A Generous Meal: Modern Recipes for Dinner

by Christine Flynn

NATIONAL BESTSELLER

Dinner can be equal parts impressive and simple any day of the week. Sometimes all you need is a little inspiration and a cabbage—and this book!

In A Generous Meal , Christine Flynn shows us—contrary to popular belief—that you don’t need a lot of time, money, or know-how to make good food. A simple potato can transform a so-so day into something special, a soup can warm you in more ways than one, and baking a chocolate cake is just another way of shouting, “I love you!” at the top of your lungs. 
 
A Generous Meal is a modern cookbook of over 100 recipes that anyone—from a novice to an experienced chef like Christine—can use to whip up restaurant-quality meals with ease.
 
Maybe you are having people over and want to put out some crusty bread and serve an array of simple starters like Butter Beans in Salsa Verde or Warm Chorizo in Sidra that will get everyone nibbling. Or, perhaps you’re looking for a vegetable forward weeknight meal like Spicy Oven Charred Cabbage and Lemons. Seafood dishes, including Herb Stuffed Rainbow Trout or Cod and Zucchini in Curry Coconut Broth, offer good variety, and meaty mains like Crispy Chicken Thighs over Vinegar Beans or Lamb Loin Chops over Minty Pistachio Butter are perfect any day of the week—and just as impressive to serve to guests.
 
And what is a meal without the possibility of dessert? Satisfy your post-dinner sweet tooth cravings with recipes like Caramel Pecan Ice Cream Crumble Cake or Polenta Biscuits with Sweet Corn Cream and Strawberries.
 
The recipes in A Generous Meal are fresh, comforting, easy to follow, and the best part? They are enjoyable to cook and eat.

Genres: Cookbooks, Food, Cooking, Nonfiction

320 pages, Hardcover

Published February 21, 2023

About the author

Award-winning author Christine Flynn was once told by a creative writing professor that she would save herself a lot of grief if she would limit her love of books to reading rather than attempting to write. Taking his words to heart, she dropped his class and wrote very little until fifteen years later when her husband gave her a Silhouette Romance which he'd received free with the gift-wrap of her mother's day present. She doesn't remember what he bought her (neither does her husband), but she remembers the book. As a person who had always found relationships fascinating, especially the often-complicated relationships between men and women, the writing she had always wanted to do had finally found its focus. Now considered "one of the genre's master storytellers" by Romantic Times Magazine, her work regularly appears on national best-seller lists, including USA Today and Waldenbooks.

Reviews

[Miss✧Pickypants ᓚᘏᗢ · Rating 4 out of 5]

This visually appealing cookbook focuses on dinner with starters, desserts and a few personal essays sprinkled throughout. Recipes are well written and offer a fresh take on routine ingredients, like cabbage and chicken, and are accompanied by scrumptious photos of the finished dishes.

[Shipshapeeatworthy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really appreciate the importance placed on the opportunities home cooking offers us in Christine Flynn’s new book, A Generous Meal. As she says, whether food is meant to bring people together or to offer a restorative break from a busy life, she emphasizes the idea that the act of feeding ourselves needn’t be onerous: “…little is required to be kind to yourself and to others and how easy it is to create a thoughtful, nourishing meal.”(1) In her new book, Flynn is looking to continue offering homey, delicious, accessible recipes in addition to thoughtful essays.

The recipes, along with 9 essays, are organized into 7 main chapters: 1) Breads, Spreads, and More, 2) A Side of Vegetables, 3) A Centre of Vegetables, 4) Delicious Fishes Dishes, 5) Meat the Mains, 6) Just Desserts, and 7) Condiments and Other Necessary Recipes. Flynn also offers helpful information to home cooks in the opening sections – Pantry Essentials and Tools and Equipment. She understands the importance of having a repertoire of key ingredients handy so that when suppertime rolls around, no one is making a mad dash to the store. There’s comfort in this type of readiness, and, having a young (-ish) family now, I appreciate anything that helps me from floundering.

More and more I’ve been gravitating towards books that show originality and have a distinct voice. Aside from the introduction and recipe head notes, it’s not easy for cookbook authors to offer in depth discussions surrounding their feelings or thoughts on food, which is why I enjoy Christine Flynn’s books. In How to Eat With One Hand and A Generous Meal, Flynn offers poignant and candid talk about her connections and influences that have guided her food. She’s funny and thoughtful and, while the recipes she offers are delicious, the real gem of her work are the essays. Not to be missed, her team of stylists and photographers (Suech and Beck, Lindsay Guscott, Andrea McCrindle) have captured Flynn’s modern/vintage aesthetic in saturated and luxurious scenes. There’s an elegant hominess to the book that compliments both the writing and recipes.

