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Yahoo
17-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
These are the 21 best new cookbooks of spring 2025
New cookbooks are a bright spot in spring, and this year's crop is a bumper one. One emerging theme is: Go easy on yourself. Among this season's favorite books, Los Angeles writers and chefs especially — including Nicole Rucker of Fat + Flour, Ari Kolender of Found Oyster and Queen St. Raw Bar & Grill, Kogi's Roy Choi and Becca Millstein of tinned fish company Fishwife — set out to make things a little simpler, boosting our kitchen confidence along the way. Get comfortable in the kitchen and out in the world. You could make a sandwich and go to the beach, as author Hailee Catalano recommends. Read a juicy memoir (thanks to Laurie Woolever). Take a culinary road trip with the chef who opened a luncheonette in a historic train caboose on the Pacific Coast Highway. Or explore the flavors of Korea, Nigeria, Pakistan, Palestine, St. Lucia, Ghana, Hong Kong or Bahrain. These are the 21 new cookbooks we're diving into this season. By Heart: Recipes to Hold Near and Dear by Hailee Catalano (DK) Hailee Catalano first caught my eye with her intuitive beach-picnic sandwich tutorials, and I'd wager that's the case for at least a few hundred thousand of her millions of followers spread across Instagram and TikTok. But with her debut cookbook, 'By Heart,' the professionally trained chef who blossomed on social media dives into so much more than sandwiches. Catalano's from-the-heart recipes pull from her Midwestern upbringing, her years in professional kitchens and a childhood spent cooking with her Sicilian grandmother, resulting in the likes of celery root-and-potato pierogi; mint-topped lamb-stuffed shells with smoked mozzarella; bar-style pizzas; dips, spreads and pickles galore; and plenty of breads to form the base of your sandwiches (recipes also included) — which, yes, are still perfect for a picnic on the beach. — Stephanie Breijo Care and Feeding: A Memoir by Laurie Woolever (Ecco) The world sees plenty of food-related memoirs sticking to details of meals and tiptoeing around the most squeamish, least flattering moments of their authors' lives. Laurie Woolever takes the opposite tack. Her words tug you along for jet-lagged, hungover embarrassments at an Australian food festival; trips in and out of beds with chefs of questionable hygiene; and glimpses into infuriating exchanges with a cruel man with whom she cheats on her husband. It's a lot, and it's a tribute to her gifts as a storyteller that the pages fly by. In essence this is a story of a careerist navigating the ugly realities of restaurant culture and food media in the last 20 years. If you've heard about Woolever, you likely know she was an assistant to Mario Batali and also to Anthony Bourdain, about whom she previously wrote 'Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography.' If either of those names bring you to the book, well enough. You'll finish it understanding this is a writer who has far more to give to literature than her adjacency to famous men. — Bill Addison The Choi of Cooking: Flavor-Packed, Rule-Breaking Recipes for a Delicious Life: A Cookbook by Roy Choi, Tien Nguyen and Natasha Phan (Clarkson Potter) Roy Choi's 'The Choi of Cooking' is a collection of recipes for life, little and big bits of wisdom he wants to share. It's deeply personal, with stories of Choi's mental and physical struggles written in his engaging and casual voice. But it's far from preachy, with an 'I'll meet you where you are' sort of mentality about eating healthier and being kind to yourself. The largest section of the book is devoted to vegetables, in the form of towering sandwiches, salads and even pancakes. If you're looking for the cooking you're used to on the Kogi trucks, the big flavors are there; the ingredients are just a little lighter. — Jenn Harris Chop Chop: Cooking the Food of Nigeria by Ozoz Sokoh (Artisan Books) 'Chop chop,' in Nigerian and West African pidgin, translates to a food lover — and it's hard not to love Nigerian food. It's a cuisine celebrated for bold long-simmered stews, sweet-sticky pounded yams, bright spiced jollof and vibrant sauces, among other hallmarks. Food writer Ozoz Sokoh began sharing and documenting Nigerian food in 2009 when she launched the blog Kitchen Butterfly, chronicling recipes, foodways and her Warri upbringing. In her debut cookbook, Sokoh explores what she's long called 'the new Nigerian kitchen' along with traditional recipes, covering Nigeria's vast regionality from angles both old and new. Pages devoted to plantains, grilled meats, leaf wraps, steamed puddings and Nigerian breakfasts are interspersed with historical and cultural context for deeper understanding beyond a delicious meal. With how-to's for suya, soups, swallows, stews and salads, you'll be biting into chops of all sorts. — S.B. Coastal: 130 Recipes From a California Road Trip by Scott Clark with Betsy Andrews (Chronicle Books) The verve and the flavors of Dad's Luncheonette — a restaurant serving roadside "classics" from a train caboose on the side of Cabrillo Highway in Half Moon Bay — leap from the pages of "Coastal." Scott Clark worked at Benu and Saison in San Francisco and faced chef's burnout before embracing his own journey by opening Dad's. He amps up mac 'n' cheese with puffed rice seasoned with nutritional yeast, bolsters fudgy brownies with rhubarb jam, and smokes mussels foraged from Martins Beach, incorporating them into a savory custard. Some recipes are involved, but then the payoff is outsize. The book is its own road trip: In between recipes, you're driving down PCH along California's Central Coast, stopping at fishing spots, a goat farm, a winery and tide pools, among many other places depicted in photographs that honor the beauty of the state. — Betty Hallock Dessert Course: Lessons in the Whys and Hows of Baking by Benjamin Delwiche (DK) There's more than science and math to baking, but the precise chemical reactions required to make a brownie chewy, cakey or fudgy, or the kinds of cause and effect that determine whether a dough rises or falls, can sometimes feel daunting. That's why Benjamin Delwiche — a.k.a. 'Benjamin the Baker' on social media — and his debut cookbook want to explain the science and quell the fears. In the extremely thorough 'Dessert Course,' the math teacher and near-lifelong baker breaks down the basics but also dives deep into methodology and how small tweaks can yield major results depending on flavor and texture preferences. Delwiche offers plenty of recipe variations for classics like chocolate chip cookies, pie crusts, brownies, icings, biscuits and beyond, with diagrams and photos to build understanding and, ideally, your dream dessert that's tailored just to your liking. — S.B. Fat + Flour: The Art of a Simple Bake by Nicole Rucker (Knopf) A lot has changed since Nicole Rucker's 2019 cookbook, 'Dappled.' For one, when it comes to the baking basics, one of her pillars of methodology shifted. Her new ethos — called 'Cold Butter Method,' or 'CBM' — works cold butter into a recipe's dry ingredients, saving time and resulting in a kind of crumbly dough for cookies, pies, cakes and beyond. She embarked on this more streamlined approach for home bakers and in both locations of Fat + Flour, one of the 101 best restaurants in L.A. In the Culver City cafe and the stall in downtown's Grand Central Market, wedges of fruit and cream pies and stacks of cookies never fail to catch the eye. With her new cookbook, some of the bakery's signature items — and some new desserts — can be made at home and, sure enough, fairly simply. 