Cook the Books Club: Cook the Books

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Tuesday, July 1, 2025

Announcement: Our Next Four Selections

It's that time of our virtual book club's cycle when we unveil the next four books selected by the co-hosts. As always, we hope the reading will delight and inspire you. Ready? Let's go!

Claudia (Honey from Rock) opens the series: for the August / September 2025 edition, she chose Alice Waters's memoir Coming to My Senses. The Making of a Counterculture Cook (September 2023)

After checking out some newer books, I choose Alice Waters's memoir. She is, after all, iconic in the Foodie world! Here is the blurb, courtesy of Publisher's Weekly:

Chef and restaurateur Waters (In the Green Kitchen, etc.) offers a personal view of her early life in this intimate and colorful memoir. The founder of Chez Panisse Restaurant and Café in Berkeley, Calif., Waters recalls a happy though gastronomically dull (e.g., frozen fish sticks, iceberg lettuce) upbringing in Chatham, N.J., as one of four sisters born to a Democrat mother and Republican father. Her supportive parents sent her to the University of California, Berkeley, where in the 1960s she became a political activist, aligning herself with the free-speech movement and the protest against the Vietnam War.

She traveled to France for a junior year abroad and fell in love with all things French, eventually declaring the French history as her college major. Waters also fell in love with French food during the trip; her tastes and senses were, in her words, "awakened." Waters began to dream of opening a restaurant; she purchased a house in Berkeley and in 1971, at the age of 27, opened Chez Panisse — a unique, organic, locally sourced restaurant with a prix fixe menu and just one main entrée served each evening, producing an experience much like dining in a private home.

Readers will be charmed by Waters's adoration of exquisitely prepared food. Her anecdotes and her descriptions of friends and customers (many of whom were filmmakers, artists, and prominent thinkers of the time) bring the era and the restaurant to the mind's eye in vibrant detail.

Aloha,
Claudia, Honey From Rock

Deadline for contributing your post is Tuesday, September 30, 2025

For the October / November 2025 edition, Debra (Eliot's Eats) has chosen the novel Maame by Jessica George (January 2023)

I have gone 'round and 'round on picking a book and finally landed on this novel. Here's an edited blurb from the publisher's site:

Maame (ma-meh) has many meanings in Twi but in my case, it means woman. It’s fair to say that Maddie’s life in London is far from rewarding. With a mother who spends most of her time in Ghana (yet still somehow manages to be overbearing), Maddie is the primary caretaker for her father, who suffers from advanced stage Parkinson’s. At work, her boss is a nightmare and Maddie is tired of always being the only Black person in every meeting. When her mum returns from her latest trip to Ghana, Maddie leaps at the chance to get out of the family home and finally start living. But it's not long before tragedy strikes, forcing Maddie to face the true nature of her unconventional family, and the perils—and rewards—of putting her life on the line. Smart, funny, and deeply affecting, Jessica George's Maame deals with the themes of our time with humor and poignancy: from familial duty and racism, to female pleasure, the complexity of love, and the life-saving power of friendship. Most importantly, it explores what it feels like to be torn between two homes and cultures―and it celebrates finally being able to find where you belong.

Debra, Eliot's Eats

Deadline for contributing your post is Sunday, November 30, 2025

For the December 2025 / January 2026 edition Simona (briciole) chose the memoir Bite by Bite by Aimee Nezhukumatathil (April 2024)

Although I've known Aimee Nezhukumatathil's poetry for some time and enjoyed reading it, I was not familiar with her essays until I saw this collection. After scanning the first few chapters, I decided to select this for our club.

From the publisher:

Aimee Nezhukumatathil explores the way food and drink evoke our associations and remembrances... From shave ice to lumpia, mangoes to pecans, rambutan to vanilla, she investigates how food marks our experiences and identities and explores the boundaries between heritage and memory.

I hope the lyrical essays will be a stimulating read and provide culinary inspiration. Should you be curious about her poetry, see a selection on this page of the Poetry Foundation website

Simona, briciole

Deadline for contributing your post: Saturday, January 31, 2026.

To round up the list of selections, for the February / March 2026 edition, guest host Amy (Amy's Cooking Adventures) chose the novel Miss Eliza’s English Kitchen by Annabel Abbs (also known by its title in the UK: The Language of Food, November 2021)

Victorian England, 1837: Eliza Acton wants to write poetry, but is told to write a cookbook instead. When circumstances demand, she begins the task, along with help from her 17-year old assistant, Ann. A fictionalized account of Eliza Acton’s life is sure to please foodies and historical fiction enthusiasts alike!

