Summer Cookbook Club

Longing to travel again? Looking for new recipe inspiration? You’re in the right place! One of our team’s favorite ways to learn about new cuisines and flavors is through travel, and since we’re limited this year, we thought…

Longing to travel again? Looking for new recipe inspiration? You’re in the right place! One of our team’s favorite ways to learn about new cuisines and flavors is through travel, and since we’re limited this year, we thought we’d try exploring in a new way.

You’re officially invited to join us for our first ever summer cookbook club, where we’ll learn about a new global cuisine each month.

The Official Lineup

  • June: Vietnamese Food Any Day, by Andrea Nguyen (buy a signed copy from us and get a travel postcard and a playlist compiled by Andrea herself!)
  • July: TBD (announced June 19)
  • August: TBD (announced July 22)

Live Cooking Demos

Every Thursday at 11am PST, a different member from our team will be doing a live cooking demo on Instagram. Mark your calendar so you don’t forget, and join us there! On Sunday morning, we’ll send out an email announcing what the weekly live recipe will be (make sure you’re signed up as part of the cookbook club to receive these emails), so you’ll have time to gather your ingredients. If you’d like to cook along with us, great, or you may just want to pop in and see how it’s done!

Author Interviews, Ingredient Spotlights and More!

Each week you can expect a new email ranging from an introduction to the month’s cuisine, a great author interview, spice profile, product profile and more!

Cookbook Club Posts You May Have Missed

Cook On Your Own & Share With the Club!

Even if you can’t make the live events, we’d love it if you try the week’s recipe on your own time and share (OR any other recipe from the book you’re excited about). If you’re comfortable sharing a photo on social media (Instagram or Facebook), show us what you’re cooking and be sure to tag #summercookbookclub so we can all follow along. 

I’m In! Where Should I Buy My Books?

We’re partnering with Beach Books, an independent bookstore in Seaside OR, to ship SIGNED copies right to your door. With your book purchase, you’ll also receive:

  • Charming travel postcard designed in-house
  • Collection of each author’s favorite music to play in the kitchen
  • Free shipping
  • The chance to support an independent bookstore

Let’s Learn Together!

We can’t wait to learn more about new flavors and approaches to food this summer, and we’re really excited to cook right along with you!

Continue reading "Summer Cookbook Club" »

13 James Beard Award-Winning Books to Add to Your Library

Every year, the James Beard Foundation usually celebrates its Media Awards—which honors the country’s best food authors, broadcast producers, hosts, and journalists—with a big gathering of names from all across the food world.

While that gathering may…

Every year, the James Beard Foundation usually celebrates its Media Awards—which honors the country's best food authors, broadcast producers, hosts, and journalists—with a big gathering of names from all across the food world.

While that gathering may not be possible this year, the work the awards are honoring remains more important than ever. We've spent the majority of the past few months indoors, and turning to the kitchen not just for nourishment, but for a bit of an escape: getting lost in a new recipe, embarking on an ambitious project, or finding comfort in an old favorite.

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This One-Skillet Chicken Florentine From Joanna Gaines Is What’s for Dinner Tonight

“It is around food that we gather in joy and in grief; it is an offering that comforts us in bad times and enriches the good times,” Joanna Gaines writes in the introduction to her new cookbook, Magnolia Table, Volume 2.

This has always been true, of …

"It is around food that we gather in joy and in grief; it is an offering that comforts us in bad times and enriches the good times," Joanna Gaines writes in the introduction to her new cookbook, Magnolia Table, Volume 2.

This has always been true, of course, but the idea of cooking as comfort feels more important than ever. In the past few weeks, it seems like the world has collectively gathered in the kitchen—baking a batch of crinkly-chewy chocolate chip cookies, letting a pantry-friendly soup burble on the stovetop, and finally attempting a sourdough starter for the first time.

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10-Minute Salmon With a Seedy Little Secret

A few winters ago, Trevor and I spent a night at Catbird Cottage. While the little soaps in the bathroom and trinkets on the shelves—and their cat, and the perfectly squeaky buttered mushrooms at breakfast—were lovely additions to our stay, they paled …

A few winters ago, Trevor and I spent a night at Catbird Cottage. While the little soaps in the bathroom and trinkets on the shelves—and their cat, and the perfectly squeaky buttered mushrooms at breakfast—were lovely additions to our stay, they paled in comparison to our host, Melina's complete collection of Donna Hay Magazine back issues.

Melina joined in as I oohed and aahed my way through all the chiaroscuro-ed vegetables, messily unmessy cheese sprinkles, and fairylike vegetable ribbons. I was, then, aspiring to work in food media, Melina very much seated in it, and Hay, to us both, its supreme overlord.

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Treat Yourself Today With Melissa Clark’s Instagram-Famous Campari Cake

If you’ve been a home cook, even a dabbling one, in the last 15 or so years, you know Melissa Clark. Maybe you’ve come across her regular writing and recipes in The New York Times, or cooked from one of her more than 40 (!) cookbooks, which range in su…

If you’ve been a home cook, even a dabbling one, in the last 15 or so years, you know Melissa Clark. Maybe you've come across her regular writing and recipes in The New York Times, or cooked from one of her more than 40 (!) cookbooks, which range in subject from braising and weeknight cooking to the Instant Pot and bread machines.

