Cookbook highlight: Endless Summer Cookbook by Katie Lee

Every month our Toronto cookbook club picks one cookbook and everyone cooks from it. For August we went with Endless Summer Cookbook by Katie Lee. Here’s what’s in it and how it held up as a group cook.

Who wrote it

Katie Lee co-hosts The Kitchen on Food Network. She’s written a few cookbooks now, and this one came out of the summer parties she throws at her place in the Hamptons. It was published by Abrams in 2015.

What’s inside

There are more than a hundred recipes, and the thing that ties them together is that they’re all party food in the loosest sense. Not fussy appetizer trays, just food that’s meant to be put out on a table for a group of people who are going to hang around for a few hours.

Some of the recipes that show up in it: salad Niçoise, figs wrapped in prosciutto, pizza cooked on the grill, steak tacos with avocado and cilantro, peach blueberry cobbler. There’s a real emphasis on produce and on things that taste better at room temperature than straight out of the oven, which is exactly what you want when the food has to sit out while people talk.

Alongside the recipes there’s guidance on wine pairing and general entertaining, and the photography is a big part of why the book works. It’s a book that’s trying to sell you on a feeling as much as a technique.

How it worked for a group cook

Really well, which is why we picked it. The recipes skew easy, so nobody had to commit a whole Sunday to one dish, and there’s enough range across starters, salads, mains and desserts that a group of thirty five people can spread out across the book without everyone landing on the same three recipes.

It’s also a forgiving book if you’re newer to cooking. Most of the recipes are short, the ingredient lists are things you can get at any grocery store, and there isn’t much in there that punishes you for improvising.

Who this book is for

If you cook mostly for other people, or you want a book you’ll actually reach for between May and September, this one earns its space. If you’re looking for technique, a book that teaches you something structural about how cooking works, this isn’t that. It’s a book about feeding a table.

Where to find it

Endless Summer Cookbook is widely available through most Toronto bookstores and libraries, including the Toronto Public Library. It also appears under the title Katie Lee’s Easy Breezy Eats in a later edition, so if you’re searching for it and coming up empty, try that.

Read how the August night actually went, rain and all. If you want to know which book is next, we announce it on Instagram and to the newsletter list first.