Multiple times while reading and cooking through Tenderheart, Hetty Lui McKinnon’s brilliant new volume of produce-forward cooking, I remember thinking, Now this is how you write a cookbook. Blending a deep and pathos-filled personal history with a truly interesting approach to vegetarian cuisine (chocolate-eggplant brownies? pea and kimchi falafel?), it’s a crowning achievement in a career spent working in plant-based recipes, from her early cookbooks Community and Neighbourhood to the more recent, lauded To Asia, With Love. Outside of books, McKinnon has recipes everywhere from Food52 to The New York Times, and also helms a super popular newsletter called “To Vegetables, With Love.” If you love vegetables and Asian-influenced cuisine, you’re probably already a huge fan of Hetty McKinnon (or are soon to be).
I’m not going to lie—I went into Tenderheart as a skeptic. The cover of the book promised “a cookbook about vegetables and unbreakable family bonds,” and it was hard not to be chary of going into yet another book about someone being nostalgic for their grandma’s meatballs or recalling eating their mother’s cookies or whatever. (Not that those cookbooks are bad—in fact they’re often quite good; but it usually feels like the same old story.) In Tenderheart, however, McKinnon offers legitimately wonderful writing about her father and his love of fresh produce (he worked in wholesale fruit and vegetable markets), and how his sharing that part of himself with his family and community was a cornerstone of their relationship. “For years after his death, I dreamed of his image on repeat, my dad entering the house like a hologram, a sack of rice stacked upon his broad shoulders,” McKinnon recalls; later, she paints another beautiful picture: “Every day, he came home from work with trays and boxes of vegetables and fruits, ready for our family meals, but always enough to share with others. Crates of mangoes of our elderly neighbor Earl who lived two doors away, oranges and apples for our family doctor, boxes of cherries as gifts at Christmastime, peaches, plums and apricots for aunts, uncles, cousins and friends.” The opening sections are some of my favorite literature I’ve read this year, full stop; this book makes me want to trick out the crispers of my fridge at full force and cook for everyone I know.
The recipes in Tenderheart are neither super difficult nor complex, but they’re seriously powerful when it comes to inventiveness and flavor; flipping through, you always get the sense that the veggies are front and center, whether you’re looking at a simple pasta, dessert, or a loaf of (yeastless) bread—in this case, one with huge pieces of broccoli in it (the “Broccoli Forest Loaf”). Tenderheart is indeed full of incredibly original cooking, even when you’re making a familiar item, like pesto, which, here, incorporates fennel fronds and pumpkin seeds; or a tiramisu that contains butternut squash puree. Later, there’s a vegan potato gratin that includes hazelnut milk, soy sauce, and leeks. I made (and loved) the creamy mushroom udon noodles, which sees leeks and assorted mushrooms swimming in a savory, creamy slosh of blended tofu, garlic, and white miso; it’s like a vegan, umami-packed fettuccine Alfredo made by someone obsessed with going to the farmers market.
The recipe intros are also full of gripping reasons and stories for the included dishes. The seaweed brown butter pasta, “a gateway recipe for seaweed skeptics,” provides an interesting explanation of dulse and what it adds to a dish; the tomato and Gruyère clafoutis explains what a clafoutis is, where it’s from, and which cheese substitutes work best with one. Throughout, you get a real sense that the book is a total work—that each recipe and every paragraph comes out of a clear and personal idea or feeling that drives everything. In my opinion, that’s what makes great art (and certainly what yields a killer cookbook).
TL;DR: Tenderheart is not only one of the most user-friendly vegetable-centric cookbooks out right now, it’s an engaging and beautiful set of recipes pulled together by both a deeply moving story and an excess of imagination. McKinnon has written a book that everybody who enjoys produce and Asian flavors should own, and one that everyone who connects to others through food (read: probably you, since you’ve read this far) will relate to. With her newest book, she has given us something that’s bound to remain in rotation for many years—at least I know this is true for me (and I have cookbooks flowing out of nearly every room in my house). In short: This is how it’s done.
Pick up Tenderheart on Amazon.
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