'Dappled' focused on spotlighting the best seasonal fruit, and there's still plenty of that in 'Fat + Flour.' There are sour-cherry pies with bourbon; sesame-crumble apple pies; and pies laced with rhubarb, raspberry and blood orange. But there are also comforting classics like ginger molasses cookies, polvorones and sour cream chocolate bundt cakes. This is a tome for all of us who've become Fat + Flour disciples over the years. — S.B. Read more: The founder of Fat + Flour busts the biggest baking myth The Fishwife Cookbook: Delightful Tinned Fish Recipes for Every Occasion by Becca Milstein and Vilda Gonzalez (Harvest) Everything about this book — the bright cover, picnic ideas, foil-wrapped dinners, a chapter dedicated to cozy tinned-fish season — says fun. Many of the recipes are beginner-level easy, but they're interesting enough to entice advanced tinned-fish lovers. Appealing for single cooks (see the chapter "A Meal for One") and party planners alike, the book also presents innovative ways to use tinned fish, whether you love smoked salmon, sardines packed in tomatoes or anchovies from the Cantabrian Sea. Anyone who has a tower of tinned fish cans in their pantry will appreciate new ideas for using them. Make chowder, Bolognese sauce, congee, tacos, udon or anchovy-laced potato casserole. It's all in here. — B.H. How to Cook the Finest Things in the Sea: Broil, Bake, Poach & Grill Your Way to Exceptional Fish & Shellfish by Ari Kolender and Noah Galuten (Artisan) Ari Kolender opened his always-crowded clam shack, Found Oyster, in 2019 in a tiny 28-seat space on Fountain Avenue across the street from 'Big Blue,' as the Scientology command center is casually known. More than five years (and a million oysters) later, Kolender and co-writer Noah Galuten have penned an essential book on cooking seafood at home. Smartly organized by technique, it lends itself to the ways we want to cook all kinds of fish and shellfish. The point is to help readers feel confident about cooking a diversity of seafood. Perfectly broil scallops; or make a bright mackerel tartare folded with crème fraîche and showered with herbs (the way they do at Kolender's restaurant Queen Street). Plus: the primer that opens the book is a handy guide to shopping for, preparing and storing fish and shellfish. — B.H. Read more: The chef who wooed L.A. with a million oysters perfects laid-back seafood Ghana to the World: Recipe and Stories That Look Forward While Honoring the Past by Eric Adjepong with Korsha Wilson (Clarkson Potter) 'Ghana to the World' shares author Eric Adjepong's sankofa cooking style — one that speaks to honoring where you came from while also looking forward. Traditional recipes passed down from his family join modern interpretations of West African dishes that bridge the chef's perspective as a Ghanaian American who grew up in Yonkers, N.Y., with his experience cooking in professional kitchens. Recipes like eggs Benedict with scallops and piri piri hollandaise or crab fried rice with benne miso and scallions point out the synchronicities between Ghanaian and American cuisines. Others, like fufu (made with boiled cassava and plantains, as opposed to yam or cassava alone), are specific to Adjepong's lineage. Personal stories include a loving tribute to his mother, Abena Agyeman, and a retelling of his appearance on 'Top Chef: Kentucky.' Photos of Ghana's palm-tree-shaded beaches, bustling food markets and baroque buildings make this a cookbook that serves as a display on your coffee table when you're not leafing through it for recipes. — Danielle Dorsey Kwéyòl / Creole: Recipes, Stories, and Tings From a St. Lucian Chef's Journey by Nina Compton and Osayi Endolyn (Clarkson Potter) Nina Compton and Osayi Endolyn's new book is a total immersion into the world of Kwéyòl and a celebration of African heritage. It's a journey that takes you from St. Lucia, where Compton is from, to Jamaica, where she continued her culinary career, on to Miami and finally to New Orleans, where Compton's three restaurants are located. The book invites readers to reconsider the meaning of home as not just the place you're from but something you bring along with you. Compton's history and the stories behind the ingredients and recipes in this book are as vibrant as the dishes themselves, exploring an entire spectrum of Caribbean cooking. — J.H. Lugma: Abundant Dishes & Stories From My Middle East by Noor Murad (Quadrille) Lugma, Arabic for 'bite' or 'mouthful,' is the first solo cookbook from Ottolenghi recipe developer Noor Murad — an ode to where she was born: the island country Bahrain in the Persian Gulf. I fell hard for the book as soon as she explained the word used for rice in Bahrain — aish, which translates to 'living.' 'There is no table setting without rice because, well, rice is living,' writes Murad, who is based in London and co-wrote the cookbook "Ottolenghi Test Kitchen." The beautiful cover dish layers saffron rice with tomatoes and potatoes. Spiced with cardamom, cloves and bay, it's as gloriously delicious as any of the Gulf countries' elaborate rice dishes. The mezze are vibrant; the vegetables, luscious; and every dish sounds like something I want to make on repeat. I made the roasted cauliflower mutabal (traditionally made with eggplant) and ate it entirely by myself. And now my new go-to easy dessert is dates with tahini, chile and salt. — B.H. Margarita Time: 60+ Tequila and Mezcal Cocktails, Served Up, Over and Blended by Caroline Pardilla (Ten Speed Press) My preference for mezcal- and tequila-based cocktails is well-documented. The margarita is no doubt the most widely known drink in that category, and author Caroline Pardilla offers 60 riffs from all manner of spirit experts, including local legends like Max Reis of Mirate, Ivan Vasquez of Madre Restaurant and Mezcaleria and Bricia Lopez of Guelaguetza. Pardilla honors the mutable margarita with recipes for every occasion, from the San Francisco-born Tommy's Margarita that subverts the original recipe by substituting orange liqueur with agave nectar to an entire section of 'blended renditions.' Providence bar director Kim Stodel's Mano de Chango balances lime, grapefruit and guava. Travel to Mexico City with Licorería Limantour co-founder Benjamin Padrón's Margarita al Pastor, a savory version that replicates the flavors of the city's most popular taco. And for party hosts who don't want to play bartender all night, Pardilla offers recommendations for the best premade mixes. — D.D. Mother Sauce: Italian American Recipes and the Story of the Women Who Created Them by Lucinda Scala Quinn (Artisan Books) There's a lot of mythos surrounding the Italian nonna — or grandmother — in cooking, but the attention usually ends at the romanticization of them. Lucinda Scala Quinn looks beyond it with 'Mother Sauce,' which pays tribute to the hardships and the struggles of the Italian American immigrants, especially women, who made their way to America between 1880 and 1924. As she shares recipes for lasagna with mini meatballs; stromboli; stuffed squid in tomato sauce; chicken cacciatore; espresso granita; ricotta pie and beyond, she traces today's Italian American cuisine to its roots in peasant cooking, or cucina povera, and the women who — often silently — helped evolve and popularize it. 