Amy, Amy's Cooking Adventures

Deadline for contributing your post: Tuesday, March 31, 2026.

Remember that membership in our book club is open to anyone and we hope you will join us by reading these selections and creating inspired recipes. For more information about participating, click here.

As always, specific announcement posts can be found at Cook the Books at the beginning of each two-month period and the current selection is always shown on the right side of the homepage.

And do not hesitate to leave a comment on this post or the specific announcement should you have any questions.

To recap:

August / September 2025: Coming to My Senses. The Making of a Counterculture Cook by Alice Waters (hosted by Claudia at Honey from Rock)

October / November 2025: Maame by Jessica George (hosted by Debra at Eliot's Eats)

December 2025 / January 2026: Bite by Bite by Aimee Nezhukumatathil (hosted by Simona at briciole)

February / March 2026: Miss Eliza’s English Kitchen by Annabel Abbs (hosted by Amy at Amy's Cooking Adventures)

Happy reading and cooking!

Thursday, June 5, 2025

June/July Selection: A Bakery in Paris

I was pleased to be invited to host CTB for the upcoming months of June and July. I chose the historical novel A Bakery in Paris by Aimie Runyan (August 2023)

This is the story of two women, Lisette, born into wealth and privilege in France to parents who are cold and distant towards her. As she becomes an adult in 1870, she flees the marriage planned by her parents and runs into the arms of Theo, a National Guardsman, who is part of the resistance against the Prussian oligarchy in control of the country. Micheline is a young woman entering adulthood in 1945 as WWII is ending, and people are trying to pick up the pieces of their lives. Micheline was raised in a loving, caring home above a cafe. Her father was killed in the war, and her mother disappeared, leaving her to care for her younger sisters. When the cafe tenants leave without warning, Micheline is unsure of how she will continue to provide for her siblings. She speaks with an elderly neighbor who encourages her to attend culinary school and restore the cafe into a bakery. The neighbor told Micheline that she was great friends with her grandmother and had many fond memories of joining her for treats after school when her mother, Lisette, owned the store. The novel skips back and forth between the lives of these two young, strong, and determined women as Micheline follows the recipes she has found in her great-grandmother's journal. These recipes are listed between chapters in the novel. I hope you enjoy this novel and will join me at the end of July when I do a roundup of the reviews and recipes inspired.

Wendy, A Day in the Life on the Farm

Deadline for contributing your post: Thursday, July 31, 2025.

Leave a comment below with a link to your post

Remember that membership in our book club is open to anyone and we hope you will join us by reading these selections and creating inspired recipes. New participants are always welcome and so are returning ones. For more information about participating, click here.

Sunday, December 1, 2024

Crying in H Mart: The Roundup

It's time for the roundup of Cook the Books' Club October-November edition for which we read Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner.

As I've done in the past, I will present our club members' contributions as a menu organized in courses. For each dish, I will give you the official information (author, blog name and post title) and a quote from it, a taste: follow the link and read the author's take of the book and how the reading inspired the cooking.

Cook the Books Club's Crying in H Mart-Inspired Menu

Soup:

Dak Gomtang (Korean Chicken Soup)

Main:

Makgalbi-jjim (Korean Braised Short Ribs)

Kimchi-jjgae (Korean Stew)

Korean Style Short Ribs (à la Chongmi)

Midnight Kimchi Fried Rice

Side dish:

Green cabbage with honeynut squash and chestnuts

Make yourself comfortable and enjoy the menu.

Wendy of A Day in the Life on the Farm prepared Dak Gomtang (Korean Chicken Soup)

"This Korean Chicken soup is flavored with garlic, onions, and ginger creating a flavorful broth served over freshly steamed rice... This soup appealed to me because I was having 10 people for dinner and this soup could be made ahead of time. I boiled my chicken and made the broth the day before dinner. I steamed the rice the morning of the dinner but did not refrigerate it. I did enjoy the food descriptions and it made me long for a trip to the Asian Market, an hour's drive from my house, to enjoy food at the little cafe in the corner."

