This was disappointing, since I usually find Sam Sifton's no-recipe recipe column to be playful and expressive. On the whole, the recipes here are meant for pulling together a quick weeknight meal using whatever you can scrounge up from the pantry and the back of the fridge. I appreciate this concept.

There are some are truly good ideas: a light fish chowder, or beef curry, for example. Others, not so much: peanut butter sriracha pickle sandwiches. Or how about "black bean tacos" featuring canned beans, shredded cheddar, lettuce, onion, and radish—do you really need a book to help you think of that? Incredibly, there is a separate recipe for "cafeteria tacos" and one for rice & beans served with tortillas in other sections of the book. I found a few sets of recipes like that: a variation of just 2 ingredients can surely be added as a note to the original recipe? Cowboy ragu & sloppy joes. Fried rice & kimchi ketchup fried rice.

A couple entries had me scratching my head: ravioli with duck liver mousse sauce (luckily I *always* keep a jar of duck liver mousse in the pantry), or curry with ground goat meat. I have literally never seen ground goat for sale in my life and I know where to buy pig feet and oxtail. Obviously you can sub with any other kind of ground meat, but I hope you see how bizarre it is to pitch this idea to an audience who presumably lives on canned beans and ramen noodles (yes, one recipe includes instant ramen and "fridge stuff").

Anyways, I do like many of Sifton's other cookbooks, but I will certainly give this one a pass.