli Music's follow-up cookbook to her James Beard Award winning "Where Cooking Begins: Uncomplicated Recipes to Make You a Great Cook." With this book, Carla continues to simplify cooking into something any of us can do, even the most busy. The book is divided into weekday and weekend meals with the weekday meals being more straightforward stovetop suppers, big salads, and healthy meals. The stovetop suppers are simple, quick cooking, low ingredient dinners that one can hammer out with a relatively low amount of pots and pans. The highlights in this section are the Pasta with Cacio e Walnut and the Herbed Rice with Shrimpy-Kimchi Tomato Sauce. I think making these recipes might compel the most amateur chef to make similar dishes employing similar flavor combinations or what they have on hand in their pantry and fridge (in essence, making them a better cook). The big salad section is a strength of this book. While the usual salads are well represented (the twist on the caprese, ranch), a plethora of salads I had never thought to put together are included. These include the Radicchio with Parm Crackers and Dates as well as the recipe for Roasted Squash aux Lardons (pancetta and running egg on a salad!). Now if you're like me, the reason to buy a cookbook is for its big elaborate recipes. Here, the weekend recipes will not disappoint you. If you were a fan of Carla's work for Bon Appetit, her recipe for brothy beans from the Youtube channel appears here. Another highlight is a recipe for fried mushrooms which make it seem like the fried mushroom could stand up well to any fried protein. Finally, there is an intricate recipe for a Sunday ragu which interestingly utilizes pork shoulder and shortribs. I recommend this book to novice and experienced chefs alike. I've received a free copy from Clarkson Potter in exchange for a free and unbiased review.
SD Teacher
There are lots to like and try in this cookbook by Carla Lalli Music. I always approach a new cookbook by browsing the recipes and thinking about what I can prepare today using what ingredients I already have in my kitchen. With this one, I made a long list because Music's recipes uses basic ingredients and staples found in many kitchens like vegetables, potatoes, pasta, and chicken. What you don't have, she assists you with "spin it"; these are substitute you can make within the recipe based on what you can find or already have. I used her spin it when I prepared her Aromatic Chicken and Ginger Soup; instead of the wide rice noodles, I replaced them with vermicelli (next time I added rice). Different grain, same result: the soup was satisfying, flavorful, and delicious. So many of these recipes are really easy and simple to prepare with basic kitchen staples and a short list of ingredients. I think our current favorites are Potato Insanity (insanely easy to make and so good) and Everybody Loves a Chicken Cutlet (again, really easy to prepare and loved by everyone). These have become weekly dinner requests. Tonight I'm going to make the Zucchini Fritters and I have a feeling this one will make it way into our menu planning again and again. So in review, That Sounds So Good is a great resource for beginning and seasoned at-home chefs. It's refrigerator and pantry friendly. The spin it feature allows you to make thoughtful substitutions if you don't have a specific ingredient. These recipes help anyone prepare a delicious, hearty meal without dwelling on using hard to find items and precise measurements. Music wants everyone cooking and enjoying good meals prepared quickly and easily. Many of the recipes I prepared were for my extended family and this book was brought up so many times after meals. I appreciate the retro 70's vibe the cookbook cover exudes. I've received a free copy from Clarkson Potter in exchange for a free and unbiased review.
Short Excerpt Teaser
Chapter 1
ABC: Always Be Cooking
Here's how to celebrate and embrace the act of cooking and eating in your everyday life, no matter what
Cook in this moment, whichever moment you're in
This book is organized by situation and occasion, rather than by ingredient or recipe type. I've divided a typical week into two buckets: Monday through Thursday, and Friday and the Weekend. My life looks a lot different on a Tuesday evening-after finishing work and catching up with a family that's been scattered all over the place-than it does on a Saturday afternoon, when I might have enough free time to let one of my cats take a nap on my chest. But no matter what day of the week it is, a girl's gotta eat! Within the weekday and weekend sections of this book, the individual chapters are devoted to the sorts of everyday scenarios you and I might find ourselves in-an effort to capture the types of meals that will fit into your actual life.
In the weekday chapters, you'll find stovetop suppers and dinner salads, and a chapter on the healthyish recipes that I crave after a weekend of eating and drinking and sleeping in. With many of us juggling work, school, housekeeping, caretaking, and commuting, these weekday dishes make the most of short active times. Half an hour of effort can add up to a complete meal if you know how to prioritize your prep and cook times.
By comparison, the weekend section is mostly devoted to recipes with longer cook times and some with larger serving sizes: soups, stews, braises, roasts, and things to grill. That said, even when you do have the downtime to afford to park something on the back of the stove or in a low oven for a couple-few hours, I don't want you to spend more than about half an hour of active cooking time to get that meal going or finish it up. (Grilling is a bit of an exception, since it's one of the few times that cooking overlaps with hanging out. But there are many grilling recipes here that can be made before your friends arrive, if that's how you like to party.) I love having people over, but my overambitious-entertainer phase-when I could be found piping out gougères at 2 a.m. the night before a holiday party-is done. My kind of weekend food isn't annoying, complicated, or technically challenging. I treasure my time off, and I don't want to spend every minute of it standing in one spot, staring at a cutting board. There are also plenty of weekend recipes here for the kinds of weekends where you are really feeling lazy.
