This book was received as an ARC from Roost Books in exchange for an honest review. Opinions and thoughts expressed in this review are completely my own.
I really enjoyed reading Modern Country Cooking. I love cooking, but at times feel like many recipes are overwhelming. Annemarie Aheam has done an amazing job with simplifying recipes and providing excellent instructions and pictures to go along with recipe. I also like her stories as to why she chose certain recipes and the connection that she has to it.

If this book doesn't have you trying to book a trip to Maine immediately, color me surprised. With lush photos of recipes, a great introduction to the farm, and tips and tricks - this book is sure to satisfy your Farm-to-Table itch. Broken up into recipes by month, the recipes aren't overcomplicated or ostentatious. They're simple, beautiful, and elevated.

One thing I love about the book, and the ethos of Salt Water Farm in general, is their leaning towards less of a dependency on strict recipes, and more of what you can do with the day's harvest. Resourcefulness, tweaking things to make them work for you, and working with what you've got are definitely on this menu. Can't wait to talk my mother into taking a trip for a cooking class at SWF!

Modern Country Cooking is a beautiful project made with love and attention to the details. Beautiful photography captures the eye but the writing really pulls you in and takes you through the year at the farm.

Excellent tip for pantry and entertaining blend with seasonal menu options to provide a nature's bounty for special meals. Recipes take advantage of ingredients that are at their peak of flavor. The farm takes these from their garden. Some of the coastal ingredients maybe hard to find for land locked Mid-westerners but would be worth the effort.

Collector's of cookbooks will find this a must buy. I can think of no better way to spend an evening with a hot cup of tea, an afghan and this book, de-stressing after a long day at work.

This book was received as an ARC from Roost Books in exchange for an honest review. Opinions and thoughts expressed in this review are completely my own.

I am a huge fan of simplistic cooking and I love the approach Annemarie Ahearn takes with Modern Country Cooking in giving a back story on why these dishes mean so much to her. I also love the pictures she displayed for most of the dishes and I can not wait to try the Meatballs in tomato sauce with Spinach and The Scallop Aguachile. Both pictures look so delicious and read easy to make and I know this will impress a lot of people. We will definitely consider this book as a candidate for a future cooking demo.

We will consider adding this title to our Cooking collection at our library. This is why we give this book 5 stars.

Modern Country Cooking is almost a "back to basics" cookbook, which I thought was pretty nice. Sometimes one doesn't need too fancy stuff.

This was a good, but I read a lot of cookbooks and I don't know if this one will really stick out for me. I enjoyed the intro where it went in to basic techniques and explained things and the recipes themselves look good, the pictures are very nice, I just didn't find the book on a whole to be that memorable.

This book is a page turner. Not only is it chock full of amazing recipes it also paints a wonderful picture of the life in Maine, the cooking school and what goes with a farm to table lifestyle. I couldn't put it down and read it in one evening.

The author, Annemarie Ahern, has become fairly well known over the last several years in New England. Her first cookbook was Full Moon Suppers at Salt Water Farm: Recipes From Land and Sea” and if you were local, you’d likely recognize the name of her Cooking School, Salt Water Farm. The focus is on making and eating food that is fresh, local, and seasonal, and (of course) delicious.

This is almost a back-to-basics kind of focus on cooking, rather than on the latest gadgets, a large portion of her cooking is done in a cast iron skillet using basic ingredients, and her recipes are uncomplicated and use basic, fresh, local, seasonal foods. Hopefully some homegrown vegetables or herbs, seasonings, allowing you to feel a deeper connection to the food you prepare, the earth it came from, or the sea that provides for us, as well.

Organized by month, each month having a collection of recipes based on what is seasonably available, along with a philosophy that there really isn’t any one “right way” inside the kitchen. Sometimes, perhaps, an easier way, or a different way, just not one and only one “right way,” along with a belief that ”we all have an inherent ability to cook.”

”Think of the first section of this book as the introduction to a Salt Water Farm cooking class – a briefing on our mission in the kitchen and helpful tips to successfully execute the recipes here.”

This begins with a section called The Fundamentals including a Country-Cooking Manifesto beginning with a paragraph titled, simply, “Keep it Simple,” followed by “Be Resourceful,” “Employ Economy in the Kitchen,” “Trust Your Senses,” “Country-Cooking Tools” which includes holding, using knives, and sharpening them, “Cooking in Cast Iron,” “Mortar and Pestle,” “Mandoline,” ”Tongs,” “Chinois and Cambro”… and more. Essentially, everything you need to know, or learn if you don’t already know. The next section is ”Sourcing and Storing Food” and is a mixture of common cooking sense advice organized into sections similar to the first, and followed by ”On Fowl, Meat, and Seafood” with its own sections, then ”Cooking vegetables, Beans, and Eggs” Working With Flour and “Welcome Them In” which is about setting the mood for the meal you’ve put your heart and soul into creating for family, friends, or perhaps just you.

The photographs in this cookbook are really stunning and make a pretty spectacular incentive to make some of these delicious sounding recipes. Some recipes are for things I’ve never heard of, but that look and sound delicious. I already have chosen many that I want to try now that the holidays are drawing near. I’m looking forward to buying a physical copy once this is available.



Pub Date: 21 Apr 2020


Many thanks for the ARC provided by Roost Books via NetGalley

Lovely cookbook with some gorgeous photos (though I wish more of the recipes were photographed). Definitely on the simpler side, but I love that the recipes are separated by month. I wish I lived closer to Maine so I could use some of the ingredient advice that Ahearn offers, but I will settle for finding the recipes/ingredients that work for my climate.