Amy of Amy's Cooking Adventures cooked Makgalbi-jjim (Korean Braised Short Ribs)

"Lots of great foodie moments and I think many who lose loved ones, especially at a young age can find this memoir relatable. As she writes, the author mentions tons of Korean foods her (sometimes overbearing) mother made for her in childhood and beyond, so there was lots of inspiration... I decided to poke around the inspiration blog [Maangchi] and see what I could find, which were these fantastic short ribs! Flavorful and delicious, this recipe will satisfy the whole family!"

Claudia of Honey from Rock prepared Kimchi-jjigae

"Some parents can be so overbearing even in their love, wanting to direct every aspect of their children's lives... The inspirations for cooking were just too many to list. All Korean food! And I had only recently posted on that. Getting Into Jang, by Mingoo Kong, A Whole New Cuisine. Anyway, I fixed a traditional Korean favorite, and one of mine as well: Kimchi-jjgae. Which is a stew in which you put some aged kimchi [spicy pickled cabbage], pork, tofu, and various seasonings."

Debra of Eliot's Eats cooked Korean Style Short Ribs (à la Chongmi)

"Zauner and her mother [Chongmi] do seem to bond over food. Korean-Chinese food was the first thing they would seek out when they arrived in Seoul for their scheduled family trips. Some of Chongmi’s more gentle lessons seemed to revolve around cuisine... It might have been food that actually kept Zauner sane... I kept coming back to Chongmi’s marinated short ribs. I pieced together a recipe that included green onions, 7-Up, soy sauce, and sesame oil... I put together a couple of recipes and then used the tips from the book on how her mom made them."

Marg of The Intrepid Reader prepared Midnight Kimchi Fried Rice

"One of the things that I enjoyed was when Michelle Zauner started trying to learn to cook more Korean food by watching Youtube videos from a person called Maangchi... I chose to take inspiration from a very popular Korean dish, Kimchi, to make a version of fried rice... did have a Korean workmate who suggested that this recipe was overly complicating things and all you really needed was some rice, some kimchi and some tuna and you had a delicious lunch, but we definitely enjoyed this when we made it, and it is an easy mid-week meal."

Simona of briciole (your host) prepared
Green Cabbage with Honeynut Squash & Chestnuts

"The book inspired me to look at a food from my upbringing, something not only Italian, but from my family traditions. When I was in Italy last month, the smell of roasted chestnuts... reminded me of my mother. Every October, she would buy a large amount of chestnuts from someone in Casperia, the village in central Italy where she grew up. Then, in the following weeks, we would eat them often, as dessert at the end of dinner, alternatively roasted and boiled... The side dish is earthy and sweet (almost dessert-like) and it's vegan."

A great Thank you! to everyone who joined in this edition of Cook the Books.

I believe all the submissions I have received are presented in the roundup. If you find anything missing or in need of amendment anywhere in the roundup, please do let me know.

And now, I’ll pass the baton to Claudia of Honey from Rock who is hosting the December 2024-January 2025 edition in which we are reading the novel Land of Milk and Honey by C Pam Zhang.

Arrivederci a presto!

Simona, of briciole

Friday, October 4, 2024

October/November selection: Crying in H Mart

For the October / November 2024 edition I chose the memoir Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner (April 2021)

In August 2018, the author had an essay published on The New Yorker with the same title. It starts thus:

Ever since my mom died, I cry in H Mart. For those of you who don’t know, H Mart is a supermarket chain that specializes in Asian food. The “H” stands for han ah reum, a Korean phrase that roughly translates to “one arm full of groceries.” H Mart is where parachute kids go to get the exact brand of instant noodles that reminds them of home. It’s where Korean families buy rice cakes to make tteokguk, a beef soup that brings in the new year. It’s the only place where you can find a giant vat of peeled garlic, because it’s the only place that truly understands how much garlic you’ll need for the kind of food your people eat. H Mart is freedom from the single-aisle “ethnic” section in regular grocery stores.

From the book review on NPR:

[Crying in H Mart] powerfully maps a complicated mother-daughter relationship cut much too short. Stories of Korean food serve as the backbone of the book, as Zauner plumbs the connections between food and identity. That search takes on new urgency after her mother's death — in losing her mother, she also lost her strongest tether to Korean culture.

I'm looking forward to learning more about Korean cuisine.

Simona, briciole

Deadline for contributing your post: Saturday, November 30, 2024.

