INTRODUCTION
In the time MUNCHIES has been around, we’ve gotten to work with all kinds of chefs, making food that ranges from lowbrow to highbrow and everywhere in between. Add to that the fact that almost all of us have spent serious time in kitchens ourselves and have super-high expectations of what food should be, what you get is a team of people who are pretty damn good at parsing pro-level skills and techniques into very tasty home-cook–friendly food.
This book is a culmination of all those skills: in short, this is how we cook when we’re at home. Most of the time, because we’re people with jobs and lives, we’re putting together quick dinners that keep us fed and happy. But we really love food and love feeding people and don’t think there’s a better way to enjoy the company of others than around a giant table of food. So, to that end, welcome to the MUNCHIES Guide to Dinner, our effort to turn the way we like to cook and eat into a collection of recipes. Easy ones for busy weeknights, and fancy ones for the occasional weekend dinner parties with friends.
We’ve divided the recipes in here into four sections: Homemade Staples, Essentials, Weeknight Meals, and Weekend Entertaining.
Homemade Staples is where we offer primers on all the things that add so much character to your meals if you make them yourself: recipes like homemade mayo and salad dressings, chicken stock, tomato sauce, and fresh pasta from scratch for the days you’re feeling ambitious. Do you have to make them at home? No. Will they kick ass if you do? Yes.
Essentials are the techniques and dishes we think everyone should know—the ones that maybe your parents would have taught you if you lived inside a Norman Rockwell painting, where you don’t really want to admit, “Uh, shit, I can’t believe I don’t know how to do this”: the roast chickens, the mashed potatoes, the pots of plain rice. With these basics, you can build all the elements and flavors you need to keep yourself fed and happy. They might not all be the quickest and easiest—although some are, for sure—but they’re exactly what you’ll want to have in your arsenal when a mac-and-cheese emergency comes along.
Weeknight Meals are exactly what they sound like: they’re what you fix yourself after a long day at work or school. They don’t generally require a lot of complicated shopping or prep, and for the most part, they’ll get you dinner on the table in under an hour. There are also a couple of recipes in that section (the Chicken Pot Pie on page 105, for example) that work perfectly if you make them on a weekend and freeze your leftovers in batches. Then you’ll have a very easy pop-it-in-the-oven-and-crack-a-beer-while-you-wait situation when you get home on a Tuesday evening.
Weekend Entertaining is loosely organized theme nights for when you want to invite your friends over and go all out. They’re intended as inspiration; no one’s saying Pimento Cheese Quesadillas and Cacio e Pepe Popcorn are mandatory for a Netflix binge-watching party (see page 113) . . .but no one’s saying they’re not, either. Treat these as loose suggestions, or shoot a couple of recipes over to each of your friends and make it a potluck.
We really want you to treat everything in here as a suggestion. We have thoughts and opinions about what goes with what, and how best to use leftovers, but fundamentally, the point of this book is to give you the knowledge base and skill set you need to be comfortable improvising on your own. We’re hoping this book gives you the tools and skills you need to make yourself (and your friends and loved ones) many, many dinners that live up to your deservedly high expectations.
Copyright © 2019 by Editors of MUNCHIES. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
