Inspired by Serious Eats, I hosted our first cookbook club, tackling The Cuban Table.

Overall, everything turned out delicious, but the book seemed to be written assuming that its readers had a decent amount of cooking experience and could guess at some of the steps. For example, the guava cheese pastries (pictured above) mentioned making a glaze, but never when to apply the glaze to the pastries.

I made croquetas de jamon — which were pretty straight forward and easier than I expected them to be. Will probably make again. Will also cook the filling longer so they’re easier to shape. Or perhaps add some cornstarch to thicken the batter.

Overall, I’ll probably cook out of this cookbook again. But I likely won’t follow the recipes to the letter.