Leave a comment below with a link to your post or email me at simosite AT mac DOT com

Note: I borrowed the book from the library. Both the ebook and the audio version had long waiting lists. If you also plan to borrow the book, I recommend you check your library soon.

Saturday, February 3, 2024

February/March selection: Relish

For the February / March 2024 edition of our book club, I chose the graphic memoir Relish: My Life in the Kitchen by Lucy Knisley (April 2013)

From the author's website:

In her forthright, thoughtful, and funny memoir, Lucy traces key episodes in her life thus far, framed by what she was eating at the time and lessons learned about food, cooking, and life. Each chapter is bookended with an illustrated recipe—many of them treasured family dishes, and a few of them Lucy's original inventions.

A welcome read for anyone who ever felt more passion for a sandwich than is strictly speaking proper, Relish is a graphic novel for our time: it invites the reader to celebrate food as a connection to our bodies and a connection to the earth, rather than an enemy, a compulsion, or a consumer product.

And from the book review on NPR:

Lucy Knisley isn't a food hipster. She's a food nerd.

Which is to say: she doesn't lecture. She enthuses.

Her knowledge of food isn't an excuse to lord her expertise over others. It's a means to connect with them, to get them to understand why she loves what she loves — and, maybe, to get them to love it, too.

Relish contains a series of stories from Knisley's life in the culinary world, from being toted along as a young girl to her mother's job at the first Dean and Deluca, to her own experiences in the Chicago food scene. These are broken up by some of her favorite recipes, lovingly illustrated and annotated in her bright, cartoony style.

I'm looking forward to reading outside my habits' boundaries.

Simona, briciole

Deadline for contributing your post: Sunday, March 31, 2024

Leave a comment below with a link to your post or email me at simosite AT mac DOT com

Wednesday, August 2, 2023

Food Americana: The Roundup

It's time for the roundup of Cook the Books' Club June-July edition for which we read Food Americana by David Page.

Cook the Books Club's Food Americana-Inspired Menu

Sandwich:

Smoked Salmon Breakfast Bagel

Connecticut-Style Lobster Rolls

Za'atar Bagels

Appetizer:

Mexican Taquitos

Main:

Three-Chile Mole

BBQ

Everything But The Bagel & Nova Salmon Cottage Cheese Bowl

Ethiopian Red Lentil Stew

Dessert:

No Churn Vanilla Bean Ice Cream

Avocado Sherbet

Make yourself comfortable and enjoy the menu.

Wendy of A Day in the Life on the Farm prepared a Bagel Breakfast Sandwich

"The food descriptions were remarkable, the history interesting and the personalities of the people who brought and introduced the foods to America were charming. The only problem with this book was that I came back from each walk starving and ate up all the calories I had just burned LOL... My recipe was taken from the chapter where we met Russ and Daughters who introduced bagels and lox to New York City. I had everything on hand that I needed for this sandwich that I enjoyed for lunch after my morning walk."

Camilla of Culinary Cam prepared Connecticut-style Lobster Rolls

"Page details and I already knew there were two distinct kinds of lobster rolls: Maine-style vs. Connecticut-style. After testing both, I realized... I vastly prefer Connecticut lobster rolls!... Maine-style lobster rolls are served cold, tossed in a mixture of mayonnaise, tarragon, celery, and scallions. Served on a buttered, toasted bun, this is the kind of lobster roll you'll likely find most easily. Connecticut-style lobster rolls hold the mayonnaise and bring on the butter. Yep. I'm sold already. Then they are served warm with more butter."

Camilla of Culinary Cam baked Za'atar Bagels

"For this post, I was inspired by Page's discussion of Russ & Daughters in New York. They are 'Not just any bagel. Russ & Daughters makes their own, two-hundred-dozen a day, triple that on holidays, each bagel hand-rolled, boiled, and baked in the traditional way, on burlap-covered wooden planks in a rotating deck oven with six deep shelves...' Once I got the hang of bagels, I make them about every other week. I've made them with poppy seeds, with salt, with dried cranberries, and more. But the bagel I'm sharing today is my Za'atar-Dusted Bagel."