'Mother Sauce' is just as much an ode to her own Italian American family, sharing generational recipes culled from memory and even handwritten notes from the 1930s. — S.B. Pakistan: Recipes and Stories From Home Kitchens, Restaurants, and Roadside Stands by Maryam Jillani (Hardie Grant) Some culinary evolutions are far more thoroughly documented in the English language than others, a sticking point that propelled Maryam Jillani to research and write her debut cookbook. Moving to the U.S. in the late 2000s from Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan, she struggled to find recipes, in print or online, that reflected the regionality of her home country — or that recognized the way traditions had shifted from Indian culture since the violent Partition in 1948. It led Jillani to begin a website, Pakistan Eats, in 2016, and then to travel across her homeland, documenting dishes cooked in kitchens of every kind, personal and professional. "Pakistani cuisine is colorful, global and breaks the rules,' she asserts in her introduction. Recipes span chile-sparked spinach with handmade whole wheat noodles (a vestige of Chinese traders who traveled along the Silk Road through the northern Hunza Valley), fish simmered in fenugreek-scented yogurt and gingery, saucy chicken karahi. Essays illuminating the country's regions and gorgeous location photography by Waleed Anwar and Insiya Syed complete Jillani's eye-opening achievement. — B.A. Salt Sugar MSG: Recipes and Stories From a Cantonese American Home by Calvin Eng with Phoebe Melnick (Clarkson Potter) Chef Calvin Eng's modern take on Chinese food is squarely Cantonese American, the kind of food he serves at his Brooklyn restaurant: taro root hash browns with sweet-and-spicy ketchup; tinned dace turned into a dip with cream cheese and sour cream; long beans in a glaze of fermented bean curd garlic butter. The restaurant is Bonnie's, the American name that his aunt chose for his mom when they moved to New York from Hong Kong. Many recipes highlight classic Cantonese techniques — some of which he learned from his mother — but expand on flavors and ingredients, what he calls "a true mishmash of identities." They glow with deliciousness and nostalgia. — B.H. Scratch That: Embrace the Mess, Cook to Impress by Alix Traeger (Union Square and Co.) Alix Traeger's bubbly, infectious and often self-deprecating personality shines through on every page of her debut cookbook, 'Scratch That.' The book is organized into categories that reflect how Traeger likes to cook and eat, with Weekend Breakfasts; her quintessential lunch foods presented as Salads, Soups & Sandy's; Dips, Snacks & Apps you can turn into a meal; Dinner, Mains & Sweet Treats (bananas foster cinnamon rolls!). She gleefully shares the mistakes she's made so you can avoid doing the same, or not. By the time you reach the dessert chapter, you'll think of Traeger as a friend, and you'll be inspired to make a little mess and have a lot of fun in the kitchen. — J.H. Tanoreen: Palestinian Home Cooking in Diaspora by Rawia Bishara (Interlink Books) I'm not the only food obsessive whose first taste of home-style, technique-driven Palestinian cooking was at Tanoreen, the restaurant that Rawia Bishara opened in the Bay Ridge neighborhood of Brooklyn in 1998. Her menu has always been a mix of the mezze dishes (hummus, tabbouleh, fattoush) common across the region, punctuated with recipes like maqluba (spiced chicken and rice flipped upside-down from the pot) specific to her family's heritage. 'Tanoreen' is an update of Bishara's cookbook 'Olives, Lemon & Za'atar' originally published in 2014. Every aspect feels brighter, with more colorful photography and more personal anecdotes about her upbringing and favorite dishes. She mingles specific, detailed dishes like hossi, a unique chile paste rounded with marjoram and allspice made to flavor kibbeh, with creations such as a seafood soup for her son warmed with cumin and fragrant with fresh basil, cilantro and dill. — B.A. The Scarr's Pizza Cookbook: New York-Style Pizza for Everybody by Scarr Pimentel with Kimberly Chou Tsun An (4 Color Books) For pizza fanatics, this book is a long time coming. Scarr Pimentel's famous New York pizzeria, now nearly a decade old, draws legions. Now the pizzaiolo's first cookbook brings his New York- and grandma-style pies to everyone's house. It's a trip through Pimentel's story: growing up rough but surrounded by family in New York City, working his way through pizzerias and eventually launching his own. All recipes are written for a home oven with a pizza steel, though pizza stones, sheet pans or an upside-down cast-iron pan also could do the trick. The book delves into the breakdown of wheat grain and how to mill (and store) your own flour at home, landing the right flour and cheese blends, hydrations and temperatures and how to check them, nailing the sauce-to-cheese ratio, and the best way to reheat pizza. And while the Scarr's cookbook outlines home pizza in its various forms (including vegan and, of course, the signature Scarr's Hotboi), there's so much more, including fried meatballs, handmade chicken sausage, calzones, cocktails and vegan garlic knots. — S.B. Umma: A Korean Mom's Kitchen Wisdom and 100 Family Recipes by Sarah Ahn and Nam Soon Ahn (America's Test Kitchen) What's embedded in the pages of "Umma," by Sarah Ahn and her mother, Nam Soon Ahn, is the singular love shared by a mother and daughter, and the myriad ways to demonstrate that love in the kitchen. It's also an extensive primer on cooking Korean food, with tips on how to build a pantry, useful kitchen tutorials and a section on how Nam Soon chooses produce. There are recipes for everything from gimbap to kimchi grilled cheese, but what really makes this book special are the stories that accompany some of the recipes and the notes that read like handwritten tips meant just for me. — J.H. We the Pizza: Slangin' Pies + Savin' Lives by Muhammad Abdul-Hadi, recipes by Michael Carter (Clarkson Potter) Muhammad Abdul-Hadi understands firsthand how incarceration can derail someone's life. Just as he was preparing to open his mission-driven pizzeria in North Philadelphia, he was hit with a federal indictment that put him on house arrest. That incident strengthened his resolve to use his pizza shop as a tool to reduce recidivism rates, employing only formerly incarcerated people. 'We the Pizza' doubles down on this ethos with stories about Down North Pizza and its staff, recipes plucked from its maximalist, Philly-style menu and history about the U.S. carceral system. Pizzas are named after rap and soul songs by Philadelphia artists, with a QR code to a playlist. 'Summertime' is studded with pan-roasted tomatoes, basil pesto and roasted red peppers, and 'My Part of Town' reinterprets the classic Philly cheesesteak as a pizza. There's an entire section dedicated to vegetarian and vegan pies, and a chapter with collaboration recipes from chefs like Shenarri Freeman and Marcus Samuelsson. Hadi includes resources for how to help. To start, any net proceeds from the sale of the book will be donated to his Down North Foundation. — D.D. If you purchase a book from a link, the L.A. Times may receive a commission. Sign up for our Tasting Notes newsletter for restaurant reviews, Los Angeles food-related news and more. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Los Angeles Times
