Author: Nicole Davis

Following a festive Friendsgiving, we're keeping the Food52 Cookbook Club gatherings going with a holiday-themed sweets swap! This time, we’ll be baking and sharing treats from Dolci! by Renato Poliafito. If you were a fan of his former Brooklyn bakeshop, Baked, or a stan for Ciao, Gloria in Prospect Heights, then you know Renato is a master of irresistible cookies, pastries, and savories. In his new cookbook, he gives Italian classics an American twist and on December 5 he’s coming to Food52 HQ bearing cookies from Dolci! to swap with our club.

Together we’ll pool our treats to create a holiday table filled with the sweet and savory (but mostly sweet) recipes from the book, like his Spumoni Loaf (essentially a giant rainbow cookie), his decadent Amaretto Caramel Brownies, and dozens of cookies.

Read More >>

Food52’s Cookbook Club has been “meeting” for over seven years—on Facebook. Now, we’re finally gathering IRL! Together with NYC cookbook club organizer Stephanie Lau, we’re throwing a Cookbook Club Friendsgiving on Thursday, November 14 with special guest Hetty Lui McKinnon. You don't need to be a member to join us, but you'll want to get your hands on a copy of Hetty's book, Tenderheart, or hunt down some of her Tenderheart recipes online (we can help!).

We’ll be bringing and sharing dishes from this IACP Award-winning cookbook that our members have been cooking from as our “Book of the Year.” It’s a love letter to vegetarian cuisine and the produce that Hetty’s father sold and shared with family and friends, with an emphasis on Asian-influenced flavors and techniques. Her sweet and savory recipes cover 22 vegetables in all, including fall favorites like squash, sweet potatoes, Brussels sprouts, and cauliflower. It’s the perfect book to dig into ahead of Thanksgiving to find your new favorite main, side, or dessert for this year’s feast.

Read More >>

Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat. Six Seasons. Tenderhart. Bravetart. Dessert Person. Midwest Made. These are just a handful of the nearly 200 cookbooks the Food52 Cookbook Club and Food52 Baking Club have collectively cooked together since 2017. And each one of them is fair game to cook through during August.

Of all the times to join the clubs, this so-called “throwback month” (which we also hold in February) is probably the easiest time to get into the groove of our Facebook Groups. You are almost guaranteed to have at least one of the cookbooks from our list sitting on your shelf, ready to crack open again. And if you don’t, we always post recipes excerpted on Food52 that you can cook from. Case in point: I don’t own Sweet Enough, which was our July pick in the Baking Club, but I still made Allison Roman’s Blueberry Cornmeal Shortbread Tart from the book because we shared the excerpted recipe. Once everyone began raving about it and posting their own pics, it was only a matter of time before I felt compelled to try it, too. (Verdict: it’s easy and so, so good.)

Read More >>

Portland, Ore. chef Naomi Pomeroy died tragically last week. As the news reverberated that the city had lost one of its most consequential, trail-blazing chefs, everyone whose life had been touched by her friendship and her cooking expressed their anguish. She was only 49.

“She was an extraordinary person. The whole city is grieving,” said Karen Brooks, the food editor of Portland Monthly, who broke the news about Naomi. She drowned while tubing on the Willamette River with her husband.

Read More >>