Cathy of Delaware Girl Eats baked an Mexican Taquitos (El Indio's Specialty)

"I’m awfully fond of Mexican cuisine and seek out the real deal when I’m in a part of the country where it’s truly authentic, in other words not along the East Coast. This is how I ended up at the El Indio Restaurant in San Diego which has been in business for over 80 years... they do indeed offer masterful Mexican food. So when I read Food Americana and saw in the chapter 'Mexican Food in the US' that this restaurant was highlighted, I read avidly about the history of the place and its long-time owner/operators who produce 'authentic Mexican food."

Camilla of Culinary Cam prepared Tree-Chile Mole

"Mole just means sauce - a sauce made with chiles. And Cesario Ruiz of My Mom's Mole likened it to curry. 'It's a like a Mexican curry. You know, every cook has a different way of making it and each curry tastes different', Ruiz said. 'And you can taste the time, love, and passion in each one.' 'This is a big process', he says. 'You have to fry each ingredient one by one. In the end, you blend.' (Food Americana) This definitely takes time and I have tried to streamline the process by grouping them as they are prepared. Then they all come together in the end."

Claudia of Honey from Rock prepared A Good BBQ

"I decided to go with BBQ as my inspired dish from the book, or from life anyway. Bob was asked to do the grilling honors on Father's Day and I made the barbecue sauce. This sauce has a double purpose, getting grass-fed steaks tender and tasty. We had opened a ripe (we thought) pineapple, which as it turned out was on the tart side. Perfect I thought for helping to tenderize the meat. Pineapple has an enzyme in it called bromelain, found in the flesh of the pineapple and in the juice as well. Bromelain is a fast-working meat tenderizer that is great for tough cuts of steak. But you don't want to leave it too long, as the meat could end up on the mushy side. Good thing the coals didn't take any longer to get ready!"

Deb of Kahakai Kitchen prepared
Everything But the Bagel & Nova Salmon Cottage Cheese Bowl

As a creator and producer of Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives, Page knows how to keep it interesting and I'd recommend this book to any foodie looking for a good read. …Although my new job has me working from home which lessens my commute, it also means that I need to come up with quick and easy, healthy home lunches. A new favorite way to get lots of protein is making cottage cheese bowls. Cottage cheese has had a big comeback this year and has become the cauliflower of the healthy eating world. I decided to take inspiration from the chapter on bagels and make a bowl with Nova salmon and everything but the bagel-spiced cottage cheese, along with some other toppings that might be found on a bagel and some Everything But the Bagel Chips.

Simona of briciole (your host) prepared Ethiopian Red Lentil Stew

"[T]he reading got me thinking about how living in the U.S. has brought me into contact with cuisines from around the world, of which the Ethiopian one is a favorite. So I decided to make a favorite dish among those that are served at Ethiopian restaurants when you order the vegetarian combo, which consists of an injera (the traditional flat bread made with teff flour) spread on a large plate and topped with small mounds of various dishes, one of which is Misir Wot (or Misir Wat), a spicy red lentil stew."

Amy of Amy's Cooking Adventures made No Churn Vanilla Bean Ice Cream

"I decided to take inspiration from the ice cream section. I have a feeling that the ice cream chapter would have a strong opinion about no churn ice cream and its air content (but they were in to super weird flavors). However, no churn is what I have since I’m not willing to buy an ice cream machine at this time. I’ve made several different no churn ice creams, but I've never made the classic: vanilla! As always, no churn ice cream is silky smooth with a great punch of flavor from the vanilla bean."

Debra of Eliot's Eats prepared Avocado Sherbet

"I really enjoyed learning about the history [of ice cream]. Apparently the ice cream cone 'became a sensation at the World’s Fair of 1904 and kicked off a boom in ice cream consumption nationwide' (196)... Maybe the most surprising history and testimony to ice cream’s restorative powers, came during WWII: “'t was considered so important for America’s troops to get ice cream during World War Two that an ice cream manufacturing plant was set up on a barge in the South Pacific. Military doctors prescribed ice cream to help soldiers recover from combat fatigue' (196)... I decided to try a weird recipe that my sister found in a retro cookbook mom had when we were growing up: Avocado Sherbet."

A great Thank you! to everyone who joined in this edition of Cook the Books.

I believe all the submissions I have received are presented in the roundup. If you find anything missing or in need of amendment anywhere in the roundup, please do let me know.

And now, I’ll pass the baton to Deb of Kahakai Kitchen who is hosting the August-September edition in which we are reading the novel Love & Saffron by Kim Fay.

Arrivederci a presto!

Simona, of briciole