17-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
These are the 21 best new cookbooks of spring 2025
New cookbooks are a bright spot in spring, and this year's crop is a bumper one. One emerging theme is: Go easy on yourself. Among this season's favorite books, Los Angeles writers and chefs especially — including Nicole Rucker of Fat + Flour, Ari Kolender of Found Oyster and Queen St. Raw Bar & Grill, Kogi's Roy Choi and Becca Millstein of tinned fish company Fishwife — set out to make things a little simpler, boosting our kitchen confidence along the way. Get comfortable in the kitchen and out in the world. You could make a sandwich and go to the beach, as author Hailee Catalano recommends. Read a juicy memoir (thanks to Laurie Woolever). Take a culinary road trip with the chef who opened a luncheonette in a historic train caboose on the Pacific Coast Highway. Or explore the flavors of Korea, Nigeria, Pakistan, Palestine, St. Lucia, Ghana, Hong Kong or Bahrain. These are the 21 new cookbooks we're diving into this season. By Heart: Recipes to Hold Near and Dear by Hailee Catalano (DK) Hailee Catalano first caught my eye with her intuitive beach-picnic sandwich tutorials, and I'd wager that's the case for at least a few hundred thousand of her millions of followers spread across Instagram and TikTok. But with her debut cookbook, 'By Heart,' the professionally trained chef who blossomed on social media dives into so much more than sandwiches. Catalano's from-the-heart recipes pull from her Midwestern upbringing, her years in professional kitchens and a childhood spent cooking with her Sicilian grandmother, resulting in the likes of celery root-and-potato pierogi; mint-topped lamb-stuffed shells with smoked mozzarella; bar-style pizzas; dips, spreads and pickles galore; and plenty of breads to form the base of your sandwiches (recipes also included) — which, yes, are still perfect for a picnic on the beach. — Stephanie Breijo Care and Feeding: A Memoir by Laurie Woolever (Ecco) The world sees plenty of food-related memoirs sticking to details of meals and tiptoeing around the most squeamish, least flattering moments of their authors' lives. Laurie Woolever takes the opposite tack. Her words tug you along for jet-lagged, hungover embarrassments at an Australian food festival; trips in and out of beds with chefs of questionable hygiene; and glimpses into infuriating exchanges with a cruel man with whom she cheats on her husband. It's a lot, and it's a tribute to her gifts as a storyteller that the pages fly by. In essence this is a story of a careerist navigating the ugly realities of restaurant culture and food media in the last 20 years. If you've heard about Woolever, you likely know she was an assistant to Mario Batali and also to Anthony Bourdain, about whom she previously wrote 'Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography.' If either of those names bring you to the book, well enough. You'll finish it understanding this is a writer who has far more to give to literature than her adjacency to famous men. — Bill Addison The Choi of Cooking: Flavor-Packed, Rule-Breaking Recipes for a Delicious Life: A Cookbook by Roy Choi, Tien Nguyen and Natasha Phan (Clarkson Potter) Roy Choi's 'The Choi of Cooking' is a collection of recipes for life, little and big bits of wisdom he wants to share. It's deeply personal, with stories of Choi's mental and physical struggles written in his engaging and casual voice. But it's far from preachy, with an 'I'll meet you where you are' sort of mentality about eating healthier and being kind to yourself. The largest section of the book is devoted to vegetables, in the form of towering sandwiches, salads and even pancakes. If you're looking for the cooking you're used to on the Kogi trucks, the big flavors are there; the ingredients are just a little lighter. — Jenn Harris Chop Chop: Cooking the Food of Nigeria by Ozoz Sokoh (Artisan Books) 'Chop chop,' in Nigerian and West African pidgin, translates to a food lover — and it's hard not to love Nigerian food. It's a cuisine celebrated for bold long-simmered stews, sweet-sticky pounded yams, bright spiced jollof and vibrant sauces, among other hallmarks. Food writer Ozoz Sokoh began sharing and documenting Nigerian food in 2009 when she launched the blog Kitchen Butterfly, chronicling recipes, foodways and her Warri upbringing. In her debut cookbook, Sokoh explores what she's long called 'the new Nigerian kitchen' along with traditional recipes, covering Nigeria's vast regionality from angles both old and new. Pages devoted to plantains, grilled meats, leaf wraps, steamed puddings and Nigerian breakfasts are interspersed with historical and cultural context for deeper understanding beyond a delicious meal. With how-to's for suya, soups, swallows, stews and salads, you'll be biting into chops of all sorts. — S.B. Coastal: 130 Recipes From a California Road Trip by Scott Clark with Betsy Andrews (Chronicle Books) The verve and the flavors of Dad's Luncheonette — a restaurant serving roadside 'classics' from a train caboose on the side of Cabrillo Highway in Half Moon Bay — leap from the pages of 'Coastal.' Scott Clark worked at Benu and Saison in San Francisco and faced chef's burnout before embracing his own journey by opening Dad's. He amps up mac 'n' cheese with puffed rice seasoned with nutritional yeast, bolsters fudgy brownies with rhubarb jam, and smokes mussels foraged from Martins Beach, incorporating them into a savory custard. Some recipes are involved, but then the payoff is outsize. The book is its own road trip: In between recipes, you're driving down PCH along California's Central Coast, stopping at fishing spots, a goat farm, a winery and tide pools, among many other places depicted in photographs that honor the beauty of the state. — Betty Hallock Dessert Course: Lessons in the Whys and Hows of Baking by Benjamin Delwiche (DK) There's more than science and math to baking, but the precise chemical reactions required to make a brownie chewy, cakey or fudgy, or the kinds of cause and effect that determine whether a dough rises or falls, can sometimes feel daunting. That's why Benjamin Delwiche — a.k.a. 'Benjamin the Baker' on social media — and his debut cookbook want to explain the science and quell the fears. In the extremely thorough 'Dessert Course,' the math teacher and near-lifelong baker breaks down the basics but also dives deep into methodology and how small tweaks can yield major results depending on flavor and texture preferences. Delwiche offers plenty of recipe variations for classics like chocolate chip cookies, pie crusts, brownies, icings, biscuits and beyond, with diagrams and photos to build understanding and, ideally, your dream dessert that's tailored just to your liking. — S.B. Fat + Flour: The Art of a Simple Bake by Nicole Rucker (Knopf) A lot has changed since Nicole Rucker's 2019 cookbook, 'Dappled.' For one, when it comes to the baking basics, one of her pillars of methodology shifted. Her new ethos — called 'Cold Butter Method,' or 'CBM' — works cold butter into a recipe's dry ingredients, saving time and resulting in a kind of crumbly dough for cookies, pies, cakes and beyond. She embarked on this more streamlined approach for home bakers and in both locations of Fat + Flour, one of the 101 best restaurants in L.A. In the Culver City cafe and the stall in downtown's Grand Central Market, wedges of fruit and cream pies and stacks of cookies never fail to catch the eye. With her new cookbook, some of the bakery's signature items — and some new desserts — can be made at home and, sure enough, fairly simply. 