Sara Jenkins' New Italian Pantry

We love Sara Jenkins' cookbook, Olives and Oranges, and have been waiting impatiently for her to come out with another. In the meantime, she has an app that offers 75 recipes based on 16 pantry items and a handful of fresh ingredients.

I'm sure the recipes are good but I'm not a big fan of the app. For one thing, it is obviously very limited. Even though she cheats on the 16 items -- some of them, such as "pasta and grains" or "onions and garlic", are multiple items -- the recipes I've looked at seem to be simple variations on a theme -- lemon, capers, garlic, parsley, olives, anchovies, etc. So whether it's lamb chops, chicken legs, cod or halibut, you're going to get a combination of these ingredients. Not too exciting.

Since, however, it is really more a technique than a recipe, the directions do encourage swapping out the various elements, and creating your own quick dish.

The app itself leaves much to be desired as app. It is slow, the user interface has gaps -- there is no way to get to the recipe page except to put "all" into the search box. The videos explaining the pantry items are a bit hoaky and very banal. In her cookbook, for instance, Jenkins has numerous specific recommendations for brands of olive oil and other products. Here she just says she cooks with olive oil.

Good effort, but I think she'd be better off getting that second cookbook out.