Videos

Cook Your Way Through the Piglet Finale

April  5, 2018

Oh, have you not heard? The Piglet finale is finally here and it’s a battle of the restaurant cookbooks: Kachka and Night + Market. It’s been a winding road, but these tomes have nudged out the rest of the competition to land the last two spots.

If you missed the earlier rounds, full of missteps and mise-en-place, then mosey on over here to catch up on how we started with 16 beautiful books and whittled it down to our current final two. To celebrate the books' arrival in the finals, we're sharing a recipe from each to give you a little taste.

The first is from Kachka: A Return to Russian Cooking by Bonnie Frumkin Morales and Deena Prichep, an ode to Soviet cuisine in all its glory. Behold, Okroshka, a crunchy, creamy kefir soup that’s best served cold. It's the tart and tangy dish your dinner's been waiting for and is as simple as boiling potatoes. Watch it come together below.

Get the recipe here!

Then, there’s Night + Market from Kris Yenbamroong and Garrett Snyder, a visual diary of Yenbamroong’s Los Angeles restaurant of the same name. Our judges have loved the bright, flashy photography and equally flashy recipes. The Thai Puffy Omelet, or Khai Jiew, is a classic Thai dish with ingredients you likely already have in your fridge, and can be whipped up at any time. It’s threaded with red onion and ground pork then fried in bubbling pool of oil until golden brown. Watch it come to life below.

Get the recipe here!

But wait, there’s more! If you’re in the market for a brand-new braiser—or just want to test your luck—there's still time to enter our giveaway. The lucky winner will not only get a copy of all 16 Piglet cookbooks, but also a glass lidded braiser from Staub. Oh, and it’s topped with a tiny little piggy to keep you company in the kitchen. Oink!

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The Piglet has been a darned good time, and while we’re sad to see it go, we can’t wait to find out which contender will go home with the highest honors in this year's Tournament of Cookbooks.

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The Piglet—inspired by The Morning News' Tournament of Books—is where the 16 most notable cookbooks of the year face off in a NCAA-style bracketed tournament. Watch the action and weigh in on the results!

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Valerio is a freelance food writer, editor, researcher and cook. He grew up in his parent's Italian restaurants covered in pizza flour and drinking a Shirley Temple a day. Since, he's worked as a cheesemonger in New York City and a paella instructor in Barcelona. He now lives in Berlin, Germany where he's most likely to be found eating shawarma.

1 Comment

Rhonda35 April 6, 2018
Thank you for the video-recipes! Probably would not have tried either recipe before watching.