A good meal is an important part of our everyday lives, but you need the right recipe to get there. This month we review some of our favorite foodie fiction, cookbooks, shows, podcasts and more! Find the right flavor for your taste and cook up a perfect reading list.
TV Show: Chopped on the Food Network was created in 2009 and is still running today - hosted by Ted Allen. Contestants are asked to created an appetizer, main dish and dessert using mystery ingredients within a basket on the spot. After each course, one contestant is chopped, and the rest continue until they choose a Chopped champion. It's inspiring to create edible food from some surprising ingredients, and fun to watch the challenges.
Food podcast: The One Recipe - hosted by Eater senior editor Jesse Sparks. Each episode features a guest from the food world and is all about one recipe they consider their "go to." It's a great combination of personal stories and food. It's been described to me as "a conversation that you love overhearing in a cafe."
Food magazine: My all-time favorite food magazine is Cooks Illustrated. It has pictures of the recipes included in the issue on the back cover, write ups on recommended kitchen tools, and recipes - but within the recipes, there are options given, and tips to adding/changing the recipe from the test kitchen. These are magazines that I keep, not rip recipes out.
General fiction: The Chicken Sisters by KJ Dell'Antonia is one of my favorite and most successful suggestions. It's an easy sell, with fried chicken, a secret recipe, dueling sister chicken joints down in Kansas where chaos ensues when the reality TV show Food Wars wants to highlight one of the sisters. Will money or family win?
General fiction: The School of Essential Ingredients: A Novel by Erica Bauermeister is a feel-good fiction involving cooking and self-discovery. Lillian hosts a restaurant in her house, but takes 8 students on to create more than just good food. Each chapter is another course, or themed dinner and focuses on a different character. Each challenge in and out of the kitchen is addressed by the characters individually, with their recipes and as a group. Bauermeister follows this with another novel from Lillian's restaurant called, The Lost Art of Mixing.
Mystery series with cooking: Joanne Fluke serves up a series with Hannah Swensen, a bakery owner in Minnesota. A cozy mystery series with murder, bakery goodies and colorful characters. A healthy series of 29 books, some of the titles might catch your eye: Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder, Lemon Meringue Pie Murder, Carrot Cake Murder, RaspberryDanish Murder and the most recent, just published, Pink Lemonade Cake Murder.
General fiction: Delicious! by Ruth Reichl is so much more than a novel about food. Delicious! is a food magazine in New York City, where Billie has come from California for a new start. When the magazine shuts down, Billie stays on to answer customer's complaints, finds a secret room with letters from WW2 that she takes to heart and starts to open her heart to love.
Memoir: From Scratch: A Memoir of Love, Sicily, and Finding Home by Tembi Locke. Travel, food, finding oneself, finding love, embracing culture, accepting help, learning to accept differences and embracing family. This book is a sucker punch to the senses. The description of the passion for creating art through cooking is intoxicating, the love between the couple is inspiring and heartbreaking. If you have or haven't read the book, watch the series on Netflix, which is a wonderful adaptation of the book. The page to screen works.
Fiction-thriller: The Golden Spoon by Jessa Maxwell is a murder mystery at a baking competition TV show at an estate in Vermont. Fans of the Great British Baking show will be happy with the parallels - interviews with the contestants, background with the host and crew, the bakes! Pies, cakes and the drama when sabotage starts- unknown substitution of salt for sugar? Eliminated. An unexplained death? A great "who did it."
Memoir: Finding Freedom: A Cook's Story Remaking a Life From Scratch by Erin French feels like fiction. Expecting a book about a journey through food to creating an amazing restaurant with a lottery reservation system while going through a personal hell, brings the reader on the rollercoaster with her. Mouth watering food descriptions, HGTV commentary on finding the right space, living off the land and toxic relationships. It's quite a mouthful.
Memoir: Audiobook: Farm City by Novella Carpenter is a memoir about urban farming to raise what you eat. Her commentary was honest, hysterical and at times gross, but fascinating. The philosophy of the process to grow what you eat, to appreciate the process what interesting and informative. It's not for my vegan friends, as the description of her learning to kill the animals she raises is not for the weak stomach. I found it riveting and would recommend it over and over.
