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Entries Tagged as 'Books'

From the Publisher’s Desk: So You Want to Write a Cookbook? (The Cliff’s Notes)

January 8th, 2012 · 1 Comment · Blogging, Books, Writing

Last month I got to visit the gorgeous offices of Harvard Common Press not once, but twice, and let me tell you – I’m about ready to move in there.

The second trip was with Boston Brunchers, founded by the multi-talented Renee Hirschberg. Renee works full time, is getting her masters, blogs several times a week, and runs a real life community whisking lucky bloggers to brunch several times a month in the Boston area.

This time she managed to swing a doozy – brunch for 40 at Harvard Common Press, complete with a question and answer session about publishing a cookbook with HCP’s associate publisher and digital media director Adam Salomone, owner Bruce Shaw, and marketing director Nancy Grant Mahoney (who’s name was too long for her Twitter handle, and got cut off – perhaps fortuitously? – to “Mahon”, a delightful cheese).

Writing a cookbook can be a two year process (or more). Here were some of the details in a snapshot:

Finding your Publisher:

  • Use Social Media to make friends with publishers: HCP has published authors they have gotten to know through Twitter!
  • In thinking about your blog and brand, remember what you are passionate about.
  • Engagement level: HCP will address many different aspects when evaluating a potential author. For bloggers, this includes writing, photography, voice, knowledge and interest, compete.com traffic, blog comments, twitter and facebook usage.

Process: so you’ve made it! You’ve waded through and have a publisher. What can you expect next?

  • Material Sources: It used to be that you could use 25% of previous blog recipes, now most publishers expect your cookbook to be 100% new material. (More work for you!)
  • Editorial Process: At HCP, editorial director Dan Rosenberg helps authors come up with a work plan, the developmental stage that helps you assess what needs to be in your cookbook.
  • Writing the manuscript: This can take 9-12 months, and realistically if you are a blogger, this means a lot less time eating out, cooking for the blog, and blogging in general.
  • Editors: You’ll likely have a robust back and forth with your editors. You’ll bang your head, panic, go a little crazy. This is good.

Ultimately, you, the editor and the publishers have the same goal in mind – to make your cookbook the best book it can be.

Once published (or almost published): Publishing houses used to have in-house marketing and do everything to pub and market a book. Now, authors can work closely with the publisher to promote the book. Bloggers have a built in market, and HCP works with the author with a wide variety of social media tools including tweet tours, blog tours (where the author may guest post on 10 or more different blogs), and in person tours.

(If you write a book, you can give a talk at Omnivore! Just make sure you ask Celia to provide some wine!)

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One more note, from me. If you want to write a cookbook, but aren’t ready to take the plunge, consider working for a published cookbook author on their next book. You will wash a lot of dishes, learn an enormous amount about the process, and be well–prepared when you eventually decide to write your own.

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Bruce Shaw, owner of Harvard Common Press, on Bloggers: ”You are technically our competitors, but you are also our life blood here!”

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And some photos of the office:






A big thank you to the kind folks at Harvard Common Press for letting me snoop around!

Harvard Common Press
http://www.harvardcommonpress.com/
HCP Dishes Blog: http://www.harvardcommonpress.com/hcp-dishes/
HCP Blog Eats (new in the blog world): http://www.blogeats.com/

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Clifford A. Wright’s Swedish Sausage and Brussels Sprout Stew

January 3rd, 2012 · 1 Comment · Books, Soups

For quite some time, the prevailing mental association I had of Sweden was Jamie Lee Curtis in ‘Trading Places’ running around a train claiming to be “Inga from Sweden” – despite the fact that she was wearing Austrian lederhosen. I still find myself laughing hysterically at this film when it comes on TBS. If you haven’t seen it, please do.

As for my current Swedish associations, Inga has been replaced with IKEA, the chef Marcus Samuelson, Trina Hahnemann’s lovely Scandinavian Cookbook, and Stieg Larsson’s Millenium trilogy. (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo books).

This weekend we went to see David Fincher’s version of “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”, which didn’t hold up for me as much as the Swedish films, which I adored.

