I’ve referenced Dinner in this column before, I think. It’s not really being tested in this column in any sense, because it’s hard to imagine thinking the book so beyond usefulness that I would toss it on the to-be-donated pile.
That said, I’ve used it a fair amount and I wouldn’t quite put it in my pantheon, either. Its strength is the simplicity and commonsense character of most of the recipes—even more so in Clark’s more recent cookbook that is all about one-pan dishes. Sometimes I think that means some low-hanging fruit in terms of easily-achieved depth of flavor gets sacrificed, and every once in a while she strips a recipe down so far that it doesn’t come out very well. I often think of this book as very comparable to Nigel Slater’s Eat, but of the two, I think Eat is very much my favorite. (It also has the advantage of being very compact: if you were ever going to travel with a cookbook in your bags, it’s the one to take.)
I picked it off the shelf for today because I have to pick up someone from the airport right when I might be preparing dinner, so I needed something simple and good. I was toying with trying to eat outside—it’s a beautiful spring day but the temperature likely will go down pretty quickly once the sun sets. I can’t grill anything because by the time we get back from the airport setting up the grill and waiting will likely take too much time. I’m not against leaving an oven on while I run out for an errand, if it’s relatively low heat, but a charcoal grill is a different kind of thing.
So I settled on tortilla soup. Clark’s recipe for it hits the basics really nicely. I’m not going to fry corn tortillas myself—a nearby business sells great-quality chips they make themselves that will fit the bill. But I am going to marinate the chicken and then do it quickly under the broiler rather than shred some poached chicken—I want there to be more flavor in the meat. I’ll wait and see whether eating outside is going to make sense, but it’ll be a good meal in or out.