Menu No 3: Lobster, Smoke, Allium, Tomato, Vanilla, Olive Oil

The third in an imaginative series of small books, each of which offers a charming dinner menu.  There is an emphasis on reducing food waste by thoughtful use of ingredients, and on careful preparation to prevent last minute fuss.

There are twelve different recipes in this small book (5" x 7", 36 pages). In addition to Voll's notes on shopping and cooking ahead, there is also a short rumination on preserving that may include the first reference to Homer we've seen prefacing a jam recipe.

Menu No. 3 offers recipes for

• Gin Cocktail
• Grilled Lobster with Parsley and Scallion Butter
• Charred Vegetables with Creamy Scallion Dressing
• Hush Puppies
• Green Salad
• Olive Oil Gelato with Tomato Jam
• a bonus

As for author Brian Voll, a self-taught, trial-and-error, home cook, he says,

I was born in Indiana to a mother who loved to cook and considered her kitchen a laboratory to try any and every interesting or unusual recipe that she came across. Her five children were her guinea pigs, and when a recipe turned out, we ate very well. When a recipe didn’t turn out, we ate a lot of pizza.

Since moving to New York ages ago, I’ve been recreating that dynamic among my chosen family in my little kitchen. Each of my cookbooklets is a distillation of a really good night when everybody ate very well, when the recipes I’d been tinkering with finally came together. The series is as much a memoir as it is a collection of recipes. Embedded within each page are the kinds of things I like to cook—inspired by travels around the world and New York City, rooted in my friends and family, and grounded in how I think about cooking: solving the puzzle for maximizing flavor and minimizing waste.

My hope is that these stories inspire people to take pleasure in home cooking with good friends.