What the movie did succeed in, was renewing my lust for the Swedish countryside. I became hungry for Swedish food. I wanted comfort food that reminded me of the simple, bare landscape. Also, I wanted comfort food that would help me to have the physique of Rooney Mara in her nude scenes of the film. Yes, I know that’s not going to happen. But loading myself up with healthy veg is a start.

So I picked up my copy of Clifford A. Wright’s “Real Stew: 300 Recipes for Authentic Home-Cooked Cassoulet, Gumbo, Chili, Curry, Minestrone, Bouillabaisse, Stroganoff, Goulash, Chowder and Much More” (what a mouthful! a tasty mouthful) which I got on a field trip to Harvard Common Press, and flipped to this Swedish Sausage and Brussels Sprout number. She’s not the most beautiful, but is chock full of tasty ingredients!

I’ve been cooking out of “Real Stew“ for the past few weeks (beginning with a stellar recipe for “Classic Egyptian Lamb and Green Bean Stew). With New England weather the way it is, this cookbook came at the perfect time, right when I needed warming recipes for the quickly cooling weather.

I’m a big fan of any sort of soup, stew, or braising book, particularly when it is cold out and my strongest desire is keep warm and stir things for a couple of hours.

Real Stew isn’t full of glossy photos, but since stews aren’t usually the most photogenic, I wasn’t at all bothered. Wright does a marvelous job in the headnotes whetting your appetite for each recipe. The book is just as much a food history primer as it is a cookbook, and I learned a lot curled up in bed with it. (Although, this is unsurprising as Wright won a James Beard for food writing for his book A Mediterranean Feast. He is very good at the craft of cookbook writing.)  

This is a very simple recipe that can be put together in under twenty minutes from start to finish.

I made this recipe almost to the letter, which wasn’t hard, as there were nine ingredients including salt and pepper. I used smoked Turkey kielbasa from Trader Joes, which made it tasty enough, but if you can get the Swedish sausage that Wright mentions, I’m pretty sure it would make this recipe spectacular. Rather than a bouillon cube, I used “Better than Bouillon”, which, unless you have home made beef stock on hand (and praise you if you do), is pretty much the bees knees.

Now, my one word of warning is: this soup tastes like Brussels Sprouts, which, may in fact be obvious, because it is one of the two main ingredients in the title, but you won’t convert Brussels Sprouts haters with this recipe. Which is fine, because that makes more for you.

Swedish Sausage and Brussels Sprout Stew
recipe by Clifford A. Wright, “Real Stew” p. 164
reprinted with permission from Harvard Common Press

makes 4-6 servings

“This stew is one suggested to me by my Saab mechanic Haken Wiberg, who tells me that this stew, called korv-och kal-gryta, uses a kind of sausage called falukorv (or falnkorv), which comes from the town of Falun, northwest of Stockholm. It is a thick, bologna-like sausage popular throughout Sweden and made of beef, lean pork, and pork fatback. Sometimes dried milk is added to it. It is then smoked before finding its way into stews. The Swedes are nuts about falukorv, as you will see by visiting www.falukorv.net on the Internet. In this recipe it is cut into chunks to cook, after peeling the skin off. A good substitute would be a small, one-pound mortadella sausage, such as that made by Arzuman (ask your store manager). Arzuman uses dried milk. If you prefer beef, try Hebrew National beef bologna. A Swedish housewife would typically use a beef bouillon cube, but if you do, make sure you don’t use more salt than called for because the cubes are high in sodium.”

1 pound small mortadella sausage or large cooked or smoked Polish kielbasa, skinned and cut into large dice

1 large onion, chopped

2 large carrots, cut into 1/4-inch-thick rounds

1 1/2pounds small Brussels sprouts, sliced lengthwise into thirds

1 bay leaf

2 teaspoons salt

6 black peppercorns

2 cups Beef Broth

1 cup water

Finely chopped fresh parsley leaves for garnish

1. Put all the ingredients, except the parsley, in  a stew pot, and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to medium, cover, and cook until everything is tender, about 12 minutes.