By all means, make whatever you want on any day you like! I don't bake during the week, which is why the desserts chapter falls in the weekend section of the book, but if you want a cobbler on a Tuesday, I'm not going to stop you. Some of the big salads found in the weekday section make excellent, uncomplicated additions to a mellow lunch on the weekend, and can also be treated as quick-to-prepare vegetable sides to go with a big braise. There's a set of suggested menus on page 281 that I put together to help you mix and match meals from the recipes throughout the book.
Monday through Thursday:
Your time is precious.
How to get big payoff from short active times
The recipe instructions in this book are written chronologically, which means that I will rarely call for things to be already prepped in the ingredient list (i.e., "1 cup chopped onions"). Instead, you'll see whole ingredients listed, and I'll talk you through the most efficient moment in which to prep them in the recipe method itself. I am all about balancing inactive and active times, and using inactive time to your benefit when cooking. Despite what you might have heard chefs say about their restaurant mise en place, it doesn't always make sense to prep every single thing before you start cooking. I've set up my recipes so you start the longest-cooking item first, and while that is in process, you'll use the downtime (inactive time) to prep the things that go with it. If I'm going to have rice with a meal, I put that on at the top, then use the 18 minutes it takes the rice to cook to make whatever else will be on the table (see the recipe for Gingery Ground Beef with Lime and Herbs on page 60 for an example of how this works). Rice can sit after it's done, so if it takes me a little longer to finish the other components of the meal, dinner won't suffer. If something needs to marinate, like the tomatoes on page 216, or soak, like the crunchy vegetables in the salad on page 108, I'll prompt you to get that going, then turn to the other ingredients.
There are absolutely occasions when you should chop and measure everything before anything hits a skillet, such as when you're making a stir-fry, deep-frying something, or making caramel sauce. There'...
ABC: Always Be Cooking
Here's how to celebrate and embrace the act of cooking and eating in your everyday life, no matter what
Cook in this moment, whichever moment you're in
This book is organized by situation and occasion, rather than by ingredient or recipe type. I've divided a typical week into two buckets: Monday through Thursday, and Friday and the Weekend. My life looks a lot different on a Tuesday evening-after finishing work and catching up with a family that's been scattered all over the place-than it does on a Saturday afternoon, when I might have enough free time to let one of my cats take a nap on my chest. But no matter what day of the week it is, a girl's gotta eat! Within the weekday and weekend sections of this book, the individual chapters are devoted to the sorts of everyday scenarios you and I might find ourselves in-an effort to capture the types of meals that will fit into your actual life.
In the weekday chapters, you'll find stovetop suppers and dinner salads, and a chapter on the healthyish recipes that I crave after a weekend of eating and drinking and sleeping in. With many of us juggling work, school, housekeeping, caretaking, and commuting, these weekday dishes make the most of short active times. Half an hour of effort can add up to a complete meal if you know how to prioritize your prep and cook times.
By comparison, the weekend section is mostly devoted to recipes with longer cook times and some with larger serving sizes: soups, stews, braises, roasts, and things to grill. That said, even when you do have the downtime to afford to park something on the back of the stove or in a low oven for a couple-few hours, I don't want you to spend more than about half an hour of active cooking time to get that meal going or finish it up. (Grilling is a bit of an exception, since it's one of the few times that cooking overlaps with hanging out. But there are many grilling recipes here that can be made before your friends arrive, if that's how you like to party.) I love having people over, but my overambitious-entertainer phase-when I could be found piping out gougères at 2 a.m. the night before a holiday party-is done. My kind of weekend food isn't annoying, complicated, or technically challenging. I treasure my time off, and I don't want to spend every minute of it standing in one spot, staring at a cutting board. There are also plenty of weekend recipes here for the kinds of weekends where you are really feeling lazy.
By all means, make whatever you want on any day you like! I don't bake during the week, which is why the desserts chapter falls in the weekend section of the book, but if you want a cobbler on a Tuesday, I'm not going to stop you. Some of the big salads found in the weekday section make excellent, uncomplicated additions to a mellow lunch on the weekend, and can also be treated as quick-to-prepare vegetable sides to go with a big braise. There's a set of suggested menus on page 281 that I put together to help you mix and match meals from the recipes throughout the book.
Monday through Thursday:
Your time is precious.
How to get big payoff from short active times
The recipe instructions in this book are written chronologically, which means that I will rarely call for things to be already prepped in the ingredient list (i.e., "1 cup chopped onions"). Instead, you'll see whole ingredients listed, and I'll talk you through the most efficient moment in which to prep them in the recipe method itself. I am all about balancing inactive and active times, and using inactive time to your benefit when cooking. Despite what you might have heard chefs say about their restaurant mise en place, it doesn't always make sense to prep every single thing before you start cooking. I've set up my recipes so you start the longest-cooking item first, and while that is in process, you'll use the downtime (inactive time) to prep the things that go with it. If I'm going to have rice with a meal, I put that on at the top, then use the 18 minutes it takes the rice to cook to make whatever else will be on the table (see the recipe for Gingery Ground Beef with Lime and Herbs on page 60 for an example of how this works). Rice can sit after it's done, so if it takes me a little longer to finish the other components of the meal, dinner won't suffer. If something needs to marinate, like the tomatoes on page 216, or soak, like the crunchy vegetables in the salad on page 108, I'll prompt you to get that going, then turn to the other ingredients.
There are absolutely occasions when you should chop and measure everything before anything hits a skillet, such as when you're making a stir-fry, deep-frying something, or making caramel sauce. There'...
