After falling in love with food writer Alison Roman’s recipes on the New York Times cooking page, including viral recipes #thestew and shallot pasta, I bought her second cookbook, Nothing Fancy: Unfussy food for having people over.

With lots of food inspiration for having people over, which according to the back cover is NOT the same as entertaining, Nothing Fancy is filled with fun, creative, and relatively simple recipes that you want to make. The ingredients are easy to find and recommend substitutions are helpful when you don’t have all the ingredients on-hand.

In addition to the recipes themselves, I also love that Alison’s personality comes through in her writing and commentary. She often gets flack for her Uber millennial lifestyle and vernacular —but I find her relatable…maybe because I’m also Uber millennial?

Review

Accessibility: The ingredients are relatively easy to find. Almost all can be found in a local grocery store. The steps in each recipe don’t require fancy tools or techniques, meaning most people can follow them. Someone who doesn’t cook a lot or feels less confident in the kitchen, however, may find some of the recipes a bit intimidating. For those cooks, Alison is super encouraging. Case-in-point, she titles one of her recipes “Whole roast fish-yes you can!” If you are planning to use the book to help you learn to cook, apart from ingredient substitutions, there are few tips to help navigate the recipe steps. I’m always interested in learning new cooking techniques, so this was a bit disappointing. 3/5

How good is the food?: Great! Of the roughly 15 recipes I have made so far, I’ve enjoyed eating all of them. There are still many more that I am excited to try. There are a few ingredients, namely anchovies, vinegar, and lemons that make appearances throughout. If you’re not a fan of those ingredients, you may not enjoy many of the recipes. Even though I like those ingredients, I have used less vinegar, in certain recipes, to better suit my taste (which is what cooking is all about anyway, right?) 4/5

Writing: Alison’s writing is charming, funny, and self-deprecating, which I like. Unlike some cookbooks I own, I enjoy reading the passages that accompany the recipes. 5/5

Esthetic: The book is a clean, crisp white cover with a photo of a beautifully roasted whole chicken on a plate held by Alison (I presume. The face is cropped out). She’s wearing a royal blue shirt, white jeans, and her signature red nails. The book looks great on a shelf and all the photos throughout are lovely. 5/5

Overall: 17/20. This is a great cookbook to have and to refer to for ideas and inspiration. It will look great on your bookshelf or wherever you keep your cookbooks and you’ll likely get good use out of it.

Below are a few of my favourite recipes from Nothing Fancy.