503: New Cookbooks Blowout: Baking, Restaurants, Memoir, Worldviews, and Influencers

24:35People love him. He's also like kind of tough to pin down in terms of doing interviews. I've requested an interview with him for our podcast, probably going back like five years since we started the show. He's never obliged some working on that one. But really, what I know about this book, which is not much, is that it is more of a memoir. It's calling A Thousand Feasts, which is kind of I'm deducing that it's stories of memorable meals and a little bit more of his life through all these all these meals in his life and his in his history. And I just can't wait to read it. I'm a fan of his cookbooks.

25:09And I want to know more about Nigel Slater. I also want to know more about Nigel Slater. So I feel like this book and all the books you've mentioned are things that I definitely need to add to my library list or maybe buy this fall. Yeah, it's a great category. And we're going to feature more books in the coming episodes on our show as we start to read them and really get them into our book bags. Do you like that word book bag? Do you ever use that word book bag? No, but maybe we should all be using it more. It takes me back to middle school. I don't know why I just came up. Yeah, it makes me feel like a young English lad going off to school.

25:40My book bag. My book bag. I'm going to stack all these memoirs in the book bag. The last one I've talked about on the show before, but I cannot mention it enough. It's Be Ready When the Luck Happens, a memoir, and it's by Ina Garten. And I've been able to read this book. I had an advanced copy, Flex Flex, there. And I'll just say that Ina does share details about her life, going back to her early days, growing up in Connecticut and really going to college and finding her way in the world in the 70s and then eventually starting Barefoot Contest in Long Island and just like 20 years of just straight work and hustle and really she had a career in the government.

26:17I can't forget about that. She worked in the White House previously to that and it's just such a great kind of like glimpse into Ina's land that in world that we don't really see on television and I just think this book is going to be a big book this fall and I look forward to seeing how it's received and if people are satisfied with what she shares and she does share a lot she keeps some of it close to the chest so it's not her whole story maybe it'll be a second edition or version or chapter to her story but I love it it's a business book more than anything it's what I took away from it how you can start small and really work hard and grow and not doing it in like a weird VC way and like get capital right away.

26:58Like this is well before that world. And she like went from one location to two. And really, it all comes back to the recipes and her finding what her audience liked to buy at the shop and really eventually finding her way into television. It's a great section there about how she ended up on the Food Network reluctantly. And then of course, we know the rest of the story. Ina Garten is who we love. And really, I think this book is terrific and you should all check it out this fall. Thanks for sharing all these pics with us, Matt. Thanks, Eliza. So, Eliza, we're back. We're talking about fall cookbooks.

27:31We're not calling these the best or the greatest. We're not using superlatives. We're kind of just reviewing what we're excited about. We've seen some of these books in PDF form, in physical form, if we're lucky. Others, we've kind of just gotten a sense of the style of cookbook from the descriptive copy. But really, this next category is a really cool one. You named it. Yeah, I named it Cuisines and Cultures, which I think is maybe an imperfect name, but I love the alliteration. So that's always a good place to start. And I think what we're trying to get at is this very large and expanding and exciting category of books that are from authors that are spotlighting different like cultural techniques or cuisines.

28:10Maybe the author is American. Maybe they're not. Maybe they're kind of talking about food that is in between different cultures. But the goal of the book is to be kind of sharing a different cultural tradition and like transporting you somewhere as well, maybe. What a great category. Well said, Eliza, it's not easy to make these categories sometimes. Yeah, I mean, it's really fun for us to get to look at all of the books and think about how to group them together. But the reality is that there's a million different ways we could talk about all of them. And one of the first books that I want to talk about today is called The Contemporary African Kitchen, Home Cooking Recipes from the Leading Chefs of Africa.

28:46And I'm just so excited about this for so many reasons. The first is that Alexander Smalls is the main writer and editor on this book. He's a James Beard Award winning chef, author and restaurateur. He co-owns the Harlem restaurants, the Cecil and Minton's. And he also is a world renowned opera singer. He has a Grammy and a Tony. I don't know if you know this about him, but he is just the most impressive. and I think the lineup of chefs that he has contributing recipes are also really impressive. There's friends of the show like Eric Agypong who has a recipe representing Ghana and Pierre Thiam from Senegal but also lots of other cooks as well and I think that it's just going to be a real cornerstone of anyone's cookbook collection.

