This Will Make It Taste Good

Recipe Guide

IF YOU’RE LOOKING FOR VEGETARIAN OR GLUTEN-FREE RECIPES, more than half of the food in this book is one or both, so dive in. But note, Little Green Dress and V’s Nuts contain anchovies in their whole form or in Worcestershire sauce. To make them and the recipes that use them vegetarian, remove the anchovies and swap the Worcestershire for the soy sauce of your preference. And go ahead and leave out the bread, croutons, or crackers to make many more dishes gluten-free.

OUR HEROES

PAINLESS DINNERS FOR PEOPLE WHO HATE WASHING DISHES (AKA ME)

WHEN LIGHT IS WHAT YOU’RE LOOKING FOR

IN PURSUIT OF DECADENCE

KIDS CAN’T RESIST

SNACKTASTIC

KITCHEN PROJECTS

WAYS WITH CHICKEN

WHEN YOU’RE TIRED OF CHICKEN

VEGETABLES ARE THE MAIN EVENT

MORNING TIME

BREAK OUT THE FLOUR

SLURP IT FROM A BOWL

SIDELINES

DIP AND DRIZZLE

FEELING THIRSTY

SWEET TOOTH

Pep Talk

MY FIRST COOKBOOK, Deep Run Roots, is a love letter to Eastern North Carolina, the place I’ve lived my whole life. It’s as much a historical document as a cookbook, and of it I’m extremely proud. But Deep Run Roots really doesn’t represent the way I cook at home most days. That’s a little different than you might expect.

At home and at my home-away-from-home office (a place we affectionately call VHQ), I’m a modern day domestic engineer who calls on a roster of flavor heroes to make simple food fantastic food. These things, my kitchen MVPs, my tricks-to-delicious, are what this book is about.

If you come on this journey with me, if you go to the mat and make a hero or two, and then make a recipe or three that builds on that hero, I promise with every ounce of my highly accomplished self that you will be inspired.

This book will change the way you cook, the way you think about what’s in your fridge, the way you see yourself in an apron. I swear on my dog Gracie’s grave that you will be empowered, confident, dare I say even nimble, in your kitchen. Your journey to make your cooking taste good will shatter the chains of recipes you’ve struggled to follow. It will reshape, even streamline, the time you spend feeding yourself and the ones you love. Boring, bland dinners of basic Brussels sprouts and boneless skinless chicken breasts will be nothing more than limp dry memories in your house. You will emerge both kitchen magician and domestic god. You’ll know what to do and when you need to do it to make breakfast, lunch, dinner, and all the nuggets in between remarkable moments in your day, because when I’m done with you, you’ll be certain as a sultan that This Will Make It Taste Good.

The funny thing is that when I set out to write this cookbook I was bound and determined it was going to be “simple.” The recipes would be exciting of course, but the nexus of it was that anybody anywhere could whippy-dippy-do them from start to finish in less than an hour. If you had no knife skills and cooking didn’t bring you joy, then this book would be for you. If you’re more Walmart than farmers’ market, this book would be yours too. And of course if you love cooking and all things in the kitchen, you’d find plenty of joy in here too.

I’m happy to say that’s where this book ended up, but it took a little while to figure out how to get there.

There were problems immediately with the lowest-common-denominator approach. Turns out that “simple” too often turns into “uninteresting” or “boring”—not exciting or fun. I broiled tomatoes and wished I could add deeply caramelized onions to the topping. I made vegetable soup and missed the onions’ broth-defining depth there too. I stewed pots of beans in the name of easy and marveled at how basic they tasted. I seared fish and steak and wondered how to properly exalt both without an herb-y, punchy crown. I made lackluster dressings and pan sauces and offered store-bought suggestions for vegetable relish, pesto, and fruit preserves to help those sauces along.

My palate and my teacher’s soul were not pleased. So I decided to do the thing that felt most natural. I decided to cook like I really cook.

I realized that my mission isn’t to protect you from time in your kitchen, it’s to help you make the most of it. So I resolved to open up my pantry and share the shelf full of tricks I use every day to make simple food taste good. I would be honest about how my experience as a chef shapes my experience cooking at home. I’d bring my green sauce, my furikake, and my preserved citrus out of the closet and expose their power. I’d give them names and bios that mirror their personality and demystify their purpose. I’d show you how to make them, organize them, store them, and exploit them to good end.

Like a belt that lends me a waist when I’m feeling baggy, my little arsenal of condiments and components brighten, deepen, and define the food I cook. Recipes themselves, they make basic stuff taste complex. Damn right they deserve their own book!

I guess you’d call this “next-level meal prep” or “meal prep for people who want to cook food that tastes really freaking good.” I mean, think about it. Why do meal-prep apostles suggest you roast asparagus on Sunday just to ruin them in the microwave on Wednesday? Why on the last night of your precious weekend do they want you to boil quinoa without a legit plan to make it taste good? Why is dry-grilled, boneless, skinless chicken breast a good way to save time? I appreciate the intention, but I’m here to tell you there’s a better way to eat well without taking all night to cook dinner.

Trust me. Cancel your Sunday date with boiled quinoa and break out your blender in the name of a deep, rich, and round herb and garlic puree. Stop reheating broccoli that was oversteamed to start with and enlist your knife to craft a crown that makes broccoli shine. Forget portion bags and tiny Rubbermaid containers and say hello to jars and ice cube trays filled with colorful flavor treasures you feel proud of.

This will not be hard. I don’t suggest you spend your free-from-quinoa time canning vegetables or butchering whole animals. Instead, I hope you lean into the way I cook at home and let my flavor heroes do the crafty part of the work. And just to be clear, these tricks-to-delicious are not hard to make. Rather, they’re simple recipes like spiced nuts for texture and pickled tomatoes for just about everything else.

This is not about skill level, technique, or gadgets. This is about working smarter, not harder. You can do it.

How This Works

UNFOLDING IN FRONT OF YOU are ten chapters of recipes, each organized around one of my flavor heroes. Within each chapter I’ll introduce you to each MVP’s persona and function. You’ll also learn how to prepare, store, and deploy that hero in a cornucopia of approachable ways. In addition to fully fleshed out, approachable, easy-to-shop-for recipes that call on that chapter’s hero, you’ll find “no brainer” suggestions for how to use it at the top of each chapter.

I suggest you start with one hero. Go deep, cooking several recipes that call on it so you can see the power a little forethought affords you. The recipes, even the heroes, are dead simple, and all but one’s ingredients (Quirky Furki) can be found at any Walmart in our great nation. In short, nothing in this book is gonna have you searching the Internet for leaf lard or setting multiple timers in the name of precision. And because this book is practical at its core, you’re gonna see a lot of chicken cooked in a bevy of ways because if you eat meat, you most likely eat chicken, and I find a lot of people need some guidance getting the bird right. Same goes for vegetables. Broccoli, cabbage, spinach, kale, squash, apples, and cauliflower look as good at Walmart as they do anywhere, so I call on them a lot.

If you’re looking for interpretations of endive, white asparagus, and Guinea hen, look elsewhere. The goal here is to make simple cooking exciting and accessible. You can thank me when you see me.

Something else you’ll notice is that the recipe names and their introductions are often, shall we say, inspired. Not necessarily a precise reflection of the ingredients they’re made of, the recipe names in this book mirror what those dishes mean to me. Food is the language I use to talk about the fabric of my life, and that’s what these recipes do.

There are stories, too, because I like to write them. They are a glimpse at the people, challenges, triumphs, and lessons learned that stock the pantry of who I am. Put it all together, and this is what makes my life taste good.

What Would Vivian Do?

SHE WOULD…