Howdy cookbook fans!

This week, a hodgepodge: some highlights from this year in Stained Page News, some cookbook news, some good things to read, some best cookbooks of the year lists, OFC some book deals. But first! A quick year-in-review for this here newsletter—this year, for the first time, I brought on freelance contributors and I think the experiment was a huge success. (If you have pitches for cookbook articles you’d like to write, email me! I pay.) Below, some of my favorite pieces from contributors, and a few things I wrote myself—thank you so much for reading this year.

The Best of Stained Page News 2021

The book previews:

• Spring preview, part 1 and part 2.

• Summer preview, part 1 and part 2.

• The big fall cookbook preview!

• A book designer’s tour of fall 2021 cookbooks.

Interviews:

• Gabrielle Davenport and Danielle Davenport of BEM Books & More, an online shop (and holiday pop-up!) that celebrates the cookbooks and food books of the African diaspora.

• Cookbook author Julia Turshen.

• Cookbook author Matt Rodbard.

• Cookbook author Kate Leahy.

Very specific cookbook sub-genres:

• A brief history of Japanese-American community cookbooks.

• Cookbooks for when you just want tasty vegetables for dinner.

• Get baked with cannabis cookbooks.

• Inside the world of art cookbooks.

Recipe and cookbook theory:

• Other kitchens, other cooks: generosity in recipe writing.

• What do photo-free cookbooks offer 21st century readers?

• What recipes have in common with clean code.

A few pieces on individual books:

• One of the world’s first photobooks focused on bread.

• 3 books that changed my life.

• The soup zodiac: 365 soups for every day of the year.

Book Deals: Nini Nguyen, Rebekah Peppler, More!

chefnininguyen

A post shared by N I N I . N G U Y E N (@chefnininguyen)

• Above: ex-Top Cheffer Nini Nguyen to write Dac Biet: An Extra Special Vietnamese Cookbook for Knopf. The book will focus on “authentically inauthentic Vietnamese-by-way-of-New Orleans cuisine in 100 recipes.” (“Dac biet,” in menu parlance anyhow, means “special,” “extra special,” or “special combo.”) Writes Nguyen on Instagram, “I’m very passionate about my heritage and the city where I come from and I really can’t wait to share that with the world!” Pub date TBA. [PM]

• Luisa Weiss, author of 2016’s lovely Classic German Baking, will write Classic German Cooking for Ten Speed. Pub date TBA. [PM]

• Rebekah Peppler, author of this past spring’s À Table, to write Le Sud: Recipes + Stories from Provence - Alpes - Cote-D’Azur. 85 recipes that offer “a new perspective on the South of France, beyond the cliches of lavender fields and rose.” Chronicle, pub date TBA. [PM]

• Like to dehydrate stuff? The Self-Sufficient Kitchen Dehydrating Foods by Jeanette Hurt will contain a massive 175 recipes for “creating and using dehydrated foods.” DK, fall 2022. [PM]

• Grab some tissues: As a cafeteria employer in Abilene, Texas schools in the 60s and 70s, Florice Hudgins contributed several recipes to a book called Our Favorite Recipes, comprised of recipes by members of the Abilene School Food Service Association. Recently, her son Dusty found a copy and posted about it in an Abilene nostalgia Facebook group. Hundreds of comments and likes later, Hudgins has reprinted the book through the original publisher (still in business!), and made a bunch of Texans very happy. [CNN]

• Cookbook newsletter alert! This week, Substack highlighted Maya Meredith’s The Kitchen Review of Books, where Meredith explores food and culture by cooking through cookbooks. [Substack, KRoB]

• In publishing, a course correction to publish Black cookbook authors. [Eater]

• Samah Dada, author of Dada Eats: Love to Cook It, was on the TASTE podcast. [TASTE]

Best of 2021 Lists

• The Washington Post’s best cookbooks of 2021. [WP]

• Garden & Gun’s favorite cookbooks of 2021. [G&G]

• The Guardian’s best food books of 2021. [Guardian]

• 57 recent titles to consider. [Cleveland.com]

• The Star-Tribune’s 15 top picks. [MST]

• WBUR’s favorite cookbooks of the year. [WBUR]

• The Boston Globe’s top ten. [BG]

That’s all for today! Paid subscribers, you’ll get one more issue this year and then I’m pausing everything (the newsletter, subscription payments for the newsletter, my life) until 2022. See you all then.