29:23Yeah. Alexander is an incredible talent. I got to go to his apartment once for a book party and got to know him a little bit better. What an amazing guy and really when he pulls his friends and fans together for a book it's going to be really a special one. Glad you called that out. My first one is Panchan, 60 Korean-American Recipes for Delicious Shareable Sides by Caroline Cho. This speaks to me. I've written Korean cookbooks myself. And really, I've known Caroline for a while and really just respected her point of view. She's an artist. She's an educator. She lives in New York City. So we've been able to hang out a few times.

29:58But I have to say, doing a Panchan book, I've thought about this category. And it's extremely difficult to write. and she's done such a terrific job because panchan isn't really a single thing. It's not just the namul, the seasoned vegetables that are there, the kimchi's. There's a whole category of soups and tongs that come out of the panchan on the panchan table and she's done such a great job by offering creativity and really like offering new ideas in the Korean American vernacular and I love it. She has a couple of these recipes that just jump on initially She's a smoky gochujang chicken salad.

30:37She's a ho bok chun, like a zucchini pancake with peppers that I really love and a kimchi potato salad. And I think Caroline is really one of our most talented recipe developers. And she's really done a terrific job. It's not a big book. It's like nice and slim in the way that you want to have it on your counter. And just like you want to make some Kobe gym with a couple of these creative sides. It's like kind of doesn't feel like it's only panchun. It's almost like a Korean for home book that I really want to cook from. Yeah, it sounds awesome. The next one that I want to talk about is called Wafu Cooking by Sunoko Sakai.

31:14And this is another example of what I would consider to be a really well-respected and regarded cookbook author coming out with something new. Sunoko Sakai first wrote a Japanese cookbook in the U.S. in 1986, which I think is like such a different landscape of where we're at now. And Wafu literally translates to Japanese style. So it's the Japanese take on foods that originate in other parts of the world. So she has like dashi cheese grits with honey miso butter. She has a miso apple pie, lots of things like that. And it's kind of combining these flavors and ingredients and techniques. And it kind of speaks to her own background.

31:47She grew up between the United States, Mexico and Japan. And so while she's previously done like Japanese home cooking style books, I think this is kind of true to her experience and also the way that a lot of people seem to eat in Japan. So I'm really excited about that one. Can't wait to try those recipes. My next one is My Egypt, Cooking from My Roots by Michael Mina. We've had Michael on the show when we did this Las Vegas series. He's an acclaimed chef from San Francisco, New York City, and Vegas. And he's written cookbooks about his own style of cooking, which leans more Mediterranean, I would say.

32:17But really, this is a book that he's been working on for, I would say, around 10 years. I've been hearing about it. Kate Leahy is one of his collaborators on the book. And I've heard it on her great podcast. She's talked about it a bit, Everything Cookbooks. Now, this is all about Egypt, the place that he lived for only two years of his life, and he immigrated to America with his family. So he recognizes that he didn't grow up around Egyptian food, but he is a real scholar of the game, and he's really gone back to Egypt for a lot of influence in his restaurants. And this is the book that he goes back and cooks with family and friends and really travels the country and offers so many great ideas in recipe writing from the Egyptian point of view.

32:58We're going to have them hopefully back to talk about it more. So I want to leave it there. But it's such a cool book. What's your next one? My last one that I'll talk about is called The Chinese Way. It's by Betty Liu. Her family is from Shanghai, but it's kind of a kaleidoscope of different Chinese techniques and also some Chinese American techniques. One of the things that I look for in a cookbook is if it's kind of organized in an interesting way. And I really like the organization of this book. She breaks it out. Well, she has a pantry section that's broken out by different flavors like sweet, salty, spicy, tangy.

