As a longtime follower of Hetty McKinnon’s writing – I subscribe to her Substack, To Vegetables with Love, and cherish her books, two of which have already featured on CookbookCorner – I have come to realise that I can’t read a recipe of hers without wanting to make it. This is even the case when a cursory glimpse at a title, a particular combination of ingredients, or just the mood I’m in at the time makes me feel initially that it’s not for me. Once I actually read the recipe, in the process learning why she’s created it, and then tasting it in my head as I absorb each step, I’m all in. Naturally, being able to draw people in is only part of it, and means nothing if the recipes don’t deliver but, in my experience, hers always do. Not that I’m the only person who feels this way: there is a reason she’s the reigning queen of the New York Times Cooking section.
Her latest book, Linger: Salads, Sweets and Stories to Savor, bears this out with bells on. The days are getting greyer and shorter, the temperature chillier, and I wouldn’t have thought a book that dwelt on salads would have massive appeal for me. But it thumped through my letterbox a couple of weeks ago, and now I cannot be parted from it! Even if you aren’t, as yet, familiar with McKinnon’s work, it will no doubt become clear when I rattle through my shortlist of favourites from the book in a moment that she is a vegetarian food writer, although a preponderance of the recipes here are vegan, actually. This is essential information for vegetarians and vegans for whom any other type of book would be surplus to requirements but, speaking as an omnivore, I find it not really to the point: Hetty McKinnon doesn’t write great vegetarian recipes, she just writes great recipes. To wit: Mushroom and Black Bean Sauce Noodles with Turmeric Daikon Pickles; Potato and Scallion Flatbread; Roasted Brussels Sprouts with Preserved Lemon-White Bean Whip; Vegan Dan Dan Salad; Vegemite Slaw with Crispy Vegemite Chickpeas; Easy Beets and Lentils with Tahini-Yogurt and Candied Nuts; Ginger-Soy Radishes and Red Onions; Rice Paper Spring Roll Salad; Potato Chip – aka Crisps! – Salad; Eggplant [Aubergine] Puttanesca; Za’atar Potatoes with Cucumber, Feta and Mint; Roasted Grapes and Feta with Grains and Kale. And don’t go anywhere yet because I also want to say to you: Rhubarb and Cardamom Spritz; Rhubarb and Rosewater Almond Cake; Plum and Cardamom Galette; and Sparkly Orange Ginger Butter Cookies!
And the recipe I am happy to be sharing with you today (difficult though it was to choose just the one) is her brilliant Cauliflower Larb.
From Linger: Salads, Sweets and Stories to Savor © 2025 by Hetty Lui McKinnon. Excerpted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
