Starred review from January 31, 2025
For Morrisey, a self-taught cook whose own culinary journey included stops in catering and running the prepared foods department at Whole Foods, cooking is about trusting in one's own confidence more than anything else. With her debut cookbook, she wants to set up home cooks for success with a collection of flavorful, budget-friendly dishes that showcase her own "half Gaelic and half garlic" roots. After running through her staple ingredients and kitchen tools, Morrisey delivers a range of recipes arranged by mood, such as "Almost Dinner" and "Soups & Sammies." The dishes themselves range from those that lean heavily on prepared and boxed items, including chocolate streusel coffee cake (which uses boxed yellow cake mix and instant vanilla pudding) and smoked-turkey croissant roll-ups (which employ refrigerated crescent-roll dough), to those that up the culinary game, such as Morrisey's recipe for chicken divan (which uses a make-from-scratch sauce rather than canned soup) and her "sleeping dogs" with caramelized onions (a yummy riff on pigs in a blanket). VERDICT Morrisey's convivial brand of culinary cheerleading will definitely find favor (while delivering maximum flavor) with new cooks making their first tentative forays into the kitchen.--John Charles
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