33:26And she gets into really good detail about like look for something that has like this region of origin on the label, like how to navigate that. But then also the book itself in terms of the recipes, there's a braising section, a frying section, a steaming section. So you can kind of choose one technique and work your way through that and learn different iterations of it from there. And I just think it's something that I want to cook a lot from. I can't wait to check it out. I have two more from this category. And again, we're going to be profiling many more books in the coming months. But this one speaks to me.

33:57Morissetta Kitchen Recipes and Stories from a Modern Puglian Farmhouse. Now, I've gone to Puglia as part of a taste travels, or I'm going back in September. So I've gotten to spend some time there. And really, this is the debut cookbook from Georgia Eugenie Goggi. She's a resident chef of a design-led restaurant hotel called Morissetta's Kitchen. At the Masseria Morissetta, massarias are throughout Puglia. They're like, it translates to farmhouse. But this is like a new style of dining. You go to a farmhouse. It's kind of agro-turismo style of cooking. And really, I love everything I've seen in Puglia.

34:33But when I went to Puglia for the first time, I tried to find a book to research Puglia. So I kind of knew what I was talking about when I was there for the first time. I couldn't really find it. And so I wish this book was there when I was there, when I was visiting there previously. The chapters are organized by season. And I like that a lot. The book is really, it's a little more chef-y. There's like a lamb and mizuna dish with mustard seeds and there's a cool tomato toast. So I don't know if I'm going to cook a lot from it. But I'm going to learn about Puglia and the way this farmhouse restaurant operates.

35:05That spoke to me. And my last one is classic German cooking. The very best recipes for traditional favorites from, okay, we're going to get into some German pronunciation here. I'm going to do my best. Semmel kunugel. That's not even right. I'm going to do this again. And we're going to keep this take because it's going to you're like you're feeling it with me as I'm going to it. Some old knudel to sauerbraten. All right, Luisa Weiss. I'm really sorry I did that, but I'm going to say some more German words. Luisa Weiss, classic German baking author, former columnist and journalist and really a terrific resource for German cuisine.

35:40And these are 100 of the best, most emblematic recipes of German Austrian home cooks. And really, I like learning about German home cooking because I don't know too much about it. And I think that I'm going to continue with my pronunciation journey. Reinder Holden, braised beef rolls. You're laughing. Sorry. Korkoflof, fresh cheese souffle. I'm really sorry, Germans out there. Korkofloof? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll get in it too. And knüner fricassee, chicken fricassee. And then there's an authentic Viennese goulash. and finally alpine kermknoodle plum butter stuffed steamed dumplings. I'm not trying to be funny here.

36:27I like that there's German language in this book. Like we're actually not trying to strip it down and make it more Americanized. We're actually making it German. So I hope, Louisa, if you're listening, you're not offended by my pronunciation. Hope to have you on the show. This book looks terrific and I can't wait to cook from it. I can't wait to cook from it and I can't wait to have Louisa tell us how to pronounce everything. We'll have like a definitely like a little bit of a fact check there. It'll be great. Thanks, Liza. You too. Eliza, we are back talking fall cookbooks. How are you doing?

36:57I'm good. How are you? I'm excited about the fall season. We've been we've been previewing many of the cookbooks coming out this fall. We're not calling these the best, the greatest, because we haven't seen the whole season. We're recording this in mid-August, so we haven't seen all the books. But really, this category we're calling big names because I think, you know, when you see a cookbook, You're like, OK, that's a person I follow. That's a person I know, either from television, from celebrity chef land or from the Internet, from social media. So many books now are being published by folks with big followings online.

37:30And we love that. So I think we've compiled a few of the ones that are are kind of jumping off right now. You start. What's your first one? My first one is by a certain someone named Dolly Parton. I'm excited. But you tell me about this book. Dolly Parton and her sister, Rachel Parton George. The cookbook is called Good Lookin' Cookin', A Year of Meals, A Lifetime of Family, Friends and Food. And as someone who aspires to be an adopted member of Dolly Parton's family, I think this is probably the closest I'm going to get. They have a ton of family recipes in the book for things like mac and cheese and spare ribs and strawberry shortcake.

