Cooking and Crafts to #StayHome | Recommended Reading, Part 2
There are few things I love more than reading, but cooking comes close. So when I had the opportunity to gather these recommendations, recommendations that combine two of my favorite things, it filled my quarantined heart with joy.
Personally, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about Samin Nosrat’s visit to The New School in the fall of 2018 (remember going to events? *sigh*), and how much I love her cookbook, Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat. It’s more than just recipes: it’s a manual, a guide to cooking. It’s a book you spend time with, which makes it perfect for this current moment. Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat is simple but intricate, and is full of beautiful illustrations by Wendy MacNaughton.
Whether you’re cooking or crafting (or both) this week, we hope you find inspiration in these recommendations from our New School community.
— Kelly McHugh-Stewart, MFA Creative Writing ’18 and Senior Manager of Digital Engagement at The New School
“Julia taught me how to cook.” — Bea Banu
Recommendations from Bea Banu, Professor of Philosophy and Chair of the Food Studies Program
As for my new favorite cookbook, with lots of comfort foods, Daneille Oron’s Food You Love but different: Easy and Exciting Ways to Elevate Your Favorite Meals. A friend just gave this to me, the recipes start at breakfast with Grits and Breakfast Tacos, segue to Pastas, Turf & Surf, Veggies and Rice, Toast (more than just avocado), and, of course, Desserts. The recipes are simple to follow with short lists of ingredients. Oron includes “Hot Tips” to make life easier and make the final dish better. It is actually a fun book to use.
My all time favorite cook books, however, are and will always be Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child, Louisette Bertholle and Simone Beck. Julia taught me how to cook. My second favorite set of cook books are by Marcella Hazan. The Classic Italian Cookbook. Those books are the best way to enter a culinary culture. I use all of them still and constantly.
Recommendations from Julia Gorton, Assistant Professor of Communication Design, Parsons
I’d recommend the book, How to Make Books: Fold, Cut & Stitch Your Way to a One-of-a-Kind Book, and would recommend the magazine, Kolaj. I also follow @alexaweibel on Instagram, she’s one of the New York Times recipe writers, and she just posted some pickled onions I made last night!
Recommendations from Mickie Meinhardt, MFA Creative Writing ’17, Events Director for Guernica and Founder of The Buzzed Word:
Right now might be the perfect time to learn about wine: We’re all stuck inside, cooking a lot, and probably having a nightly glass (or… more) to pair with those meals. I find that visual learning and a down-to-Earth approach are key for wine learning, and I have two favorite books like that: Grasping The Grape, a pocket-size illustrated guide to every major wine grape by sommelier Maryse Chevriere (who also runs the delightful Instagram @freshcutgardenhose); and Wine Folly: The Essential Guide To Wine by Madeline Puckett. The former is all about the grape — the best and simplest place to start in learning your way around wine. Approachable and adorable, with succinct flavor profiles and characteristics of each grape, this book really helps break it down. And Wine Folly is probably the #1 guide to wine drinking out there. It will teach you how to pour, smell, and most importantly TASTE wine in a very digestible way. Puckett has made it her mission to bring wine to the masses, and I think anyone who enjoys wine should have this book on their shelf. I still reference both of these often.
I don’t always pair wine with food, but a good food-wine pairing is the best feeling. Grasping The Grape is young and fun, so it pairs well with Molly Yeh’s hummus recipe (a staple in my kitchen) or any of Alison Roman’s snacks — her dips are famous, and her tahini-date-cauliflower situation is my favorite thing to serve to friends. And Madeline Puckett feels like a kindred spirit of Melissa Clark, both experts who guide you through the wide world of cooking easily and with a gentle hand. Melissa’s guide to roasting chicken recently helped me turn out an actually perfect bird; Wine Folly and a rosemary-speckled roast chicken are made for one another.
“Travel without a passport.” — Rozanne Gold
Recommendations from Rozanne Gold, Faculty, Food Studies Program
A bit of radical simplicity is what’s called for these days. One might want to explore the simple/complex notion of cooking with three ingredients (consider “Recipes 1–2–3”) or another book appropriately titled Radically Simple. I might have written them both, but I do believe in the music and magic of cooking. If you are interested in getting to the essence of flavor and taste, with a feeling of virtuosity — then these might be worth a look. If it’s a bit of culinary exoticism you’re after, try Indian-ish by Priya Krishna (the dal are divine). Travel without a passport.
Recommendations from Ivy Kirk, Faculty, Parsons
I find inspiration from NY Times cooking. My favorite recipe is this Sourdough, which I have been making probably twice a week. I also read Fashionista, Vogue.com, and BOF which are good ways to keep up with what’s happening in fashion, though not really crafty. We also started making cheese, and the New England Cheesemaking Supply Co. is a good resource.
Phoebe Tran, BA Food Studies ’19, Co-Founder and Food Program Director of Happy Family Night Market
There are so many food books that I love. If I had to choose one, it would be what I’m currently reading — The Mushroom at the End of the World by Anna Tsing. I’ve re-read the prologue now a few times, in awe at how Tsing’s message speaks to what we are experiencing now in the midst of a global pandemic:
“This book tells of my travels with mushrooms to explore indeterminacy and the conditions of precarity, that is, life without the promise of stability. I’ve read that when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, thousands of Siberians, suddenly deprived of state guarantees, ran to the woods to collect mushrooms. These are not the mushrooms I follow, but they make my point: the uncontrolled lives of mushrooms are a gift — and a guide — when the controlled world we thought we had fails.”
