2020 Book Sales; Todd Richards' Soul Menu

Oct 20, 2020

Howdy cookbook fans!

I hope your Tuesday is treating you well thus far. We’ve got a lot of news to get through today so I’ll get right to it.

Shooting The Nom Wah Cookbook has been important to me because it is my visual love letter to Chinatown. Prior to one small web shoot, I had never had the privilege of shooting Cantonese food and people on such a large scale. To be able to photograph people that look and talk just like me, along with the very food and dishes that I grew up with (that you rarely see in mainstream media) has been nothing short of cathartic.

—Photographer Alex Lau on his latest project (click over for more). [Insta]

Cookbook Sales 2020: Bread Books and La Contessa

NPD Books @npdbooks

Print unit sales for bread #cookbooks in the U.S. grew 145 percent year over year, for the nine months ending September 2020—200,000 more bread cookbooks have sold in the U.S. in 2020 than in 2019, as the U.S. followed COVID-19 pandemic shelter-at-home orders.

Let’s check in on book sales, shall we? Overall, according to NPD BookScan, book sales are up 6.4% in the first three quarters of 2020. And a good chunk of those were books about…bread? Thanks to everyone staying home, bread cookbook sales are way, way up. NPD reports the genre grew by 145% in the first three quarters of 2020. That makes for an additional 200,000 bread books sold this year so far. What’s that I hear? More bread bro book deals being signed, off in the distance?

Meanwhile, Ina Garten’s new book Modern Comfort Food is doing numbers, to absolutely no one’s surprise. She’s currently #1 overall according to NPD BookScan, #1 on the NYT Advice, How-To & Miscellaneous list, #1 on Amazon’s cookbooks list, and #5 overall on Amazon. All of this despite calling for flour tortillas in her enchilada recipe. (I got some flack for this on Twitter, to which I say: make food however you think it tastes best, don’t let people yuck your yum, etc, but enchiladas are made with corn tortillas?)

Paula Yes-on-Prop-A Forbes @paulaforbes

i do not mean to speak ill of our queen but the new ina garten cookbook has an enchilada recipe that calls for flour tortillas

Also, quick note to say that just because book sales are up doesn’t mean your local bookshop is thriving, so make sure you shop your local indie stores when you buy cookbooks. Especially with the holidays coming up.

The Rise is more than a cookbook; it is a conversation, a collaboration, and, above all, a declaration that Black Food Matters. The recipes bear influences from southern cooking, West Africa, the Caribbean, and East Africa, and are accompanied by a collection of chef profiles and essays by Samuelsson’s cowriter, Osayi Endolyn….The Rise begins with a look to the future, exploring where Black food is heading, and then pays homage to cooks on whose shoulders Black chefs stand, and the migration stories that make the cuisine so diverse and rich.

—Food writer Klancy Miller on Marcus Samuelsson’s new cookbook, The Rise. [Vogue]

Chef Todd Richards to Open Cookbook-Inspired Stall

You see this go the other way a lot —cookbooks inspired by restaurants—but you don’t often see a food venture inspired by cookbook. But that’s exactly what Atlanta chef Todd Richards is doing: Eater Atlanta reports Richards will open Soul: Food & Culture at Krog Street Market, inspired by his 2018 cookbook Soul: A Chef’s Culinary Evolution in 150 Recipes. The book’s goal is to “highlight what soul food can be for a new generation of cooks,” and the menu at the food stall includes “a hot fried catfish sandwich, a choice of either chicken or catfish and waffles, and four distinct fried chicken sandwiches, ranging from crispy fried and spicy Buffalo, to a sandwich topped with pimento cheese and Benton’s bacon.” Also, that cover just knocks me out every time I see it. I love it.

My very public love for Olney had led to a friendship with his brother and sister-in-law (and fellow Minnesotans) Byron and Marilynn, and their generosity had led us here…to meet Lulu Peyraud for the first time….The proprietress of Domaine Tempier, revered Bandol winemaker, collaborator and inspiration behind my favorite cookbook, Lulu’s Provençal Table, friend, protector, and muse to Olney, sainted mother figure to a generation of Olney acolytes, and a quiet legend in the world of French food and wine, was stopping by to eat her favorite lunch, pieds et paquets, which only Marc cooked to her satisfaction. I was the kid who had grown up worshipping Mickey Mantle and had just gotten a call asking if I could fill in at shortstop for the Yankees.

—Writer Steve Hoffman remembers Lulu Peyraud, muse to the great cookbook author Richard Olney and so much more. Peyraud died recently at the age of 102. [F&W]

I guess when you’re Richard Gere and you see your neighbor Martha Stewart on Today baking cakes you can just call her up and ask for one of the cakes. [IG]
Is there such a thing as a perfect chocolate chip cookie recipe? Pastry chef Ravneet Gill has one in her book The Pastry Chef’s Guide, or at least a ton of people on Instagram think it’s perfect. [NYT]
Dutch cookbook author Joke Boon didn’t let losing her sense of smell when she was 4 years old stop her from writing five cookbooks. [CNN]
A great interview between LAT restaurant critic Bill Addison and The Man Who Ate Too Much author John Birdsall about food, gay identity, and James Beard. [LAT]
Bill Granger is apparently Australia’s “King of Breakfast” and he has written a book for all times of the day called Australian Food. [Stylist]
Four (!) recipes for you from the new Claire Saffitz cookbook, Dessert Person. [Taste]
I link to a lot of calls for recipes for community cookbooks, but this Knoxboro, New York cookbook is looking for artists to design its cover! [Observer-Dispatch]
Sturgeon County, Alberta is just looking for recipes though. [St Albert Today]
Non-boring ways to gift-wrap a book. More presents 2020! [F52]
Inside Lauren Ko’s new book, Pieometry. [My Modern Met]
Are these the 5 best Ina Garten cookbooks? [Mercury News]
The Orlando Sentinel’s former food editor of 28 years (!) Heather McPherson talks about her relationship to cookbooks in honor of National Cookbook Month. [OS]
Unsure how you can celebrate National Cookbook Month? Your library can help! [Sun Englewood]
4 upcoming cookbooks from South Africa. [IOL]
And the first best cookbooks of 2020 list I’ve seen this year! [CNN]

By promoting pleasure over perfection, Nigella Lawson made every woman feel like a domestic goddess.

—Celebrating How to Be a Domestic Goddess 20 years after publication. [Telegraph]

That’s all for today! I will see Friday folks Friday, have a great week.