'Dappled' focused on spotlighting the best seasonal fruit, and there's still plenty of that in 'Fat + Flour.' There are sour-cherry pies with bourbon; sesame-crumble apple pies; and pies laced with rhubarb, raspberry and blood orange. But there are also comforting classics like ginger molasses cookies, polvorones and sour cream chocolate bundt cakes. This is a tome for all of us who've become Fat + Flour disciples over the years. — S.B. The Fishwife Cookbook: Delightful Tinned Fish Recipes for Every Occasion by Becca Milstein and Vilda Gonzalez (Harvest) Everything about this book — the bright cover, picnic ideas, foil-wrapped dinners, a chapter dedicated to cozy tinned-fish season — says fun. Many of the recipes are beginner-level easy, but they're interesting enough to entice advanced tinned-fish lovers. Appealing for single cooks (see the chapter 'A Meal for One') and party planners alike, the book also presents innovative ways to use tinned fish, whether you love smoked salmon, sardines packed in tomatoes or anchovies from the Cantabrian Sea. Anyone who has a tower of tinned fish cans in their pantry will appreciate new ideas for using them. Make chowder, Bolognese sauce, congee, tacos, udon or anchovy-laced potato casserole. It's all in here. — B.H. How to Cook the Finest Things in the Sea: Broil, Bake, Poach & Grill Your Way to Exceptional Fish & Shellfish by Ari Kolender and Noah Galuten (Artisan) Ari Kolender opened his always-crowded clam shack, Found Oyster, in 2019 in a tiny 28-seat space on Fountain Avenue across the street from 'Big Blue,' as the Scientology command center is casually known. More than five years (and a million oysters) later, Kolender and co-writer Noah Galuten have penned an essential book on cooking seafood at home. Smartly organized by technique, it lends itself to the ways we want to cook all kinds of fish and shellfish. The point is to help readers feel confident about cooking a diversity of seafood. Perfectly broil scallops; or make a bright mackerel tartare folded with crème fraîche and showered with herbs (the way they do at Kolender's restaurant Queen Street). Plus: the primer that opens the book is a handy guide to shopping for, preparing and storing fish and shellfish. — B.H. Ghana to the World: Recipe and Stories That Look Forward While Honoring the Past by Eric Adjepong with Korsha Wilson (Clarkson Potter) 'Ghana to the World' shares author Eric Adjepong's sankofa cooking style — one that speaks to honoring where you came from while also looking forward. Traditional recipes passed down from his family join modern interpretations of West African dishes that bridge the chef's perspective as a Ghanaian American who grew up in Yonkers, N.Y., with his experience cooking in professional kitchens. Recipes like eggs Benedict with scallops and piri piri hollandaise or crab fried rice with benne miso and scallions point out the synchronicities between Ghanaian and American cuisines. Others, like fufu (made with boiled cassava and plantains, as opposed to yam or cassava alone), are specific to Adjepong's lineage. Personal stories include a loving tribute to his mother, Abena Agyeman, and a retelling of his appearance on 'Top Chef: Kentucky.' Photos of Ghana's palm-tree-shaded beaches, bustling food markets and baroque buildings make this a cookbook that serves as a display on your coffee table when you're not leafing through it for recipes. — Danielle Dorsey Kwéyòl / Creole: Recipes, Stories, and Tings From a St. Lucian Chef's Journey by Nina Compton and Osayi Endolyn (Clarkson Potter) Nina Compton and Osayi Endolyn's new book is a total immersion into the world of Kwéyòl and a celebration of African heritage. It's a journey that takes you from St. Lucia, where Compton is from, to Jamaica, where she continued her culinary career, on to Miami and finally to New Orleans, where Compton's three restaurants are located. The book invites readers to reconsider the meaning of home as not just the place you're from but something you bring along with you. Compton's history and the stories behind the ingredients and recipes in this book are as vibrant as the dishes themselves, exploring an entire spectrum of Caribbean cooking. — J.H. Lugma: Abundant Dishes & Stories From My Middle East by Noor Murad (Quadrille) Lugma, Arabic for 'bite' or 'mouthful,' is the first solo cookbook from Ottolenghi recipe developer Noor Murad — an ode to where she was born: the island country Bahrain in the Persian Gulf. I fell hard for the book as soon as she explained the word used for rice in Bahrain — aish, which translates to 'living.' 'There is no table setting without rice because, well, rice is living,' writes Murad, who is based in London and co-wrote the cookbook 'Ottolenghi Test Kitchen.' The beautiful cover dish layers saffron rice with tomatoes and potatoes. Spiced with cardamom, cloves and bay, it's as gloriously delicious as any of the Gulf countries' elaborate rice dishes. The mezze are vibrant; the vegetables, luscious; and every dish sounds like something I want to make on repeat. I made the roasted cauliflower mutabal (traditionally made with eggplant) and ate it entirely by myself. And now my new go-to easy dessert is dates with tahini, chile and salt. — B.H. Margarita Time: 60+ Tequila and Mezcal Cocktails, Served Up, Over and Blended by Caroline Pardilla (Ten Speed Press) My preference for mezcal- and tequila-based cocktails is well-documented. The margarita is no doubt the most widely known drink in that category, and author Caroline Pardilla offers 60 riffs from all manner of spirit experts, including local legends like Max Reis of Mirate, Ivan Vasquez of Madre Restaurant and Mezcaleria and Bricia Lopez of Guelaguetza. Pardilla honors the mutable margarita with recipes for every occasion, from the San Francisco-born Tommy's Margarita that subverts the original recipe by substituting orange liqueur with agave nectar to an entire section of 'blended renditions.' Providence bar director Kim Stodel's Mano de Chango balances lime, grapefruit and guava. Travel to Mexico City with Licorería Limantour co-founder Benjamin Padrón's Margarita al Pastor, a savory version that replicates the flavors of the city's most popular taco. And for party hosts who don't want to play bartender all night, Pardilla offers recommendations for the best premade mixes. — D.D. Mother Sauce: Italian American Recipes and the Story of the Women Who Created Them by Lucinda Scala Quinn (Artisan Books) There's a lot of mythos surrounding the Italian nonna — or grandmother — in cooking, but the attention usually ends at the romanticization of them. Lucinda Scala Quinn looks beyond it with 'Mother Sauce,' which pays tribute to the hardships and the struggles of the Italian American immigrants, especially women, who made their way to America between 1880 and 1924. As she shares recipes for lasagna with mini meatballs; stromboli; stuffed squid in tomato sauce; chicken cacciatore; espresso granita; ricotta pie and beyond, she traces today's Italian American cuisine to its roots in peasant cooking, or cucina povera, and the women who — often silently — helped evolve and popularize it. 