Some other food books I’d recommend:
Appetites and Aspirations in Vietnam: Food and Drink in the Long Nineteenth Century by Erica J. Peters
Country Women by Jeanne Tetrault and Sherry Thomas
Meals to Come: A History of the Future of Food by Warren Belasco
Note: Happy Family Night Market, an organization that celebrates the Asian diaspora through food, art, and education, recently launched a new series where they invite chefs impacted by the COVID-19 crisis to share recipes in quarantine. Check it out here.
Recommendation from Anette Millington, Director of Parsons First Year and Assistant Professor of Fashion Systems and Materiality
Below are some of my favorite recommendations on craft thinking and making. Some classics, some current inspiration.
Making
Knit for Health & Wellness: How to Knit a Flexible Mind and More by Betsan Corkhill
Mastering the Art of Embroidery: Tutorials, Techniques, and Modern Applications by Sophie Long
The Art of Manipulating Fabric by Colette Wolff
Thinking
Waste Not Want Not: An Inquiry into What Women Saved and Assembled — FEMMAGE (1977–78) by Miriam Schapiro and Melissa Meyer
Women’s Work: The First 20,000 Years Women, Cloth, and Society in Early Times by Elizabeth Wayland Barber
Crafting Textiles in the Digital Age edited by Nithikul Nimkulrat, Faith Kane, Kerry Walton
Unsettling Coloniality: A Critical and Radical Fiber/Textile Bibliography edited by Aram Han Sifuentes, Lisa Vinebaum, Namita Gupta Wiggers
Inspiration
Vitamin T: Threads and Textiles in Contemporary Art by Phaidon Editors
True Colors: World Masters of Natural Dyes and Pigments by Keith Recker
Good Stuff to Follow
Parson MFA Textiles on Instagram!
Stitch Links
Brooklyn Lace Guild
Critical Craft Forum
The Center for Craft: Building a future for craft
“Nose-to-tail eating seems like a small contribution to the whole battle swirling around us, and the title [Odd Bits] aptly captures my slightly unbalanced feelings in the moment.” — Cathy Kauffman
Recommendation from Cathy Kauffman, Faculty, Food Studies Program
The cookbooks that I am enjoying in this moment are ones grounded soundly in tradition — this is not a time to experiment, but to return to old friends. Mastering the Art of French Cooking (Julia Child et al.) is a favorite. If I were hosting my usual eight for Easter dinner, I would be preparing Child’s luscious mushroom velouté, her classic navarin of lamb with carrots and turnips, and a traditional fruit tart; I will likely do only the navarin, as I’m cooking just for two. Nonetheless, there is something reassuring about playing her warbling voice in my mind as I read through her detailed recipes and remember the many times I have the served the mushroom velouté and a fruit tart to friends who must now remain distant.
I am also enjoying Carol Field’s Italy in Small Bites (HarperCollins 1993), which collects recipes for merende, small snacks found all over Italy. Field is a culinary anthropologist, interviewing restaurateurs, bakers, and nonnas to get their recipes (and she gives them all credit). My two favorites are for lightly sweetened, yeasted buns, one infused with currants and rosemary, the other with lemon zest and essence.
I am lucky enough to have access to a range of organ meats from a local farm — there is a two-and-a-half pound beef tongue (among other offal) in my freezer that will soon be treated to Jennifer McLagan’s slow and deliberate brining and poaching treatment from her marvelous Odd Bits (Penguin/Random House 2011). Nose-to-tail eating seems like a small contribution to the whole battle swirling around us, and the title aptly captures my slightly unbalanced feelings in the moment. McLagan’s recipes are clear updates on tradition that sacrifice nothing.
Recommendations from Preethi Gopinath, Director of the MFA in Textiles program and Associate Professor of Textiles
Websites and blogs that I recommend right now:
TextileArtist, Tomorrow is Always New, Pretty Fix blog, Row House Yarn Knitting (kits and lessons), and the Row House Yarn Blog.
The Maiwa School of Textiles’ Podcast Voices on Cloth
And the books:
Slow Stitch: Mindful and Contemplative Textile Art by Claire Wellesley-Smith, Stitch and Structure: Design and Technique in Two- and Three-Dimensional Textiles by Jean Draper, and, Textiles: The Whole Story by Beverly Gordon. Textiles: The Whole Story is not a craft book but a wonderful take on the history of textiles and their relationship to humans since the beginning of time!
Recommendation from Andrew Smith, Faculty, Food Studies program
I’m delighted to recommend the latest addition to my cookbook collection, Darra Goldstein’s Beyond the North Wind: Russia in Recipes and Lore (California: Ten Speed Press, 2020). It has great traditional recipes that I’ve never seen in previously published Russian/Soviet cookbooks. She gives historical introduction to recipes and helps put them into context. I love this cookbook!
Author’s note: If you’re interested in purchasing any of the books above, we hope you consider ordering through your local bookseller! We’ve linked each book to its respective website on IndieBound.com, for easy access in finding and supporting a bookstore near you.
With Earth Day approaching (Wednesday, April 22), next week’s book recommendations will focus on the environment. Have a recommendation for this series? Share it with us on Twitter @TheNewSchool.