2. Sprinkle with parsley and serve.

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Cookbooks of the Moment : Fall/Winter 2011

December 14th, 2011 · 4 Comments · Books, Gifts

I read a lot of cookbooks (unsurprisingly). This is a small selection from the books stacked next to my bed right now*, and I’m still missing quite a few of my favorites. This was a very good year for cookbooks. I’m absolutely adoring all of these, and any one of them would make a fabulous holiday gift.

Image of stacked books from here. 1. Vegetarian by Alice Hart ; 2. The Food Lover’s Guide to Wine by Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg ; 3. Cook This Now by Melissa Clark ; 4. Indochine by Luke Nguyen ; 5. Mourad – New Moroccan by Mourad Lahlou ; 6. Comfort & Spice by Niamh Shields ; 7. My Family Table by John Besh ; 8. Jamie Oliver Magazine, Christmas 2011 Issue ; 9. Canal House Cooking – Italian Summer ; 10. Home Made by Yvette Van Boven ; 11. Bourke Street Bakery by Paul Allam and David McGuinness ; 12. Moro East by Sam & Sam Clark.

What are your favorites right now?

* In fact, there are so many books next to my bed that they could form a small table, which, come to think of it, would be quite useful because I still don’t have very much furniture.

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Finding New Ways to Learn in Life + Improving Your Food Photography: Plate to Pixel

December 7th, 2011 · 2 Comments · Books

I believe that it is really important to never stop learning, and more importantly to actively seek out new learning opportunities. I think we all get into a rut sometimes, which is why it is so fun to make yourself happy by choosing to learn something new. I divide my learning into a few different categories:

1. Short term experiences. The idea here is to expose myself to many different things in sort of quick blasts. A lot of these are through taking a lesson of some type in order to learn the basics of a new skill or activity. Say, taking two weeks to try out new exercise classes, reading a book on a topic that I know absolutely nothing about, taking a cooking class, learning to play a handful of tabs on the guitar, finding someone who has a garden and needs a weeder.

Ultimately, some of these experiences will lead to:

2. Long term passions. These are the things that take a lifetime to develop. I like creating actionable projects to help me develop my passions. This blog is one of those projects. The Tea Project is one too. Another passion (without a real project) is developing my photography skills.

I’m particularly interested in food photography. With photography (and almost everything else in life), the key to learning is doing. It does help to have some fundamentals though. Classes are expensive, but incredibly worth it. A few years ago I took a class with Penny De Los Santos, and it was shocking how much a few hours of killer instruction changed my life. (Yes, my life.)

Another way I keep myself doing is having a camera on me at all times. It doesn’t have to be my Lumix (which I adore, for the record)– it can also be the technology that I keep in my pocket at all times: my smart phone. I love taking photos with my phone. I don’t have an iPhone, so I can’t use Instagram (sadness.), but I have a lot of fun using RetroCamera and FXCamera.

I also spend a lot of time reading about food photography  online. CreativeLive is a great resource that I’ve been spending a lot of time on. They have free streaming classes, and the ability to purchase previously recorded ones. (I’m a little bitter that I didn’t buy Penny De Los Santos’ food photography class while it was on sale). MattBites, Wrightfood, and White on Rice Couple  are a (very small) handful of some of the phenomenal blogs I draw inspiration from.

And finally, I love to read physical books. I take a lot of them out of the library – art books, technical books, and really constructive resources. This week, I’ve been reading Plate to Pixel – Digital Food Photography & Styling by Hélène Dujardin. Hélène writes and styles a beautiful blog: Tartelette – and I really admire her expertise and ability to share her knowledge. Plate to Pixel covers photography techniques, lighting, and styling. The book is not over-technical, and good for anyone ranging from skilled photographers who want to transition to food, to people who still can’t manage to take their thumb out of the frame. I think it would make a pretty great gift as well.

I’d love to hear about how you are learning too. What are your passions? What do you want to experience (for the first time) next? 