38:04And I just think Dolly Parton is not only a country icon, but kind of a cooking icon. She's released a cookbook in the past. She also has the Duncan Hines cake mix brand line, which I think is super fun. And I just feel like any step you can get closer to Dolly Parton is a good path to be walking. I so agree. I loved her costume book that we put out last fall. This is like her second book with us here at Crown Publishing Group. And I've gotten to check out the book early. And it's such a terrific package. They call it like the way the photos and the text all come together. And like, come on the show, Dolly.

38:37Please. Yeah. Dolly, if you're listening, I'll be super normal and chill and I would love to talk to you. Also, I think this would be a great gift. I know we're not quite in holiday season yet, but I think if you're a Dolly Parton fan, this would be really fun to receive. Definitely a great gift for any Dolly fans. What's your first one to call out? My first one is soup salad sandwiches from Maddie Matheson. Now, Maddie has done cookbooks in the past and they've been terrific and I've been able to check them out. I've never met Maddie, but I've enjoyed his online content. And of course, we know Matty from The Bear, where he where he plays, I would say, a non-chef, more of like a goofball.

39:13But anyone who knows anything knows that he's like behind the scenes, one of the food stylists and food producers with Coco Store for this terrific show. But so Matty is a chef in Toronto and he has run acclaimed restaurants for a decade. And really, this is his first book that kind of really narrows the focus into soup, salad and sandwiches, three of his favorite food categories. and really I think the guy could probably have written a book about pho because he writes such a love letter to broth and pho and he worked closely with a Vietnamese chef and worked at a Vietnamese restaurant in his career and he has such a love letter to kick off the first section of this book I'm like man the guy probably wanted to write a pho cookbook but really we know that he wanted to expand it out a bit more and I love the light broths in the first soup section he has a rutabaga and daikon broth He's got a avogolamano soup that I feel is a real banger.

40:07But moving on to salads, he really has a lot of dexterity with his cookbook writing and his recipe writing. Cold broccoli salad. He's got this like recipe for a roasted shallot salad that is a little bit chef-y. So I think like cool thing about Matty is that he's like letting it all hang out and like loving every moment of it and doing these like kind of flexi chef-y recipes. but also very simple. Recipe's got a great love letter segway into sandwiches about the grilled cheese which is simply white bread and Kraft American singles. I think that's the only way to go with grilled cheese personally.

40:43And I just love the way he brings a lot of his voice and personality into it. And I think like the tuna melt is his love language with his wife Trishy which I thought is very sweet. And I think any fan of Maddie will love this book because it really does have his voice throughout it and lots of funny asides and quips in the head notes. And I'll close and say the man loves bologna. And he'll like cut a human if someone comes at him and tries to shade bologna. And I'm the same kind of person. So I love that he's a fan of the bologna. Bologna on English Muffin too. Nice little bread choice there.

41:18And you're going to maybe interview him. We're working on that. We'll see what happens. Come on, publicist. Make that happen. We want to make, we want to have Maddie in the show and Eliza's going to do the interviews. It's going to be really fun. What's your next one? My next one is called What Goes With What? 100 Recipes, 20 Charts, Endless Possibilities by Julia Tertian. I think Julia Tertian really knows what home cooks are looking for and want. And she has a really great approach towards like making it easy to cook at home in her newsletter. Keep Calm and Cook On. She does a lot of these matrixy charts that have like a recipe for any kind of soup where you have something brothy, aromatic, etc.

41:54And then you can kind of spin it into these different directions. And I think they've been such a success in her newsletter that it maybe led the way for this book to happen, which is kind of based in like helping you look at what's in your fridge, what's in your pantry and make something happen from there, which I think is a skill that is kind of hard to learn as a home cook, but is the most empowering thing that you can do. So I just think this is a really great book. And I'm actually going to get to talk with Julia about it at Rizzoli Bookstore here in New York on October 16th. So I'm looking forward to that.

42:21And we'll share a link to get tickets and RSVP when that's a little bit closer to. Yeah, I can't wait to have her on the stage at Resoliet. So those are always terrific events. And I love that she is, I think, now more of a cooking educator than a cookbook writer. And she does cooking classes online and a big fan of Julie Churchon. My next one is from Dominique Ansel, the father of the cronut. The cronut, the cruffin. I feel like so many combination words we owe to him. Indeed. Life's sweetest moments, simple stunning recipes, and the heartwarming stories. So it's a very slim book. It's only 40 simple recipes, all in the dessert category from Dominique Ancel.