TV Show: Chopped on the Food Network was created in 2009 and is still running today - hosted by Ted Allen. Contestants are asked to created an appetizer, main dish and dessert using mystery ingredients within a basket on the spot. After each course, one contestant is chopped, and the rest continue until they choose a Chopped champion. It's inspiring to create edible food from some surprising ingredients, and fun to watch the challenges.
Food podcast: The One Recipe - hosted by Eater senior editor Jesse Sparks. Each episode
features a guest from the food world and is all about one recipe they consider their "go to." It's a great combination of personal stories and food. It's been described to me as "a conversation that you love overhearing in a cafe."
Food magazine: My all-time favorite food magazine is Cooks Illustrated. It has pictures of the recipes included in the issue on the back cover, write ups on recommended kitchen tools, and recipes - but within the recipes, there are options given, and tips to adding/changing the recipe from the test kitchen. These are magazines that I keep, not rip recipes out.
General fiction: The Chicken Sisters by KJ Dell'Antonia is one of my favorite and most successful suggestions. It's an easy sell, with fried chicken, a secret recipe, dueling sister chicken joints down in Kansas where chaos ensues when the reality TV show Food Wars wants to highlight one of the sisters. Will money or family win?
General fiction: The School of Essential Ingredients: A Novel by Erica Bauermeister is a feel-good fiction involving cooking and self-discovery. Lillian hosts a restaurant in her house, but takes 8 students on to create more than just good food. Each chapter is another course, or themed dinner and focuses on a different character. Each challenge in and out of the kitchen is addressed by the characters individually, with their recipes and as a group. Bauermeister follows this with another novel from Lillian's restaurant called, The Lost Art of Mixing.
Mystery series with cooking: Joanne Fluke serves up a series with Hannah Swensen, a
bakery owner in Minnesota. A cozy mystery series with murder, bakery goodies and colorful characters. A healthy series of 29 books, some of the titles might catch your eye: Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder, Lemon Meringue Pie Murder, Carrot Cake Murder, Raspberry Danish Murder and the most recent, just published, Pink Lemonade Cake Murder.
General fiction: Delicious! by Ruth Reichl is so much more than a novel about food. Delicious! is a food magazine in New York City, where Billie has come from California for a new start. When the magazine shuts down, Billie stays on to answer customer's complaints, finds a secret room with letters from WW2 that she takes to heart and starts to open her heart to love.
Memoir: From Scratch: A Memoir of Love, Sicily, and Finding Home by Tembi Locke. Travel, food, finding oneself, finding love, embracing culture, accepting help, learning to accept differences and embracing family. This book is a sucker punch to the senses. The description of the passion for creating art through cooking is intoxicating, the love between the couple is inspiring and heartbreaking. If you have or haven't read the book, watch the series on Netflix, which is a wonderful adaptation of the book. The page to screen works.
Fiction-thriller: The Golden Spoon by Jessa Maxwell is a murder mystery at a baking competition TV show at an estate in Vermont. Fans of the Great British Baking show will be happy with the parallels - interviews with the contestants, background with the host and crew, the bakes! Pies, cakes and the drama when sabotage starts- unknown substitution of salt for sugar? Eliminated. An unexplained death? A great "who did it."
Memoir: Finding Freedom: A Cook's Story Remaking a Life From Scratch by Erin French feels
like fiction. Expecting a book about a journey through food to creating an amazing restaurant with a lottery reservation system while going through a personal hell, brings the reader on the rollercoaster with her. Mouth watering food descriptions, HGTV commentary on finding the right space, living off the land and toxic relationships. It's quite a mouthful.
Memoir: Audiobook: Farm City by Novella Carpenter is a memoir about urban farming to raise what you eat. Her commentary was honest, hysterical and at times gross, but fascinating. The philosophy of the process to grow what you eat, to appreciate the process what interesting and informative. It's not for my vegan friends, as the description of her learning to kill the animals she raises is not for the weak stomach. I found it riveting and would recommend it over and over.