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Chef Michael Smith's Kitchen: 100 of My Favorite Easy Recipes
Chef Michael Smith is passionate about cooking and sharing great food and flavors. Chef Michael Smith’s Kitchen is a collection of Chef Michael’s all-time favorite recipes that he cooks regularly in his own home kitchen, using lots of wonderful, memorable flavors to be enjoyed with family and friends.
Chef Michael Smith’s Kitchen features over 100 fabulous, easy-to-make recipes, each with a mouth-watering photo, celebrating easy and delectable meals, and embracing a relaxed approach in the kitchen. Packed with helpful tips and suggestions, aspiring and experienced home cooks alike will have the freedom to play and experiment, guided by Chef Michael Smith’s expertise. Readers will learn to expand their culinary repertoire and create flavorful food for family and friends with accessible recipes that are perfect for both everyday meals and special-occasion dinners.
Chef Michael Smith’s Kitchen features over 100 fabulous, easy-to-make recipes, each with a mouth-watering photo, celebrating easy and delectable meals, and embracing a relaxed approach in the kitchen. Packed with helpful tips and suggestions, aspiring and experienced home cooks alike will have the freedom to play and experiment, guided by Chef Michael Smith’s expertise. Readers will learn to expand their culinary repertoire and create flavorful food for family and friends with accessible recipes that are perfect for both everyday meals and special-occasion dinners.
272 pages, Paperback
First published September 6, 2011
8 people are currently reading
80 people want to read
About the author
Michael Smith
14 books19 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
Chef Michael Smith graduated with honors from the prestigious Culinary Institute of America in New York in 1991. He worked in London, South American and Caribbean restaurants before coming back to North America and Manhattan.
In 1992 he moved to Prince Edward Island, from where he has become Canada's best-known chef, the winner of the James Beard Award for Cooking Show Excellence and host of Chef at Home, Chef at Large and The Inn Chef on Food Network Canada and in 26 other countries.
He is today an award winning cookbook author, newspaper columnist, roving Canadian cuisine ambassador, restaurant chef and home cook.
Chef Michael Smith graduated with honors from the prestigious Culinary Institute of America in New York in 1991. He worked in London, South American and Caribbean restaurants before coming back to North America and Manhattan.
In 1992 he moved to Prince Edward Island, from where he has become Canada's best-known chef, the winner of the James Beard Award for Cooking Show Excellence and host of Chef at Home, Chef at Large and The Inn Chef on Food Network Canada and in 26 other countries.
He is today an award winning cookbook author, newspaper columnist, roving Canadian cuisine ambassador, restaurant chef and home cook.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
September 29, 2012
Chef Michael Smith, Canada's most popular chef, is passionate about cooking and sharing great food and flavours. Inside you'll find Michael's all-time favourite recipes, the ones he cooks regularly in his own home kitchen�lots of wonderful, memorable flavours that you'll enjoy with your family and friends.
Chef Michael Smith's Kitchen features over 100 fabulous, easy-to-make recipes, each with a mouth-watering photo. Start your day with French Toast Sandwiches Oatmeal Crusted with Blueberry Stuffing and Marmalade Mint Butter or Apple Pie Pancakes with Caramel Syrup. Enjoy Coconut Crusted Chicken with Mango Mint Salsa or Honey Mustard Barbecue Baked Baby Back Ribs, or a great fish dish like Grilled Tuna Steak or Pan Seared Scallops with House Wine Sauce for a wonderful dinner. You'll also find lots of recipes for delicious vegetables, grains, and side dishes like Nutmeg Roasted Sweet Potatoes with Wilted Baby Spinach or Sausage Sage Bread Pudding. And of course, Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups and Triple-Treat Creamsicle Marshmallows are sure to become your favourite treats to finish off any meal.
Chef Michael invites you to enjoy cooking his favourite recipes and to make them yours.
It's been a great fall for foodies in Ontario. Let's face it - any season that gives those of us who love food the opportunity to experience some amazing and different dishes, prepared by some of our favourite chefs has to be celebrated. Between the Feast of Fields event to the recent Word on the Street (yes, foodies love books too - there's a whole subset of them called "cookbooks"), to the upcoming Soupstock extravaganza, there is no better time to be in love with quality food made from fresh and local ingredients.
No better time indeed, as Chef Michael Smith, our own Canadian rock star chef from PEI, has been making quite a splash at these events with his own cookbooks. I've admired his recipes on his Food Network shows, and finally had the opportunity to make some of his delicious food when I received a copy of "Chef Michael Smith's Kitchen: 100 of My Favourite Easy Recipes". Previously released in Canada, it was recently released in the US by Pintail Books, an imprint of Penguin, and has some amazing dishes that everyone should try.