42:59And really, I like the guy. I've spent some time with him. I really enjoy his company. He's got a lot to say. Hoping to have him on the show eventually. But I like this idea that he's telling some stories. He lived kind of a crazy life. You know, he's like so trained in France and has so much technique to teach. But then he became this like kind of meme chef guy, long lines, the Corona, et cetera, et cetera. Probably like a little bit of a head fuck for the guy to have this one recipe to find him a man who really has a lot to offer. So he's probably, I haven't read the book, so I'm not saying I know the content, but he's telling stories along the way.

43:32And some of the recipes that jump out, he's got his own classic creme boule, a hazelnut cake, and of course his tiramisu that I think I've tried in his studio before, which is like, I remember a few years back, it was one of my favorite dishes he's ever made. Evan Sung does photography. It's going to be a terrific book. I'm really looking forward to it. What's your final one? My final one is by Carolina Gellin. It's called Pass the Plate. And then when we talk about people who are big online in the food space that are making recipes, like Carolina is one of my favorites. And when I was looking up the book, I really loved this blurb from Deb Perlman of The Smitten Kitchen.

44:08She says, not a lot of cookbooks make me shouty, but this one did instantly. Everything looks so good. Clever, innovative and fresh. I hardly know what to cook first. and I felt the same way looking at the PDF. She has recipes for like chicken schnitzel with lemon gremolata and upside down pineapple coconut cake. And I just think it's cool when you can see somebody who has so much personality and success online who can make a book that feels like it's hitting on all of those same notes. So I'm excited about this one. I'm a big Carolina fan. I had a great conversation with her in the studio. It may have aired before.

44:38It will be airing soon. My next one is Justine Cook's A Cookbook. Recipes, Mostly Plants for Finding Your Way in the Kitchen by Justine Duran. We know Justine Snacks from her online persona. She is somebody that really has a love for beans. She is a terrific baker. And she calls herself a breakfast romantic. And really, this book, to me, is so intimate and personal. I love the writing. I spent a couple hours with it recently, and I just loved reading through it. Terrific writer and recipe developer. She has a great sweet and savory oatmeal combination. and again, her bread baking is underrated.

45:16I love that's near the end of it and this is a book, if you're a fan of Justine Cooks and you follow her on socials, you should definitely check out this book. I have to call it a final author. Sarah Fennell from Broma Bakery, Sweet Tooth, her and Justine and Carolina, three of our authors here at Crown, came together. I think they had dinner together recently. All three are so unique. They're all coming out this fall and I just love this book. It's like a huge success and already. And I love what she's doing. We're going to have a feature about her up soon. So really, these are our big names, but we're going to have plenty more to talk about later on in the fall.

45:54So thanks for sharing, Eliza. You too. Eliza, how are you doing? I'm good, Matt. How are you? We're doing a series of segments that are previewing our great fall season. We haven't seen every book, so we're not calling these the best and the greatest. We haven't been able to assess everything, But these are books that have jumped off the Amazon page, off of the books, our magic page, off of the omnivore pages, our favorite indie retailers. They're the ones that really we're looking forward to. And again, plant forward is the category. What is your first book to chat about? My first book to chat about is called Easy Indian Vegetarian by Chetna Makan.

46:31Chetna's name you might know from The Great British Bake Off. She also has done a couple of cookbooks, including Healthy Indian Vegetarian, which came out in 2020, which was one of my kind of comfort books during the early pandemic. I think she makes really great recipes and I'm just excited to have a new one from her to add into my rotation. Yeah, I'm a big fan of Jenna and I love that she is maybe going to come to New York and do an interview in our studio. So we'll look forward to that. My first book is The Weekday Vegetarians Get Simple from Jenny Rosenstrock. Jenny is a longtime friend of the pod and has published a number of books.

