Book review: More is More by Molly Baz

Molly Baz is here in all-American glory to show throwing everything but the kitchen sink at a recipe can make stellar dishes

Most chefs can agree there is beauty in simple dishes with few ingredients. Molly Baz is here in all-American glory to preach the opposite – make an explosion of flavours by throwing everything but the kitchen sink at it. “Don’t stop until it tastes delicious,” is her mantra.

You’d expect to end up with a mismatched mess, but she finds a way of combining this and that to create unique masterpieces. Baz made her name with Bon Appétit on its YouTube channel, leaving in solidarity with three of her colleagues who were not given pay and contracts they felt were equitable. She has since built up her own name and brand, gaining recognition for her attempts to make cooking fun – not least by renaming dishes with her own lexicon. In Baz-lish, mortadella becomes ‘morty-d’, cucumbers are ‘cukes’ and a cheese cracker recipe is titled ‘crick cracks’.

The ethos of More is More is summed up in the story of when Baz received a lacklustre plate of calamari at a bar, but managed to rescue it with a dash of lemon from her Bloody Mary, a side of mayo, a dab of hot sauce and a liberal seasoning from a tin of Maldon salt she keeps in her bag.

It’s about taking something ordinary and making it extraordinary. See, for example, her dolmas, which she sizzles in olive oil, sits on a “schmear” of yogurt and adorns with brown-buttered pine nuts, or her chicken wings, which are coated in a red curry sauce and rolled in peanuts and coriander. Baz has previously shied away from creating a bolognese recipe, but finally found a place for one in this book, adding both white and red wine, mascarpone and miso paste and serving it with broken lasagne sheets.

More is More is the second cookbook from Molly Baz, the first being Cook This Book, and both provide a window into a new generation of cooking. She effortlessly creates meals that, if served in a restaurant, would all become instant social media hits. Open this book and be hit by a wall of colour as Baz shows off her unashamedly maximalist aesthetic and approach to cooking.

More is More by Molly Baz (Murdoch Books, £26)