I can't lie - when I first paged through the book, I did wonder about the whole "easy recipe" description. However, once you get down to it, the recipes are incredibly simple to follow, and use ingredients that aren't hard to find if you don't have them in your pantry already. I would advise you to choose your recipes to fit the seasonal vegetables in your region; there are a number of recipes that I really wanted to make when I received the book in late July, but I chose to wait so that the food would be at the best quality possible.
We chose certain dishes because I was making them with people with food concerns, and these were the dishes that had the best mix of things we wanted to eat with easy substitutions as necessary, and we also really liked the flavours that were mentioned. In the end, we chose to make three things from the book:
* Bacon Beans with Spinach
* Thyme-Baked Chicken with Red Wine and Mushroom Sauce
* Raspberry Ginger Red Cabbage
The general consensus is that Chef Michael Smith (heretofore known as CMS) has a great eye (mouth? tongue) for flavour combinations. He has that wonderful ability to select simple ingredients that mix cleanly to create great tastes together. Case in point - the raspberry ginger red cabbage recipe. To be honest, we were both concerned that the addition of the orange juice and the jam might make this dish a little too sweet for our tastes, but our fears were groundless. The mix of the raspberry jelly (we chose a black and red raspberry jam) with the acid of the OJ and the tang of the ginger was a lovely mix that complimented the cabbage well. We were sure not to let it simmer too long, not wanting cabbage mush at the end of things, and it was still a lovely brilliant red/fuchsia colour at the end, likely due to the sweet-and-sour mixture that returned any missing colour to the dish. If anything, we might add a little more ginger to the dish next time, but we really like ginger in this household so we might add more than most.
I had private reservations about the beans, having visions of either a mushy baked bean scenario or hard-as-pebble nuggets on our plates. Thankfully, we followed the instructions to rinse the beans the night before, and we found that the addition of the bacon, onion, garlic and spinach (with a dollop of red wine vinegar) made for a really flavourful dish. It's an excellent alternative to roasted potatoes on a cool fall evening, and something that everyone really enjoyed. Not surprisingly, we increased the amount of bacon, but we're almost positive that didn't influence things (much). Really, can you have too much bacon in a dish?
"Life is about balance - like the decadence of bacon fat balanced with the hearty goodness of nutritionally intense spinach. That's your story. Stick to it." ~ CMS, page 191
The red wine and mushroom sauce is already a family favourite, and we've made it several times. The first time it was used over pork loin, and the second over the suggested chicken; while it was certainly delicious over the chicken, we agreed that the mix of the sauce over pork was absolutely divine. We did make a few minor changes here - due to dietary needs, we changed the cornstarch to potato flour but the results were just as tasty and the sauce still thickened up nicely. Leftovers were happily spirited away by hungry university students - much to the chagrin of the chef (me) who was hoping for lunch the next day.
There are other great recipes in the book that we've sampled, and so far we haven't found a dud within the book. This book would be a great present for that university student newly out on his/her own, or for the foodie in your life who enjoys lovely clean flavours with delicious seasonal ingredients. If you haven't picked up one of CMS's books yourself, this is a great book to start.
"Food is fun. Over the years, I've always enjoyed cooking. Letting yourself go - simply allowing your ingredients to guide you - is empowering and enjoyable. You can relax, smile, laugh, and stay in the moment That's how your cooking becomes peaceful and gratifying and leaves you open to discovery." ~ CMS, introduction
Chef Michael Smith's Kitchen is available from all good book retailers, including Indigo, Amazon and your friendly indie bookstore. Published by Pintail Books in the US, Penguin Canada in Canada, ISBN: 9780143177630, 264 pages.
Chef Michael Smith's Kitchen features over 100 fabulous, easy-to-make recipes, each with a mouth-watering photo. Start your day with French Toast Sandwiches Oatmeal Crusted with Blueberry Stuffing and Marmalade Mint Butter or Apple Pie Pancakes with Caramel Syrup. Enjoy Coconut Crusted Chicken with Mango Mint Salsa or Honey Mustard Barbecue Baked Baby Back Ribs, or a great fish dish like Grilled Tuna Steak or Pan Seared Scallops with House Wine Sauce for a wonderful dinner. You'll also find lots of recipes for delicious vegetables, grains, and side dishes like Nutmeg Roasted Sweet Potatoes with Wilted Baby Spinach or Sausage Sage Bread Pudding. And of course, Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups and Triple-Treat Creamsicle Marshmallows are sure to become your favourite treats to finish off any meal.
Chef Michael invites you to enjoy cooking his favourite recipes and to make them yours.
It's been a great fall for foodies in Ontario. Let's face it - any season that gives those of us who love food the opportunity to experience some amazing and different dishes, prepared by some of our favourite chefs has to be celebrated. Between the Feast of Fields event to the recent Word on the Street (yes, foodies love books too - there's a whole subset of them called "cookbooks"), to the upcoming Soupstock extravaganza, there is no better time to be in love with quality food made from fresh and local ingredients.