47:06We may know Jenny from Dinner, A Love Story, a series of books from about a decade ago. But The Weekday Vegetarians is a popular sub stack. And Jenny is just one of my favorite recipe writers, like straight up. She makes really accessible, simple recipes that have vegetables and are vegetarian focused. She's not saying that you should always have a vegetarian diet, but she's mostly cooking vegetable focus and vegetarian focus. These are 100 accessible stress-free recipes to make plant-forward cooking more streamlined. And really, she's focusing on the streamlined part here. Some of her, I would call more of her streamlined recipes in this collection include sheet pan gnocchi with butternut squash, mushroom charred bread pudding, crispy eggplant bowls with pistachios and basil.

47:52So she's really using the larder that we all have around and really focusing on streamlining dinner, getting it out on the table in an hour or less. And I just love Jenny's recipe writing. So this is a terrific collection. What's your next one? I just want to say the idea of a savory bread pudding really speaks to me. So I'm excited about that book as well. Totally. I love a savory bread pudding. It's actually great for like entertaining. People like a bread pudding. It looks nice on the table. Yeah. And it's just comfort food purely. Totally. The last book I'll talk about is called Big Vegan Flavor.

48:22And it's by Nisha Vora. And it is truly a big book. It's 600 pages. and I think is kind of just hitting on this idea of cooking like fully plant-based, really craveable, delicious food in so many different ways. Nisha Vora has a really big following on Instagram and TikTok. Rainbow Plant Life is her handle, which you've maybe seen before. And I think there's just a lot of recipes in this book that I'm really excited to cook. And the techniques behind them are cool. Like there's a recipe for miso butter seared king oyster scallops. So she's turning mushrooms into a scallop, but she's brining them ahead of time, which is what gives it this really good kind of texture to make it really tender, which I have cooked many mushrooms in my life, but I've never brined them before cooking.

49:01So I'm excited about that. There's also a recipe for like a chai spiced custard tart with mango, which just sounds like something I want to eat a lot. And I think this is another example of somebody who's developed a really big following online by knowing what people really want to eat and figuring out how to make it easy to actually cook. And so it's cool to see that be translated into a book. I'm really looking forward to that one. And speaking of big books, this is an absolute doorstop. Mastering the Art of Plant-Based Cooking from Joe Yonan. I've gotten a chance to actually hold this book.

49:34We got it pretty early here in the office. It is a really amazing book to hold. It is 300 mouth-watering recipes for flavorful staples, weeknight meals, and celebratory feast. Now, Joe Yonan is a name that we all know. He's the food and dining editor at the Washington Post. And he wrote a regular column called Weeknight Vegetarians. And really, I like Joe's sensibility. These are extremely well-tested recipes. And I'm just a fan of tackling this topic and calling it Mastering the Art. Wow. He's delivered on the promise. And it's 300 recipes. That's like a lot, like 300 recipes. A couple of those include smoky eggplant harissa dip, a citrus and mango salad with fresh turmeric and cucumbers, Enchilada Five Ways and Black Sesame Swirled Cheesecake.

50:22So he's really covering the gamut of plant-based cooking. And really, he also has a lot of great reporting in there. You know, this gentleman is a editor at the Washington Post. So he takes the journalism really seriously. For anyone who's trying to get more into plant-based cooking, this would be my pick. It's really a big book and I enjoy it. Yeah, I think it's cool. Also, his last book, Cool Beans, was the title. It was a bean book. is kind of, I think, like a step on the way up to this one because beans are obviously such a huge staple when you're doing plant-based cooking. So I like that he kind of mastered one corner and then said, okay, let me take a whack at the whole spectrum.

50:59Well said, Eliza. And I agree. He's really like, his ambition is super high with this book. And again, I can't imagine the proposal, 300 recipes is like tremendous. And I don't think you're gonna be disappointed with this book. There's so many more plant-based books to talk about throughout the year and we will, but thanks for sharing yours.

51:20This is Taste is hosted by Eliza Abarbanel and me, Matt Rodbar. The show is produced by Shalia Harris and Pat Stango and edited by Clayton Gumbert. Theme music by Steve Rydell. Visit Taste online at tastecooking.com and make sure to subscribe to our newsletter for updates on all cool things that are happening.