I was unable to download the book. I would have loved to it seemed something I would have enjoyed. Thanks, NetGalley.

I was a little disappointed this read more along the lines of a memoir than a cookbook. It was still rather interesting.

Many people are going to love this cookbook, which more than anything sells a fantasy of what it's like to live on the coast of Maine on a perfect coastal country property with a perfect husband, perfect friends and family, perfect baby daughter who waits patiently to nurse because at three months old she understands there are important things you must do first (really, this was written about what it's like in November at her farm first thing in the morning), perfect garden, and so on. The author, who trained in great culinary schools and kitchens, vacations for months every year in Mexico and says "I spent my early 20's in Paris" (well of course she did), teaches you how to be a great chef by using copious amounts of heavy cream, butter, bacon, white flour, fresh seafood and fresh-from-your-organic garden vegetables.

This was an oddly emotional cookbook for me to read, because Maine was one of many states I lived in as a child and I have very painful memories of my time there. Ahearn's incredibly over-the-top writing about how idyllic it is contrasted sharply to my memories, though I'm sure it's far more idyllic in the place of privilege she writes from.

Every month starts with two pages of descriptions of what life is like for Ahearn during that month. She focuses on the Maine weather, household and farm tasks, and what her family is doing, plus what types of foods she cooks. Here is an excerpt from September about what she says new motherhood was like for her:

"In my hazy memory of the first few weeks of her life, it was warm and sunny every day and we lay on a blanket under the apple tree in our back yard cooing at our sweet new child, who mostly slept and nursed. Friends came by to visit with baskets of ripe peaches, bowls of heirloom tomatoes and fairytale eggplants, fresh cheeses from the farmers' market, beautiful breads made with local grains, and hearty greens tied up like bouquets. One neighbor delivered a gorgeous salad Nicoise with imported canned tuna, and another neighbor brought a chicken stew made with a host of late-season vegetables from their farm. A dear friend (in fact, the woman who married my husband and me) came over to cook an entire Peruvian feast for the two (well, three) of us, making us feel like new-parent royalty. The house was filled with vases of sunflowers and dahlias, and a warm breeze moved through the rooms from morning until evening. Dinnertime was a sacred time, when I cooked up all the beautiful ingredients that were delivered to our doorstep, with the baby bound to my chest, the two of us listening to summertime jazz or soulful blues."

Apparently in Ahearn's world, nobody ever has food allergies or health issues and almost nobody is vegetarian (forget about vegan), though she does say she has one vegetarian friend and resists the urge to put chicken stock in the dish she makes for her. If you start to get too fat you cut down on all the heavy cream you add, but not too much. You cook with white flour, as long as it's really expensive white flour from some local mill. You spend a small fortune on groceries (except in late summer when your garden is so full that you never need to go to the grocery store) and occasionally cook with chicken thighs when you've blown your budget. Bluebirds fly around your head as you cook.

These are good recipes. They're fancy but pretty easy to do. Expect to spend a lot of money if you want to eat like this, and also expect to gain a lot of weight and perhaps develop some health conditions. It will be easier to cook these dishes if you have access to things like freshly foraged mushrooms, razorback clams you've just dug up on the beach and live lobster (no, you won't be killing it humanely, in case you wondered).

Photos are provided for about 1/3 or 1/4 of the recipes, though sometimes they are artistic photos of ingredients rather than the finished recipe. Nutritional information is not provided. In total, there are about 6-8 recipes per month. Examples of the dishes are beet gratin, cassoulet, smoked haddock, congee with poached chicken and ginger, bangers and mash, lemony ice cream and sour cherry clafoutis. Ahearn also provides an extensive primer of basic cooking skills at the start of the book.

Ultimately, it's pretty obvious that I didn't really enjoy this book but as a cookbook it is a fairly good one, thus the 3 star rating. I suspect that some folks will absolutely adore this book as it does an excellent job of transporting you to a fantasy that some are likely to enjoy. It also will teach you how to cook conventional upscale food well.

I read a temporary digital ARC of this book for the purpose of review.

Love the photos and Annemarie's story, but unfortunately I thought I was getting a cookbook not a memoir/biography or insight into her process. It was very informative though. Would still recommend. Just not what I was looking for. Thank you for the opportunity to read and review your book.

This is a great resource for sure. I really enjoy Ms. Ahearn's philosophies and styles in her cooking approach; keeping it simple and being resourceful. I have to admit that there's a lot of information/text for me to process (that's just me), yet I know it keeps me referring back to the text. The photos and beautiful simplicity of the book made me realize it was more than just a collection of recipes. I'd love to take her cooking classes, but until that happens, this book will do :)

Beautiful! I've been cooking for decades and have a bit of a cookbook addiction. I believe that if you get only one go-to recipe from a cookbook, you've done well. Looks like it's going to be two here: the potato- leek soup and the buckwheat- blueberry pancakes.

I'm vegetarian, and can use substitutions or deletions for many of the recipes, and there were several recipes for vegetable side dishes. And who knew I was being too brutal on my onions all these years. I learned a few things!

The photography is beautiful; plus, I'm a sucker for dinnerware. A score of A+ on both in "Modern Country Cooking."

I read this cookbook straight through and even though some of the recipes seem a little fancy for my family, I learned a lot reading the instructions and the authors explanation of different ways of doing things, and ingredients. This is a cookbook I would recommend just for that if nothing else. Well written and the photos were amazing