'Mother Sauce' is just as much an ode to her own Italian American family, sharing generational recipes culled from memory and even handwritten notes from the 1930s. — S.B. Pakistan: Recipes and Stories From Home Kitchens, Restaurants, and Roadside Stands by Maryam Jillani (Hardie Grant) Some culinary evolutions are far more thoroughly documented in the English language than others, a sticking point that propelled Maryam Jillani to research and write her debut cookbook. Moving to the U.S. in the late 2000s from Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan, she struggled to find recipes, in print or online, that reflected the regionality of her home country — or that recognized the way traditions had shifted from Indian culture since the violent Partition in 1948. It led Jillani to begin a website, Pakistan Eats, in 2016, and then to travel across her homeland, documenting dishes cooked in kitchens of every kind, personal and professional. 'Pakistani cuisine is colorful, global and breaks the rules,' she asserts in her introduction. Recipes span chile-sparked spinach with handmade whole wheat noodles (a vestige of Chinese traders who traveled along the Silk Road through the northern Hunza Valley), fish simmered in fenugreek-scented yogurt and gingery, saucy chicken karahi. Essays illuminating the country's regions and gorgeous location photography by Waleed Anwar and Insiya Syed complete Jillani's eye-opening achievement. — B.A. Salt Sugar MSG: Recipes and Stories From a Cantonese American Home by Calvin Eng with Phoebe Melnick (Clarkson Potter) Chef Calvin Eng's modern take on Chinese food is squarely Cantonese American, the kind of food he serves at his Brooklyn restaurant: taro root hash browns with sweet-and-spicy ketchup; tinned dace turned into a dip with cream cheese and sour cream; long beans in a glaze of fermented bean curd garlic butter. The restaurant is Bonnie's, the American name that his aunt chose for his mom when they moved to New York from Hong Kong. Many recipes highlight classic Cantonese techniques — some of which he learned from his mother — but expand on flavors and ingredients, what he calls 'a true mishmash of identities.' They glow with deliciousness and nostalgia. — B.H. Scratch That: Embrace the Mess, Cook to Impress by Alix Traeger (Union Square and Co.) Alix Traeger's bubbly, infectious and often self-deprecating personality shines through on every page of her debut cookbook, 'Scratch That.' The book is organized into categories that reflect how Traeger likes to cook and eat, with Weekend Breakfasts; her quintessential lunch foods presented as Salads, Soups & Sandy's; Dips, Snacks & Apps you can turn into a meal; Dinner, Mains & Sweet Treats (bananas foster cinnamon rolls!). She gleefully shares the mistakes she's made so you can avoid doing the same, or not. By the time you reach the dessert chapter, you'll think of Traeger as a friend, and you'll be inspired to make a little mess and have a lot of fun in the kitchen. — J.H. Tanoreen: Palestinian Home Cooking in Diaspora by Rawia Bishara (Interlink Books) I'm not the only food obsessive whose first taste of home-style, technique-driven Palestinian cooking was at Tanoreen, the restaurant that Rawia Bishara opened in the Bay Ridge neighborhood of Brooklyn in 1998. Her menu has always been a mix of the mezze dishes (hummus, tabbouleh, fattoush) common across the region, punctuated with recipes like maqluba (spiced chicken and rice flipped upside-down from the pot) specific to her family's heritage. 'Tanoreen' is an update of Bishara's cookbook 'Olives, Lemon & Za'atar' originally published in 2014. Every aspect feels brighter, with more colorful photography and more personal anecdotes about her upbringing and favorite dishes. She mingles specific, detailed dishes like hossi, a unique chile paste rounded with marjoram and allspice made to flavor kibbeh, with creations such as a seafood soup for her son warmed with cumin and fragrant with fresh basil, cilantro and dill. — B.A. The Scarr's Pizza Cookbook: New York-Style Pizza for Everybody by Scarr Pimentel with Kimberly Chou Tsun An (4 Color Books) For pizza fanatics, this book is a long time coming. Scarr Pimentel's famous New York pizzeria, now nearly a decade old, draws legions. Now the pizzaiolo's first cookbook brings his New York- and grandma-style pies to everyone's house. It's a trip through Pimentel's story: growing up rough but surrounded by family in New York City, working his way through pizzerias and eventually launching his own. All recipes are written for a home oven with a pizza steel, though pizza stones, sheet pans or an upside-down cast-iron pan also could do the trick. The book delves into the breakdown of wheat grain and how to mill (and store) your own flour at home, landing the right flour and cheese blends, hydrations and temperatures and how to check them, nailing the sauce-to-cheese ratio, and the best way to reheat pizza. And while the Scarr's cookbook outlines home pizza in its various forms (including vegan and, of course, the signature Scarr's Hotboi), there's so much more, including fried meatballs, handmade chicken sausage, calzones, cocktails and vegan garlic knots. — S.B. Umma: A Korean Mom's Kitchen Wisdom and 100 Family Recipes by Sarah Ahn and Nam Soon Ahn (America's Test Kitchen) What's embedded in the pages of 'Umma,' by Sarah Ahn and her mother, Nam Soon Ahn, is the singular love shared by a mother and daughter, and the myriad ways to demonstrate that love in the kitchen. It's also an extensive primer on cooking Korean food, with tips on how to build a pantry, useful kitchen tutorials and a section on how Nam Soon chooses produce. There are recipes for everything from gimbap to kimchi grilled cheese, but what really makes this book special are the stories that accompany some of the recipes and the notes that read like handwritten tips meant just for me. — J.H. We the Pizza: Slangin' Pies + Savin' Lives by Muhammad Abdul-Hadi, recipes by Michael Carter (Clarkson Potter) Muhammad Abdul-Hadi understands firsthand how incarceration can derail someone's life. Just as he was preparing to open his mission-driven pizzeria in North Philadelphia, he was hit with a federal indictment that put him on house arrest. That incident strengthened his resolve to use his pizza shop as a tool to reduce recidivism rates, employing only formerly incarcerated people. 'We the Pizza' doubles down on this ethos with stories about Down North Pizza and its staff, recipes plucked from its maximalist, Philly-style menu and history about the U.S. carceral system. Pizzas are named after rap and soul songs by Philadelphia artists, with a QR code to a playlist. 'Summertime' is studded with pan-roasted tomatoes, basil pesto and roasted red peppers, and 'My Part of Town' reinterprets the classic Philly cheesesteak as a pizza. There's an entire section dedicated to vegetarian and vegan pies, and a chapter with collaboration recipes from chefs like Shenarri Freeman and Marcus Samuelsson. Hadi includes resources for how to help. To start, any net proceeds from the sale of the book will be donated to his Down North Foundation. — D.D. If you purchase a book from a link, the L.A. Times may receive a commission.
