In this guest post, ckbk subscriber Francene Connor writes about a South Australian cookbook that is close to her heart: The Blue Ribbon Cookbook by Liz Harfull. Francene discusses the importance of community cookbooks and the vital role they play in preserving rural traditions and supporting local communities.
Read MoreLondon-based author Urvashi Roe’s new book, Biting Biting, traces her family’s roots from India to Tanzania (where she was born) and to London. It’s a celebration of home-style vegetarian and vegan snacks – beer snacks, salty snacks, sweet nibbles… Small these snacks may be, but they are packed with memories, and Roe tells her family’s history with honesty and wit.
Read MoreLondon-based food writer, blogger, author, and cooking teacher Torie True published Chilli & Mint in November 2021. The book is filled with home-style Indian recipes, and Torie describes her role as a teacher as being “a bridge between East and West cuisines.” She tells ckbk why she believes it’s important to pass on the knowledge she has learned over the years.
Read MoreTo mark the release of The Quality Chop House cookbook, we talk to co-owner William Lander about the restaurant’s history and that of London chop houses, and how the venue fits into the legacy of the area’s groundbreaking eateries. Located in the area of the city near acclaimed restaurants St. John, The Eagle and Moro, and handily just up the road from Smithfield meat market, it has played a prominent role in the recent success of Modern English cooking.
Read MoreThe Eagle in London’s Farringdon opened in 1991 and hatched the concept of the gastropub as we now know it. The Eagle Cookbook is a showcase for the gutsy, heartfelt cooking that still comes from its famed open kitchen. We talk to former chefs to find out what it was like to work at the ground-breaking pub, and what they think lies behind The Eagle’s continued success.
Read MoreAnnette Ogrodnik Corona , who lives in Bethelhem, Pennsylvania, is the author of The New Ukrainian Cookbook, recently added to ckbk. Here the author tells us about her baba’s (grandmother’s) kitchen, and introduces us to traditional Ukrainian Easter baking.
Read MorePolish-born author Zuza Zak was partly inspired to write Amber & Rye: A Baltic Food Journey by her Lithuanian grandmother, and the stories she told about her idyllic childhood spent in and around Vilnius. Find out how Zuza researched the book – and about the evolving cooking of the Baltic states – in her Behind the Cookbook feature.
Read MoreShehar Bano Rizvi’s debut cookbook, Virsa: A Culinary Journey from Agra to Karachi, is a collection of family recipes and memories that she has dedicated to her parents. By turning her family recipes into a full-color, beautifully photographed book, Shehar has saved heirloom dishes for posterity – while giving readers an insight into her family’s food traditions.
Read MoreThe idea for My Big Fat Greek Cookbook was born when filmmaker, actor, innovator, and author Christos Sourligas learned of his mother’s terminal illness. Determined to document his mother’s recipes, he spent a year working alongside her, learning to cook her dishes. This book, co-authored by mother and son, is the result. Christos describes it as “our family’s gift to the world.”
Read MoreJoanna Pruess, the author of Cast Iron Cookbook and Cast-Iron Cooking for Two, talks about what inspired her love of cast-iron cooking and how she came to write her books, and shares her favorite collections of recipes cooked in cast iron.
Read MoreCambridgeshire-based author and farmer’s wife Jenny Jefferies has compiled two cookbooks that fly the flag for sustainability, regenerative agriculture, conservation, and community. She tells us all about her methods and motivation for writing these two books.
Read MoreIn the 1970s and 1980s, Sainsbury’s published a groundbreaking series of cookbooks written by top authors. The books have become classics, and ckbk is working with the authors to make many of these much-loved titles available once more online.
Read MoreFor more than 30 years, David Moore’s Michelin-starred restaurant Pied à Terre has served some of the best food in London. Pied à Terre: Celebrating 30 years tells the story of the restaurant through the decades and includes recipes for many of its best-loved dishes. To mark the book’s arrival on ckbk, we spoke to restaurateur David Moore, who looks back on the restaurant’s history and the making of the book.
Read MoreIn 1971, half a century ago, two young mothers wrote a book that captured the spirit of the time, and still has strong resonance to this day. Poor Cook focuses on good simple cooking from scratch. Its “do what you can with what’s available” ethos is very much in keeping with today’s imperative to reduce food waste. We spoke to the two co-authors who told us how they came to write the book….
Read MoreElizabeth Schneider’s Vegetables from Amaranth to Zucchini, now celebrating its twentieth anniversary, is as relevant today as it was when it was first published. In a piece written exclusively for ckbk, the author reflects on how much – and how little – the food world has changed since the book’s publication.
Read MoreMaury Rubin is the creator of City Bakery in Manhattan, and author of Book of Tarts, published just over 25 years ago. We asked Rubin to cast his mind back to the early days of City Bakery, and tell us about how his award-winning book came into being.
Read MoreFred Plotkin’s Recipes From Paradise: Life and Food on the Italian Riviera is a love letter to Liguria, which he says “may be as close to paradise as one can find on this earth”. Plotkin tells ckbk why Liguria is the part of Italy that will always hold the most fascination for him.
Read MoreAlmost 50 years ago, Roy Andries de Groot, an aristocratic, eccentric, and profoundly blind British American food writer took a trip to France that would, indirectly, change the course of American cooking. The book that resulted captures a moment in culinary time and place like perhaps no other, and its influence has been profound.
Read MoreCandida Crewe, daughter of food critic Quentin Crewe, reflects on the life of her father and how he came to pen what many chefs regard as one of the best books on French cuisine ever written, Great Chefs of France.
Read MoreIn the monumental tome, The Complete Guide to Traditional Jewish Cooking (2006), food writer Marlena turns historian and storyteller to explore “a cuisine that is as diverse as it is delicious.” We spoke to Marlena about Jewish traditions that matter most to her personally and how she has had to start from scratch again in her understanding of flavor.
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