Cookbooks – FoodWatcher

A Vegan, Cold Weather Soup That Packs Some Heat

Before Lindsay-Jean Hard joined the staff of Zingerman’s— the famed, Ann Arbor community of businesses that includes a deli, bakery, mail order company, and many more offshoots—she was Food52’s OG community editor. She created the Food52 Cookbook Club and Baking Club, sparked conversation in the comments and on the Hotline, and applied her background in urban planning and sustainability to Cooking With Scraps, a Food52 column focused on food waste that she turned into an IACP Award-nominated cookbook of the same name.

Knowing her affinity for making the most of every ingredient, it’s easy to trace the lineage of the Oh So A-Peeling Banana Bread in the new cookbook that she co-authored, Zingerman’s Bakehouse Celebrate Every Day: A Year’s Worth of Favorite Recipes for Festive Occasions, Big and Small, back to Lindsay-Jean. This riff on her Genius Banana Peel Cake is a personal favorite, she said, “in part, because it is a solid version of a classic that is ready for any tweak you want to throw at it. But also because I'm proud of the fact that I helped reduce food waste at the Bakehouse with a tweak to their original recipe—it now uses the whole banana, peel and all!”

To Bake Like a Scandinavian, Reach for the Cardamom

“The smell of freshly ground cardamom is strong and pungent, and it reminds me of eucalyptus or menthol,” said Nichole Accettola, whose new book, Scandinavian From Scratch: A Love Letter to the Baking of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, hit shelves this we…

“The smell of freshly ground cardamom is strong and pungent, and it reminds me of eucalyptus or menthol,” said Nichole Accettola, whose new book, Scandinavian From Scratch: A Love Letter to the Baking of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, hit shelves this week. Admittedly, it’s a difficult flavor to describe, defying easy categorization. Like cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg, cardamom is considered a “warming” spice—but, depending on who you talk to (and the variety of cardamom you’re tasting), it can just as easily be described as “peppery,” “smoky,” “citrusy,” “sweet,” “fresh,” “resinous,” or “floral.”

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With origins in South India and grown today in India, Guatemala, Sri Lanka, and Tanzania, the practice of using cardamom in cooking and medicine is not a new one. From the earliest recorded mention of the spice in Vedic texts from 3000 B.C. to its use as a perfume, aphrodisiac, and digestive aid in Ancient Greece and Rome, cardamom has, for the last thousand-or-so years, also maintained a stronghold in Scandinavia’s baking scene. “Historians trace its arrival in Scandinavia back to the Middle Ages, when the Moors settled in Spain and traders from the north got hold of the spice,” said Nichole. When used in baked goods, the spice “has a yellow citrusy (lemony-pomelo) pungency”—akin to lemon zest “but with even more depth in flavor.”

’These Are People You Should Know About’: a Q&A with Klancy Miller on Her Stunning Second Book

Food wasn’t always the path for Klancy Miller. But, after earning a diplôme de pâtisserie from Le Cordon Bleu Paris, it was an easy choice. Now, her work has been featured in New York Times, Bon Appetit, Food Network, Vogue, and more (including Food52!…

Food wasn't always the path for Klancy Miller. But, after earning a diplôme de pâtisserie from Le Cordon Bleu Paris, it was an easy choice. Now, her work has been featured in New York Times, Bon Appetit, Food Network, Vogue, and more (including Food52!). After her debut cookbook in 2016: Cooking Solo: The Fun of Cooking For Yourself, Klancy turned to self-publishing, where the concept of her magazine, For the Culture, was born.

Klancy's second, eponymous cookbook—a comprehensive anthology of 66 Black women and femmes in the modern food world—is a triumphant blend of food history, pop culture, wisdom, and recipes. For the Culture features interviews with industry leaders from Mashama Bailey to Carla Hall and, of course, a bunch of delicious recipes to go along with it.