• Hi there, my name is Heidi Swanson. 101 Cookbooks is my recipe journal. It's where I write about the recipes that intersect my life, travels, and everyday interests. Often the recipes are from my cookbook collection, sometimes not - they might come from a friend, or I might write about a recipe I created myself.
  
  I focus primarily on natural, whole foods and ingredients - vegetarian recipes that are good for you and for the planet. Welcome!

I'm sitting there with three tubes of kraft paper, a ball of twine, two dwindling rolls of tape, and a small mountain of presents to wrap. Fat, juicy raindrops are pelting the window panes. Wind is making the bones of the house creak, and I suspect it will be dark by 3:30 this afternoon. There is a pot of day-old red posole bubbling away over a low, low flame in the kitchen. Which, by the way, is the warmest place in the house right now. I'm eager to pick through the pot to procure more than my fair share of flowered kernels. Kernels I'll then hide under thin whisps of pan-fried tortillas, a pinch of toasted Mexican oregano, and a bit of crumbled feta. It will be just the right thing to have for lunch on a day like today.

I've had...

Continue reading Red Posole and recipe...

While shopping for holiday gifts this year, I fell into a trap. The "one for you, one for me" trap. Some of you might know it? Not behavior I'm particularly proud of, but it is what it is. For example, I bought Ad Hoc at Home as a gift, then bought the Coco book for myself. Casa Moro = gift, River Cottage Bread Handbook = me. Phaidon's huge Coco book surprised me. I thought it would be too restaurant-centric for my tastes, filled with recipes that wouldn't translate to my day to day cooking. But there I was, flipping through it, excited about many of the chefs who were highlighted within the 400+ pages - Mona Talbott, Skye Gyngell, and Amaryll Schwertner to name a few. And I've actually been cooking from it.

Continue reading Pounded Walnut Strozzapreti and recipe...

I've become convinced that these sparkling, sugared cranberries should be a part of every holiday spread. They glint and wink in the surrounding holiday lights, and lend a striking dash of red to the table. Another great thing is the way they effortlessly make the transition from savory course to sweet. So, for example, I've become fond of serving them as part of a cheese spread, but I imagine they'd be nice as the finishing touch on on a tart or clustered atop a crème brûlée or pudding of some sort.

I've experimented with a range of sugars here, and some work better than others. In the beginning, I wanted to make them with a maple sugar coating - but the cranberries looked like they had been dropped in dust. The same goes for raw cane sugar, and Rapadura. So I gave up trying...

Continue reading Sparkling Cranberries and recipe...