USA Today
02-04-2025
- Entertainment
- USA Today
'Bourdain' author shares her story in new memoir
'Bourdain' author shares her story in new memoir | The Excerpt On a special episode (first released on April 2, 2025) of The Excerpt podcast: Women in the culinary world have long fought to be heard, respected and given full credit for their contributions. With a career spent both cooking and writing about food alongside well-known chefs and television personalities Mario Batali and Anthony Bourdain, Laurie Woolever has a unique perspective on navigating the complex world of food culture. She is the best-selling author of 'Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography,' a collection of interviews with those who knew him personally and professionally, and co-author of 'World Travel: An Irreverent Guide,' with Anthony Bourdain. She joins us on The Excerpt to discuss her new memoir 'Care and Feeding,' which is on bookshelves now. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending an email to podcasts@ Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text. Podcasts: True crime, in-depth interviews and more USA TODAY podcasts right here Dana Taylor: Hello, and welcome to The Excerpt, I'm Dana Taylor. Today is Wednesday, April 2nd, 2025, and this is a special episode of The Excerpt. Women in the culinary world have long fought to be heard, respected, and given full credit for their contributions, their rightful place at the table. With a career spent both cooking and writing about food alongside well-known chefs and television personalities, Mario Batali and Anthony Bourdain, Laurie Woolever has a unique perspective on navigating the complex world of food culture. She's the bestselling author of Bourdain: the Definitive Oral Biography, a collection of interviews with those who knew him personally and professionally, and co-author of World Travel: An Irreverent Guide with Anthony Bourdain. Her new memoir, Care and Feeding is on bookshelves now. Thanks for joining me, Laurie. Laurie Woolever: Thank you for having me, very happy to be here. Dana Taylor: Can you describe the professional world you entered following culinary school? Was it, and does it remain a culture of food, alcohol, and drugs? In Care and Feeding you were pretty wide open regarding your road to addiction and recognizing when you needed help. Laurie Woolever: Yeah, I will say that the world of restaurants and professional cooking that I entered into was very high pressure and very high stakes, but also a lot of fun. There was pretty easy access to alcohol, but I do want to say that my perspective comes from one specific restaurant. So, I think that there is a range, certain fine dining restaurants, there's a very low tolerance for drinking on the job, joking around, there's silence in the kitchen. That was not my experience, things were a little looser, a little bit more fun. And this was the late 90s and early 2000s, so that was a specific point in time. I do think that kitchens remain a high pressure, high stakes environment, there is a lot of goofing around, and a lot of camaraderie, a lot of ways to blow off steam, but I do think that things have changed for the better, that's my anecdotal understanding from speaking to friends who are still in the business. Dana Taylor: I was going to ask you about working in high pressure environments, you write about the challenges of finding your path while working in various high pressure environments within the culinary world, in broad terms, what did survival mean to you then, and what does it mean to you now? Laurie Woolever: I think at the time, survival meant getting along with people, going along, if there was someone that was in power that was doing something untoward or uncomfortable, it was about... And this was my experience, and I wrote about it in the book. I tried to diffuse it quietly and privately, and not to make a scene about it because I knew that would lead to blowback. I think survival was just making and saving enough money to be able to live in New York City. And in some ways that is still the case. Working as a writer, living in New York, raising a child, it is continuing to hustle every day to try and make money. But I think that I am a much more confident person now, and a much more calm person now, I did give up drinking and doing drugs several years ago, and that has made a big difference in my life. So, in a lot of ways, it's easier to survive and to get by when your life is quieter and calmer and not so chaotic. Dana Taylor: You spent a good deal of your career working with two larger-than-life personalities, it's clear from your book that both Mario Batali and Anthony Bourdain helped propel your writing career. Let's start with the good stuff. Batali's Restaurant Babbo was at one time the most sought-after restaurant in New York City, for you, what was the upside of being there? Laurie Woolever: It was really exciting to be headquartered at Babbo, to be at this place that had just opened to huge critical acclaim, there were a certain number of seats and probably 10 times as many people looking to get a seat in the restaurant every single night, as there was availability. So, that really just led to an electric sense of I'm in the center of something really great. And my colleagues were all at the top of their game, young, and youngish, and very excited about being somewhere that was really one of the best restaurants in New York. And all of that came with access to opportunity for me. Mario had a lot of power in the marketplace and media, real estate, business, and so he was able to connect me with a lot of people who were helpful to my career, he helped me to get bylines as a fledgling food writer, and really just established me in a scene in New York that was very appealing to me. Dana Taylor: You also spent years working with Anthony Bourdain, I know you call him Tony, including during his pivot from the show, No Reservations to Parts Unknown. His star ascended at that time, did you feel that yours did as well? How did he help you? Laurie Woolever: Over the course of being Tony's assistant, which was just under a decade, I definitely found that I was getting more and more opportunities, as Tony's star rose he got busier and busier, and I was very valuable to him as an assistant, as an administrator. But he also knew that I wanted to be a writer, and so he started to give me opportunities to get involved with things that were more gratifying to me intellectually. I did some line editing on some of the books that he published on his imprint, and then we ended up writing a cookbook together, called Appetites, that came out in 2016. So, as time went on, I continued to get more and more responsibility to collaborate and to work with him on exciting creative projects. Dana Taylor: Many of the types of experiences you shared regarding working with Mario Batali in the early 2000s seemed destined for a collision with the Me Too movement that took off in 2017. There was a moment when Anthony Bourdain thought you might need to do some personal damage control when Mario Batali was accused of sexual assault. Was there a personal reckoning there, or did that feel unfair to you? Laurie Woolever: I had mixed feelings about it. It felt a little jarring and slightly unfair to have to take any responsibility for harassment and alleged abuse and things that I didn't really feel that I had any part in. Where I landed on it ultimately was that I was part of a culture that in which this was very, very normalized, and as much as it's not okay to be touched inappropriately at work, or to be ever to be abused or assaulted in any way, it was the lower end of things, this was kind of normalized in the late 1990s and early 2000s when I was working around him. And so, I had to look at my part in it, look at the part that I played in not more vocally pushing back, but also just recognize that none of these things happen in a vacuum, and it's not really black and white, and as much