Notes & Recommendations ✏️

Here are this week's recommendations.

As I wrote last week, I’m taking time off from essays until after Labor Day to focus on assignments and book edits. Regardless, paid subscribers are still getting Friday recipes, and I’m still sending out notes and recommendations on Mondays.

My editor, the publicity team at Beacon Press, and I decided on a full title for my forthcoming book: Meatless: The Radical Cultures and Innovative Cooks That Have Shaped Plant-Based Eating. I sent over the paintings that have stuck in my head as possible cover inspiration. All that’s left is to do these edits.

I had this brief piece on jam come out in T: The New York Times Style Magazine, highlighting women pastry chefs in Atlanta, on Long Island, and in Providence, who all put a unique and personal spin on preserves.

The writer, translator, and critic Lily Meyer referenced this newsletter in her review of The Good-Enough Life at The Atlantic.

Friday’s From the Kitchen dispatch for paid subscribers will include a recipe for zucchini fritters that have a Long Island diner twist. See the recipe index for all recipes available to paid subscribers.

Grated tomato on sourdough toast topped with pickled aji dulce & dill.

Recommendations

1. In Search of Mycotopia by Doug Bierend provided really crucial background insight for a piece on mushrooms in Puerto Rico that I have coming out soon in Foreign Policy. If you want to understand the citizen science aspect of both foraging and cultivation (and honestly, read something that felt a lot like my forthcoming book!), this is the one.

2. Cooking With Mushrooms by Andrea Gentl is coming out in October and I highly recommend it—gorgeous photos. This cookbook feels like a really important moment for culinary mushrooms, as older cookbooks look and feel extremely hippie-dippy, frankly! This one is sexy.

3. In a collaboration of favorites, Dr. Julia Skinner of Root Kitchens was interviewed by Chloe at Sourced Journeys about her work on fermentation!