Her latest, recently released on Mar. 10, is Dinner in French. It's a book that seems to hit, bullseye-style, Clark’s expertise: balancing the ease of weeknight recipes with somewhat more ambitious techniques and ingredients. It's the perfect home-cook's book.

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How to Help Your Favorite Cookbook Authors (& Bookstores!) Right Now

Now more than ever, home is where many of us are seeking refuge and solace in light of the novel coronavirus. This is a tough time, but we’re here for you—whether it’s a new pantry recipe or a useful tip for your kitchen, here are some ideas to make th…

Now more than ever, home is where many of us are seeking refuge and solace in light of the novel coronavirus. This is a tough time, but we’re here for you—whether it’s a new pantry recipe or a useful tip for your kitchen, here are some ideas to make things run a little more smoothly for you and your loved ones.


Coverage of spring cooking usually looks pretty different than it does this year: At a time when food media should be beginning to sing songs of radishes, peas, asparagus, and ramps, the focus this year is mostly on storage produce, pantry staples, and all-consuming kitchen projects. Coverage of spring cookbooks looks pretty different, too—but that doesn’t mean the books have stopped!

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The Viral ‘New York Times’ Dish I Make for Friends (& Myself!) Week After Week

I came across this bo ssäm recipe while testing hundreds of others for our co-founder Amanda Hesser’s forthcoming 10th-anniversary update to The Essential New York Times Cookbook. The process is straightforward, if not requiring a little patience: Coat…

I came across this bo ssäm recipe while testing hundreds of others for our co-founder Amanda Hesser’s forthcoming 10th-anniversary update to The Essential New York Times Cookbook. The process is straightforward, if not requiring a little patience: Coat pork shoulder in a one-to-one mixture of sugar and salt. Let rest overnight. Stick into an oven. Twiddle thumbs as pork-scented air wafts around you for six hours. Baste hourly, if you want, but really just let the roast baste itself until shreddy and covered in a glossy bark.

A few days after I tested the dish for the first time, Amanda texted, asking if I could remake the bo ssäm for a dinner party, and then a few weeks after that dinner party, the request got truncated to: Dinner, 6, Friday, the pork again?

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How One Chef Proves Vegan Cooking Is for Everyone

Anyone familiar with Bryant Terry’s work as a James Beard award–winning educator, chef, and author knows his M.O.: He’s been teaching the importance of eating whole foods, and working to create a healthful, just food system since his beginning as a gra…

Anyone familiar with Bryant Terry’s work as a James Beard award–winning educator, chef, and author knows his M.O.: He’s been teaching the importance of eating whole foods, and working to create a healthful, just food system since his beginning as a grassroots activist almost 20 years ago. Terry was inspired by how food has been used throughout history as an expression of Black agency: From the rice that African women stealthily wove in their hair before embarking on the Middle Passage; to the proliferation of watermelon as a symbol of Black freedom; to the Black Panther Party’s Free Breakfast for Schoolchildren, which fed children from low-income neighborhoods in the 1960s and 1970s across America.

It’s with this celebration of Black culture and foodways that Terry's new book, Vegetable Kingdom, opens. He is playful in his approach to recipes, thinking "as a collagist—curating, cutting, pasting, and remixing staple ingredients, cooking techniques, and traditional Black dishes popular throughout the world to make [my] own signature recipes.” And the diverse mix of dishes proves Terry's deftness with African, Asian, Caribbean, and American Southern flavors—Haricot Vert and Mushroom Stew, Dry Yardlong Beans with Broken Rice, and Jerk Tofu Wrapped in Collard Greens, to name a few—plus, his eagerness to fuse them in fascinating ways.

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What Are Your Favorite Cookbooks of All Time?

Ask any home cook what the best cookbook of all time is, and you’ll probably get an excited—and exasperated—response. Where does one even begin? It’s an entirely unscientific, exceedingly subjective question with a thousand and one right answers. It’s…

Ask any home cook what the best cookbook of all time is, and you'll probably get an excited—and exasperated—response. Where does one even begin? It's an entirely unscientific, exceedingly subjective question with a thousand and one right answers. It's like being asked to pick your favorite child or pet. (Heck, making this decision was almost impossible even when we were just trying to name the best cookbook of the year.)

Naturally, we decided to ask this question anyway, to the best and brightest home cooks we know (that's you!). We're officially on the hunt for the greatest tomes of our time, and we need your help. So, tell us: What cookbook—new or old, long or short, famed or unjustly overlooked—has changed the way you cook? Whose corners are dog-eared, with pages splattered, stained, and utterly well-loved? Which one do you turn to when you're in need of a kick of inspiration and a back-to-basics lesson on a classic dish? And which cookbook's there for you most, when you need a friendly, steady voice to coach you through a head-spinning technique?

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