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An Extravagant Hunger by Anne Zimmerman

August 22nd, 2011 · 2 Comments · Books, Writing

 

“It seems to me that our three basic needs, for food and security and love, are so mixed and mingled and entwined that we cannot straightly think of one without the others. So it happens that when I write of hunger, I am really writing about love and the hunger for it, and warmth and the love of it and the hunger for it… and then the warmth and richness and fine reality of hunger satisfied… and it is all one.”
— M.F.K. Fisher (The Art of Eating)

I have a few rituals for when I get into a rut with food. When I can’t think of what to cook any more, I sit down surrounded by my favorite cookbooks, and make lists. When I can’t think of what to write anymore, I read M.F.K. Fisher. For me, her writing is comforting. Like a stand-by recipe you know will turn out perfectly every time, but each time you cook it, it surprises you with new complexity. A new taste or thought. A new memory. Or a new connection.

Mary Frances Kennedy (M.F.K) Fisher, is generally considered one of the founders of modern food writing. For me, she is the ultimate authority.

Now, lest we ignore our predecessors, there has been food writing for millenia. The Greeks, the Romans, the Egyptians, they certainly knew how to throw a party, and enjoy their food and drink. But somehow, in the past several hundred years, there has been a drought of evocative food writing. The genre suffered a long spell of being largely prescriptive and dry. Either you were writing about how to give dubious elixirs to invalids, or you were giving technical details about mother sauces.  Stray from these directions and you would be swiftly smote by the culinary deities. There wasn’t much more than that.

M.F.K Fisher was radically different. She wrote about food from the perspective of someone who passionately loved eating food. She wrote about indulging, traveling for food, taste, dreaming about food. She was blunt, exceedingly witty, and intelligent. How many food writers are expansive enough that their quotes fit seamlessly into Roger Ebert’s film reviews? Reading her writing, I’m always reminded of F.Scott Fitzgerald in tone and style – except instead of writing about disaffected wealthy people, she writes about quelling her own hunger, which is a much more interesting topic. She wasn’t a professional chef (and some of the recipes in her early books were slightly off), but boy could she conjure up a taste memory.

And that’s what modern food writing is about. Good food writing, that is. Fisher’s writing is about thinking about food, not from a technical standpoint, but a heartfelt one. If you are interested in improving your writing, M.F.K. Fisher is a good place to start.

Almost all the food writing I love and devour – the books, blogs, gushing articles in Saveur, even Ruth Reichl’s dream-like food tweets “Silver sky. Breezy. Cooler. Tiny red new potatoes gently roasted. Shower of salt, sweet green garlic. Soft, savory. Irresistible.” which spawned ½ of @RuthBourdain’s satirical tweets: “El Bulli just served its last dinner. Sources tell me Ferran shut off the lights in the middle of dessert and played “Don’t Stop Believin’.” – is indebted to M.F.K. Fisher.

I could spend my time writing about M.F.K. Fisher ad nauseum, but this post is actually about Anne Zimmerman, whose biography of Fisher’s early life came out this year.

I met Anne a few years ago soon after I moved to San Francisco. She was finishing  a book about the aforementioned food writer, Fisher, and I was managing a bookstore that specialized in books on food. I’m truly in awe of anyone writing a book, but Anne seemed particularly sweet and humble about it. I knew within about five minutes of meeting her that I would enjoy her writing.

Anne Zimmerman’s “An Extravagant Hunger” relates the story of M.F.K. Fisher’s fascinating rise to fame and prominence. Beyond her writing, Fisher was a riveting persona. By gathering details from her personal correspondence and papers, Anne brings to us the woman behind the writing, and it is easy to see Anne’s admiration of her subject in the text. A dramatic life, rife with tumultuous romance, passion and creativity, the food writing iconoclast is truly a phenomenal character.

There is no doubt that Fisher was a brilliant and talented young woman, however she didn’t hit her stride until her early thirties when her first book was published. From then on, she was incredibly prolific. She penned more than 30 books about food, and countless articles, as well as the best translation of Brillat Savarin’s ‘The Physiology of Taste’.

For all of us writers who have yet to publish our first book, it is encouraging to read about the meandering path it takes to be a true renaissance woman.

An Extravagant Hunger: The Passionate Years of M.F.K. Fisher by Anne Zimmerman
Published by Counterpoint, 2011
352 Pages

And if you need to get started on Fisher – I’d go ahead and recommend ‘The Art of Eating‘ which is a compilation of some of her best work.

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