No better time indeed, as Chef Michael Smith, our own Canadian rock star chef from PEI, has been making quite a splash at these events with his own cookbooks. I've admired his recipes on his Food Network shows, and finally had the opportunity to make some of his delicious food when I received a copy of "Chef Michael Smith's Kitchen: 100 of My Favourite Easy Recipes". Previously released in Canada, it was recently released in the US by Pintail Books, an imprint of Penguin, and has some amazing dishes that everyone should try.
I can't lie - when I first paged through the book, I did wonder about the whole "easy recipe" description. However, once you get down to it, the recipes are incredibly simple to follow, and use ingredients that aren't hard to find if you don't have them in your pantry already. I would advise you to choose your recipes to fit the seasonal vegetables in your region; there are a number of recipes that I really wanted to make when I received the book in late July, but I chose to wait so that the food would be at the best quality possible.
We chose certain dishes because I was making them with people with food concerns, and these were the dishes that had the best mix of things we wanted to eat with easy substitutions as necessary, and we also really liked the flavours that were mentioned. In the end, we chose to make three things from the book:
* Bacon Beans with Spinach
* Thyme-Baked Chicken with Red Wine and Mushroom Sauce
* Raspberry Ginger Red Cabbage
The general consensus is that Chef Michael Smith (heretofore known as CMS) has a great eye (mouth? tongue) for flavour combinations. He has that wonderful ability to select simple ingredients that mix cleanly to create great tastes together. Case in point - the raspberry ginger red cabbage recipe. To be honest, we were both concerned that the addition of the orange juice and the jam might make this dish a little too sweet for our tastes, but our fears were groundless. The mix of the raspberry jelly (we chose a black and red raspberry jam) with the acid of the OJ and the tang of the ginger was a lovely mix that complimented the cabbage well. We were sure not to let it simmer too long, not wanting cabbage mush at the end of things, and it was still a lovely brilliant red/fuchsia colour at the end, likely due to the sweet-and-sour mixture that returned any missing colour to the dish. If anything, we might add a little more ginger to the dish next time, but we really like ginger in this household so we might add more than most.
I had private reservations about the beans, having visions of either a mushy baked bean scenario or hard-as-pebble nuggets on our plates. Thankfully, we followed the instructions to rinse the beans the night before, and we found that the addition of the bacon, onion, garlic and spinach (with a dollop of red wine vinegar) made for a really flavourful dish. It's an excellent alternative to roasted potatoes on a cool fall evening, and something that everyone really enjoyed. Not surprisingly, we increased the amount of bacon, but we're almost positive that didn't influence things (much). Really, can you have too much bacon in a dish?
"Life is about balance - like the decadence of bacon fat balanced with the hearty goodness of nutritionally intense spinach. That's your story. Stick to it." ~ CMS, page 191
The red wine and mushroom sauce is already a family favourite, and we've made it several times. The first time it was used over pork loin, and the second over the suggested chicken; while it was certainly delicious over the chicken, we agreed that the mix of the sauce over pork was absolutely divine. We did make a few minor changes here - due to dietary needs, we changed the cornstarch to potato flour but the results were just as tasty and the sauce still thickened up nicely. Leftovers were happily spirited away by hungry university students - much to the chagrin of the chef (me) who was hoping for lunch the next day.
There are other great recipes in the book that we've sampled, and so far we haven't found a dud within the book. This book would be a great present for that university student newly out on his/her own, or for the foodie in your life who enjoys lovely clean flavours with delicious seasonal ingredients. If you haven't picked up one of CMS's books yourself, this is a great book to start.
"Food is fun. Over the years, I've always enjoyed cooking. Letting yourself go - simply allowing your ingredients to guide you - is empowering and enjoyable. You can relax, smile, laugh, and stay in the moment That's how your cooking becomes peaceful and gratifying and leaves you open to discovery." ~ CMS, introduction
Chef Michael Smith's Kitchen is available from all good book retailers, including Indigo, Amazon and your friendly indie bookstore. Published by Pintail Books in the US, Penguin Canada in Canada, ISBN: 9780143177630, 264 pages.
August 30, 2012
Michael Smith is one of my favourite chefs, and as an added bonus, he’s Canadian. I love all his tv shows. This was the first of his cookbooks that I’ve had the pleasure of trying.
I love the set-up of the book, with a full page picture of each recipe. I’m a visual person when it comes to food, and there is better than seeing what the recipe should look like. The recipes themselves are easy to read, with simple instructions.
I easily bookmarked over a dozen recipes to try right away. I have made two so far, and both turned out great. I was a bit surprised at how complex some of the recipes were, as Chef Michael Smith is generally known for simple, easy food.