as I benefited from being around Mario and having access to some of those channels of power, that it was also ultimately a toxic environment that I spent many years in. So, it was a complicated personal reckoning. Dana Taylor: You've worked in publishing and professional kitchens, places that have historically haven't been welcoming to women. Over the past 20 years or so have you seen or experienced any meaningful changes there? Laurie Woolever: I can only speak to my own experience in terms of kitchens, where I haven't really been in kitchens in a long time. Women made up probably half the kitchen staff, or a little less than half the kitchen staff when I worked at Babbo. So, it wasn't that we weren't necessarily invited or included, but that there was, you had to work a little bit harder, or maybe a lot harder to prove that you deserve to be there. My understanding now from speaking to chefs who are still active in kitchens, and speaking to cooks and people in the industry, is that there have been some changes. It's not completely linear, and I think there probably will be ebbs and flows of progress and regression, but I think that many restaurateurs got scared in 2017, and thought about how do we put some structures in place in the workplace to prevent things like this from happening and/or to have a way to react in a cohesive way if someone does have a complaint? So, I think you see more HR structure, just more supports, more communication between management and employees. But it is what it is, as they say. People are people, stress is stress, relations between men and women are what they are, and I think there always will be sort of a looser environment than maybe in an office or another type of workplace, but I do believe that there have been some changes. Dana Taylor: As I mentioned, you've written extensively about Anthony Bourdain, in your new book, you discuss the impact of his life on both your career and personal life, as well as the impact of his death on both of those. What was the biggest lesson you took away from his life, and what was the biggest lesson you took away from losing him? Laurie Woolever: I think one thing that really was so powerful that I learned from Tony, and I saw it, he talked about it, I think other people experienced this too, was this openness to the idea that I don't know everything, and I probably can't ever know everything about a subject, about a person. And he had this really incredible way of staying open-minded, of asking questions, of being willing to be proved wrong, and even sort of enjoying being proved wrong, if it meant that it would deepen his understanding of a subject or a person or a situation. So, I try and remember that, I try and move that way, to not stay completely fixed in my judgment of a situation or a person, but to try and keep turning something over to understand all the angles of it. And then, as far as his death and what I learned, I got practice in managing grief in a way that I hoped I never would have to, but that is part of life is death, and also recognizing that much like he knew there was always more to learn, there's always more to learn about a person. And so, when I spoke with people that knew him for the biography, I must've spoken to between 90 and 100 people, and I learned something new about him from every single one of those people. And I was quite sure when I started that I knew everything there was to know about this guy, and it was really, in some ways, a pleasure to be proven wrong, to know that whatever someone shows you or tells you, there's always more to a person going on under the surface. Dana Taylor: Your book is called Care and Feeding, which sounds nurturing, Laurie, now that I've read it, I'd like to have a deeper understanding of why you chose that title. How did you land on that? Laurie Woolever: I had a good friend I was talking with about my career a few years ago, and just sort of describing the different high and low points, and she said, "Gosh, you know, you really have made a career out of the care and feeding of difficult men." And I had never framed it in that way, but it made so much sense to me that even, whether it was with Mario, or Tony, or working in various publications that were helmed by men, or working as a private cook, there were challenging aspects of everyone's personalities or everyone's lives that I had to manage, and I think I've developed some skill in that area. So, that's one explanation for the title. And then, also there's a lot of cooking, and feeding, and self nourishing, or self neglect, and all of that, that goes on throughout the book. At some point I get engaged, I get married, I have a baby, my marriage falls apart, and each step along the way, there's some aspect of trying to keep things together, in part by keeping people well-fed. Dana Taylor: And finally, it would be impossible to tell the story of your professional life without discussing your work with Mario Batali and Anthony Bourdain. Does this book close the chapter on that era of your life? What's next for you? Laurie Woolever: Yeah, I think this has got to be the final word from me on those jobs. I would not be where I am without either of those two huge presences, but I don't want the rest of my life to be just relitigating and retelling these stories. So, moving forward, I really love collaborating with people and helping them tell their stories, I would love to find someone that has an amazing story to tell and needs a writer to help them get it on the page. I am working on a cookbook collaboration with Chef Ryan Bartlow, who has a restaurant in New York, called Ernesto's, and I do love that kind of work too. So, it's just I'd like to keep writing books and figure out a way to keep the rent paid. Dana Taylor: Laurie Woolever's new book, Care and Feeding is available now. Thank you so much for being on The Excerpt, Laurie. Laurie Woolever: Absolutely. Thank you. Dana Taylor: Thanks to our senior producer, Shannon Rae Green and Kaely Monahan for their production assistance, our executive producer is Laura Beatty. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending a note to podcast@ Thanks for listening, I'm Dana Taylor, Taylor Wilson will be back tomorrow morning with another episode of The Excerpt.
New York Times
07-03-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Bourdain and Batali's Assistant Spills Some Secrets
Laurie Woolever has played many roles in the food world. She was Mario Batali's assistant from 1999 to 2002, and Anthony Bourdain's assistant, working closely on his books and television shows, from 2009 until his death in 2018. Her new memoir, 'Care and Feeding,' which Ecco will publish on Tuesday, is a candid account of tending to high-wattage celebrities, and of working as a woman, wife and mother in a wildly male-dominated industry. It's also a reckoning with the high-risk behaviors that tied the three together. Below is a condensed and edited version of our phone interview. You grew up in upstate New York and moved to the city after college with hopes of becoming a writer. How did you end up in culinary school? I was drawn to the industry because I had this very wrong idea that it would be fun. The sort of fuzzy notion that I had of everyone hanging out in the kitchen, cooking, listening to music — that was very wrong. I'm glad that I had that, because I think if I had really understood what professional cooking was, I would have been too scared. I would have probably changed my mind about even going to cooking school. What was it like to work at Babbo, the restaurant that was the white-hot center of the culinary world? When the restaurant was brand new, everyone there knew that we were someplace special. It was getting a lot of press, everybody wanted to get in, celebrities were there every night. Mario's star was on the rise, and I think there was a real collective sense of pride, and we really cared about what we were doing. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