One of my favourite recipes from the book is for Lentil Soup. Like all good, hearty soups, this one begins life in a large Dutch oven, and, from there, carrot, celery and onion is cooked until softened. The flavours continue to build with the addition of garlic, cumin, coriander, turmeric, cinnamon, and red chili. The base is one of vegetable stock and canned whole peeled tomatoes which have been crushed, with the crowning glory – split red lentils – being the last to grace the pot. Served with lemon and a drizzle of olive oil, we enjoyed this soup with some crackers on the side. Not only deeply comforting and delicious, part of the magic of a soup recipe like this is that you’ll have enough for leftovers too!

After making Flynn’s recipe for Dutch Baby w/ Berries and Crème Fraîche, I’ve learned that not all Dutch baby recipes are created equal! Flynn’s is just as she describes in the recipe notes: “…a giant puffy cross between a popover and a pancake” but, as I have found, none of the other recipes I’ve tried to this point give a result as true and dramatic as this one. Don’t ask me what the difference is – whether it’s in the technique or ingredients -- because I’m just happy to enjoy this marvelous recipe. Served with a generous spoonful of whipped Crème Fraîche and berries, my daughter and I savored this on a lazy Sunday morning. Surprisingly there was a leftover portion which she took for lunch the next day much to her delight.

From the Just Desserts chapter, I had an early opportunity to try a few of the recipes that made it into the book – the Apple Tart with Rose Cream, Marble Cake, and Sweet Potato Bread Pudding. Flynn gives much thought to her recipe development and, the combinations and flavours she comes up with are interesting and delicious! Take the Marble Cake – she uses black cocoa powder, which creates such a dramatic contrast with the other layer and, it compliments the hints of orange in both the batter as well as in the glaze. In the notes for the tart recipe, she tells us that, “If you cut into the right apple, it will smell exactly like a rose”, so adding rose water to the whipped cream presents this experience of cutting into the right apple to home cooks. The flaky pastry, lush baked apples, topped with the rose cream is a sublime experience. Finally, the loveliest of autumnal desserts: Sweet Potato Bread Pudding, where the secret to the recipe is baking a sweet potato cake loaf first. While the loaf is perfect on its own, by adding cubes of loaf to a baking dish – along with eggs, cream, maple syrup and chopped, toasted walnuts – the resulting dessert is both cakey and custardy with the perfect amount of fall spices. Great on a dessert table or even served as part of a weekend brunch.

With A Generous Meal, Christine Flynn offers home cooks a beautiful guide to cooking meals for yourself as well as your loved ones. Her thoughtful essays and recipes are meant to be enjoyed and lingered over – just like a good dinner.

A version of this review is also posted to www.shipshapeeatworthy.com

I would like to take this opportunity to thank Penguin Canada for providing me with a free, review copy of this book. I did not receive monetary compensation for my post, and all thoughts and opinions expressed are my own.

[Deirdre · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was pretty fun - an impulse $1.50 purchase at the library's used cookbook sale - picked up because it had a fresh recipe for celery, lol, which we struggle to consume in our household. And behold, it also has some fresh recipes for cabbage, something we also struggle to consume! (You may ask why we don't just stop buying vegetables we struggle to consume, but we get a weekly CSA box of farm-fresh veg, and you have to eat what is plentiful and in season that way. Unfortunately, sometimes cabbage is plentiful and in season.)

Also I appreciated her essays, the unique aesthetic of the photos, the fact that she is a Canadian writer living in Canada, and the glimpse into someone else's preferences and go-tos. I never buy canned fish besides tuna, for example, and neither does our household rely too heavily on fresh herbs or feta, but perhaps we could start.

I will note that while this recipe book bills itself as inexpensive, everyone has different standards for what that means and in my world, oysters, cheese, and the aforementioned fresh herbs count as expensive, haha. Not to say it isn't worth branching out and splurging occasionally, but I'm just sayin'.

[Rebecca Ann · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am mostly interested in the decadent treatment of vegetables in this book. The photography is beautiful and some of the recipes I've never heard of before. It's not inaccessible, most of the ingredients are findable in chain stores thank goodness but there are a few places that baffled me a bit. In the tonnato recipe, she calls for egg yolks but they go in raw and there are no instructions to cook them, and no note about how this is very much not commonplace for most folks to eat raw eggs. In fact, the CDC advises against it at every turn. Overall a very beautiful book with some fresh ideas.

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow! What an excellent cookbook. The recipies are absolutely deadly, such delicious meal ideas! Christine's writing really wraps the entire thing together, guiding you through the plethora of salivating dishes in this tomb. I've made about a dozen meals from this now and they've all been exceptional!

[Terry Stone · Rating 2 out of 5]

It’s a beautiful book, but aside from that, I don’t think I would make much from this cookbook. Paging through this book, I honestly didn’t see anything that I would make.

[Nancy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Simple recipes that are impressive! A new twist on regular recipes. A great cookbook.

[Lesley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Might try a few of these recipes, but nothing too exciting.

[Virginia · Rating 4 out of 5]

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.