Overall, I am very happy with the recipe selection. I will be continuing to try new recipes from the book as I buy the necessary ingredients, and hope to find a few I will make over and over.
I love the set-up of the book, with a full page picture of each recipe. I’m a visual person when it comes to food, and there is better than seeing what the recipe should look like. The recipes themselves are easy to read, with simple instructions.
I easily bookmarked over a dozen recipes to try right away. I have made two so far, and both turned out great. I was a bit surprised at how complex some of the recipes were, as Chef Michael Smith is generally known for simple, easy food.
Overall, I am very happy with the recipe selection. I will be continuing to try new recipes from the book as I buy the necessary ingredients, and hope to find a few I will make over and over.
June 23, 2012
I guess I'm not up on my chefs because I don't know too much about Michael Smith, arguably Canada's most famous chef. I received a copy of his newest cookbook, simply titled Chef Michael Smith's Kitchen - 100 of My Favourite Recipes. (The spelling of favourite is a clue that he is from Canada.)
The book, like the title, is simple but gorgeous. It is divided into the typical chapters- Breakfast, Soups, Salads, Main Course, Dessert. In between chapters there are pages, like Salt & Pepper and Knives & Pots, where Smith describes simply what you need to know about using salt and pepper to season and the six (Martha Stewart would faint!) kitchen tools you need. They are:
One large pot, big enough to boil pasta in
One small pot, big enough to make a small batch of pasta sauce
One frying pan, large enough to make a batch of pancakes
One large chef's knife, for slicing and dicing
One serrated knife, for slicing bread
One small paring knife, for opening envelopes and cutting limes for your gin and tonics
Even a small apartment kitchen like mine can handle that.
The book is beautifully done, and each recipe is divided into four sections, with different colors and fonts: the recipe name and introduction, the ingredients, the directions and kitchen tips. Each recipe has an accompanying photo (well done by James Ingram), either of the finished product or of ingredients.
The recipes are simple too, using ingredients that can be found in most grocery stores, another plus for me. I don't have room for ingredients I will use only once.
I have bookmarked at least a dozen recipes to try that I know my adult sons would enjoy, including:
Bacon Breakfast Taco with Cheddar Scrambled Eggs
Chicken Cheddar Quesadillas with Jalapeno Cilantro Pesto
Buffalo "Wing" Salad with Spicy Chicken Chunks and Spicy Blue Cheese Dressing
Sweet Potato Vegetarian Chili with Cinnamon Sour Cream
Pan Roasted Zucchini with Cherry Tomatoes and Oregano
What I like best about this book is that it is filled with recipes that aren't intimidating, they are simple, made with fresh ingredients, and I think pretty much anyone can make them. I'll keep you posted on which recipes I try.
The book, like the title, is simple but gorgeous. It is divided into the typical chapters- Breakfast, Soups, Salads, Main Course, Dessert. In between chapters there are pages, like Salt & Pepper and Knives & Pots, where Smith describes simply what you need to know about using salt and pepper to season and the six (Martha Stewart would faint!) kitchen tools you need. They are:
One large pot, big enough to boil pasta in
One small pot, big enough to make a small batch of pasta sauce
One frying pan, large enough to make a batch of pancakes
One large chef's knife, for slicing and dicing
One serrated knife, for slicing bread
One small paring knife, for opening envelopes and cutting limes for your gin and tonics
Even a small apartment kitchen like mine can handle that.
The book is beautifully done, and each recipe is divided into four sections, with different colors and fonts: the recipe name and introduction, the ingredients, the directions and kitchen tips. Each recipe has an accompanying photo (well done by James Ingram), either of the finished product or of ingredients.
The recipes are simple too, using ingredients that can be found in most grocery stores, another plus for me. I don't have room for ingredients I will use only once.
I have bookmarked at least a dozen recipes to try that I know my adult sons would enjoy, including:
Bacon Breakfast Taco with Cheddar Scrambled Eggs
Chicken Cheddar Quesadillas with Jalapeno Cilantro Pesto
Buffalo "Wing" Salad with Spicy Chicken Chunks and Spicy Blue Cheese Dressing
Sweet Potato Vegetarian Chili with Cinnamon Sour Cream
Pan Roasted Zucchini with Cherry Tomatoes and Oregano
What I like best about this book is that it is filled with recipes that aren't intimidating, they are simple, made with fresh ingredients, and I think pretty much anyone can make them. I'll keep you posted on which recipes I try.
February 16, 2013
One of my favourites from one of my favourite chefs. The recipes are easy to prepare and consistently tasty. We prepared an entire birthday dinner using recipes from this book to rave reviews from the whole party.
July 31, 2013
Beautiful book! Love the pictures and recipes. Love Chef Michael!
August 24, 2015
Had a few things I would try.
December 14, 2016
Okay easy recipes nice ideas for everyday cooking
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews