What sets Dianne apart isn't just her track record – it's her practical, no-nonsense approach to the business side of food writing. She's the person who tells you exactly what editors want to see, how to craft a pitch that gets attention, and when it actually makes sense to write a cookbook versus when it doesn't.

If you’re the type of person who likes to ask the chef at your favorite restaurant where she eats on her day off, then you’ll want to hear from Dianne about how she thinks about cookbooks. I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did.

-KT

Do you remember the first cookbook you bought? Do you still have it?

I have the first cookbook my mother purchased. Before that, she cut recipes out of newspapers or handwrote recipes by interviewing friends and family. It was for me and my sister, called Betty Crocker’s Cook Book for Boys and Girls. I still make the sugar cookies, especially if I am baking with kids. They include nutmeg and lemon zest, which seemed quite sophisticated.

What’s the cookbook in your collection that’s the most splattered on or falling apart from years of loving use?

A friend who knows I like to bake gave me a paperback cookbook from 1989 titled Brownies, Bars, & Biscotti. It is a modest book with simple recipes that work. My mother-in-law became obsessed with the Walnut Biscotti and requested that I make them for all holiday dinners. Until one day, when she announced that she wanted store-bought Pepperidge Farm cookies instead. I haven’t made them since, and that was probably at least a decade ago. The lemon bars are good too.

As a Canadian, I used to cook from books by Anne Lindsay, who sold millions of them. I interviewed her here.

And I have to put a word in for Peg Bracken in The Compleat I Hate to Cook Book, because it’s hilarious and never fails to crack me up. I wrote about it here.

What cookbook most influenced your own approach to writing about food?

I’m afraid that my food writing idol, when I first started out, was not a cookbook author but restaurant critic Jonathan Gold. I lived in Los Angeles and wrote restaurant reviews. I was so enamored of him that I was too scared to interview him for the first edition of Will Write for Food. I finally got to interview him for my blog.

The way I write about food now is to use it as a tool to tell a bigger emotional story about identity, family, and love. I love a moving personal essay, sometimes with a recipe at the end.

I don’t necessarily look to cookbooks for that kind of content, but recently, Potluck Desserts surprised me. I liked Justin Burke’s confessional storytelling and pride (literally!) in celebrating his family of choice with baked goods to share. It’s a baking cookbook, but not one I’ll soon forget because of the story behind it. Eric Kim’s Korean-American is beautifully written to honor Kim’s past and present.

What's a cookbook you think deserves more recognition, either for its recipes or its writing?

Carolyn Phillips wrote a scholarly and passionate 514-page cookbook about the 35 cuisines of China, called All Under Heaven. She says in the introduction that she only got to “just the tip of the iceberg!” Each region gets its own chapter. Her illustrations are stunning and appear throughout. There’s lots of engaging storytelling about how the recipes got their names and who was behind them. Many recipe methods contain technique-based tips for success that make clear that she has cooked every dish multiple times.

When are you most likely to use a cookbook in your own life? For everyday cooking, bigger projects, or just to curl up on a couch and read through?

All three. I cook almost every day. Every once and a while, there’s a project. For example, I decided to make elderflower syrup and doing so required a learning curve of reading recipes from different sources.

I also love to read cookbooks in bed, especially the ones with lots of storytelling and evocative photos other than hero shots. Pakistan from Maryam Jillani is a current example. (Disclosure: I worked with her on some early writing.) Give me any book by Yotam Ottolenghi.

When you’re using a cookbook, do you cook recipes as-written or do you tend to riff on them or use them as looser inspiration?

Both. If it’s something I’ve never made before and I feel intrigued to try it, I usually follow the recipe. Sometimes I combine or skip steps or ingredients because as a recipe editor, I know how to make the recipe simpler and faster. Other times I have a hankering for a specific dish, such as babaganoush, so I look up a few recipes and then wing it.

What trends in cookbooks are you seeing that you’re really excited about? Any that you don’t love and would be happy to see end?

I enjoy the gorgeous illustrated covers that have vibrant colors. They might also have embossed lettering or design, or pillow tops. Unfortunately, the interior designs are too similar: White pages with full-color photos and recipes on one page each. They seem interchangeable. In contrast, Molly Baz and Rick Martinez definitely have their own style.

Stories about having too much zucchini — from your garden, from your neighbor’s garden, dropped in the break room at work, or mysteriously left in your car during a break-in — are beyond cliché at this point. But clichés happen for a reason, and zucchini plants sure do like to GROW. So figuring out what to do with “all that zucchini” has just become part of summer.

For me, of course that means leaning on cookbooks, and there’s no shortage of answers to be found there. Zucchini can be raw and sliced in ribbons, gently poached in olive oil, grated in meatballs or dumplings or fritters, fried until deep golden and melting into a sauce, in bite-size chunks and stir-fried hot, shaved and layered in a Spanish tortilla, and so much more. It can be delicate, crisp and fresh, or nutty and rich and creamy. Baked into bread or munched on raw. Even with an over-abundance of zucchini, I feel like I’m just scratching the surface of the possibilities.

Olive oil-poached zucchini and raw tomatoes

from Canal House Cooks Every Day by Melissa Hamilton and Christopher Hirsheimer

I have cooked zucchini so many ways, but this is the first time I tried slow poaching in olive oil. I loved the outcome — the cherry tomatoes brought brightness, while the olive oil mellowed the zucchini while preserving some crispness, which was a nice touch. It won’t go down as my favorite method for cooking zucchini, but it’s a nice one to add to my repertoire, and honestly it’s tough to go wrong with these flavors.

Also, don’t worry about how much olive oil this uses: it’s great to re-use with just about anything, including this next pasta.

Fried zucchini pasta

from Tenderheart: A Book About Vegetables and Unbreakable Family Bonds by Hetty Lui McKinnon

I have a tough time putting together any roundup of recipes without including a Hetty McKinnon one. The zucchini in this recipe is basically the opposite of the Canal House salad above: it’s cooked and cooked and cooked. You fry it and then sauté it, and the result is heaven. I didn’t really stop to take nice pictures here, because pasta is meant to be eaten right away, but trust me: this is a recipe you need to make. The butteriness of the fried zucchini, the crunch of the pine nuts, the freshness of basil — it all comes together into something really special.

But also trust me on this: you need A LOT of zucchini. Don’t doubt the recipe! The pasta shown here used 7 pounds, so it’s a good thing it was on sale at my local co-op. If you have one, I recommend using the slicer attachment in your food processor to save time.

Peppery zucchini with whipped feta

from What Goes with What: 100 Recipes, 20 Charts, Endless Possibilities by Julia Turshen

I love a recipe that highlights pepper like the delicious spice that it is, and Julia Turshen’s peppery zucchini does just that. We served it alongside lamb kebabs on a rooftop in summer, so honestly we would have thought it was great no matter what, but really: it was great. (Buy a good pepper grinder! It’s worth it!)

Zucchini mutiya

from Amrikan: 125 Recipes from the Indian American Diaspora by Khushbu Shah

Another recipe that gets bonus points for being something I’ve definitely never tried before! Mutiya is a Gujarati street food made with chickpea flour, and Khushbu Shah’s version incorporates a pretty good quantity of grated zucchini. It was delicious served with some cilantro-mint chutney which I will admit was leftover from a takeout order from Spice Waala (if you’re in Seattle, you either already know and love Spice Waala, or you need to try it ASAP).

I’m a big fan of Amrikan: it so beautifully highlights the way Indian food mixes and blends with the cuisines around it in the diaspora. I’ve loved every recipe I’ve tried, but special shout-outs to the Cauliflower Manchurian, both egg curries, and the Malai broccoli.

Non-Cookbook Tip: Add zucchini strands to your noodles

First of all, let me make this clear: I refuse to call them “zoodles.” They are zucchini strands and they are NOT a replacement for noodles or pasta, they are their own delicious thing.

Now that that’s out of the way, I’m here to tell you that zucchini strands make a lovely addition to so many noodle dishes. As you can see above, I made Top Ramen with zucchini, topped with a drizzle of nice sesame oil, and I am not remotely ashamed of it (my first food memory is Top Ramen at daycare when I was maybe 3 or 4, and it remains a beloved comfort food for me). Last night, I threw a bunch of zucchini strands and julienned carrots into Kenji Lopez-Alt’s Sesame Noodles (minus the chicken, subbing cashew butter for peanut butter for my allergic brother-in-law) from The Wok. Served with a nice glass of Alsatian white (shout out to my other business, Little Thing Wine), it was a perfect meal for an extra-warm Seattle evening.

More zucchini, because it’s never enough

It may shock you to hear that this is not the only newsletter writing about zucchini at this time of year!! So let me include a nowhere-near-complete, but still-pretty-awesome, list of zucchini ideas from some favorite Substack writers:

1. The Dinner Plan by Maggie Hoffman: How to eat all the zucchini (and love it)

2. Keep Calm & Cook On by Julia Turshen: what do I do with all of this zucchini???

3. To Vegetables, With Love by Hetty Lui McKinnon: Cold spicy rice noodles with smashed zucchini

4. Modern Chinese Cook by Betty Liu: Miso Zucchini Mixed Rice

5. Stories from Catbird Cottage by Melina Hammer: Feta brine pasta salad

6. Saturday Table by Rita Kokshanian Mashkova: Lemon pepper zucchini bucatini

Jane, the founder of Eat Your Books and my fantastic coworker, also recommends the Arabic frittata with zucchini, peas, and leeks from Sami Tamimi’s new Boustany. I can’t wait to try it.

And if you’re looking for zucchini recipes in your own cookbooks, check out the newly released(!) CookShelf app: you can scan your cookbook barcodes and have a complete index of all your books in one place, so you can see every single zucchini recipe you have, even if it’s called “courgette” in the book.

Finally: I cannot promise I won’t be posting another zucchini post in a couple weeks. We’re nowhere near done with zucchini season.

Her upcoming book Linger (August 26 in Australia and New Zealand, October 7 in the US, UK and elsewhere) features 100 salad recipes plus desserts, bakes, entertaining menus and personal essays. As someone who loves to linger around a dinner table almost as much as I love cooking, I can’t wait to dive into this book in October. Preorders are open now in the US (if you’re in the US, check out the links at the bottom of this post for an awesome pre-order bonus), Australia, and UK.

I'm definitely a bit star-struck here, and so honored that Hetty agreed to share her thoughts on cookbooks with us! I hope you enjoy her essay as much as I did.

-KT

I didn’t grow up in a home with cookbooks. My mother cooked rabidly and constantly, and it was clear that food was a way for her to express her creativity, her independence and her love for her family, and perhaps most importantly, a tether to the home she left behind. Her knowledge of Cantonese food and flavors was immense but her culinary knowledge was gained from oral traditions and in her own words, “from watching” her elders.

My first experience of cookbooks came from the iconic Australian Women’s Weekly cookbooks. These inexpensive, thin paperback volumes are as classically Australian as Vegemite, each one themed by cuisine or occasion. I came across them at my local newsagent (a cross between a newsstand and stationery store selling newspapers, magazines, greeting cards, books, snacks and more), where I spent most of my pocket money as a teenager. I purchased the Middle Eastern edition, which featured dishes, spices and flavors which I’d never even heard of before. Cooking from that book was an adventure. I purchased some spices and lentils from my local supermarket and made mujadara (spelt megadarra in the book, I think), a dish that felt vaguely familiar because there was rice, but the lentils and caramelized onions were completely new to me. The book opened my eyes to what we can all learn from cookbooks – to understand a culture different to our own, to travel the world through flavor, to push ourselves out of our comfort zone. It also taught me that it is often good to feel uncomfortable by what we are seeing on the page – whether that be techniques, ingredients or flavors – because those are important learning moments.

It is The Australian Women’s Weekly Kid’s Birthday Cake cookbook which I count as one of my most treasured. I bought it to make a cake for my oldest child’s first birthday. The book is beloved in Australia, one of those which you’ll find in almost every household. The book is not about baking, but purely about decorating children’s-themed birthday cakes. In the weeks leading up to my daughter’s first birthday, I slaved over the instructions collecting the candy and supplies I would need to make ‘Ginger Neville’, the orange cat. The book recommends using box cake but I made a chocolate sour cream cake, which I decorated in lashings of orange buttercream. Licorice was used for the whiskers and to outline the eyes and mouth, blue jellybean for the eyeballs. After weeks of planning, Ginger Neville came to life and she was worth all the effort. I’m not sure my daughter was that impressed, but I was thrilled with my efforts. That book became my lifeline over the next decade and more, the source of inspiration for many of the birthday cakes I made for my three children.

I love cookbooks for different reasons. One of the things that really draws me to cookbooks is the design and photography. Art direction is such an essential part of the cookbook’s story, a way to establish a sense and place for the book. When it comes to design, the book I come back to again and again is Breakfast, Lunch, Tea by Rose Carrarini. It is one of the first cookbooks I bought when I became interested in cooking and for me, it ticks all the boxes of what a great cookbook should – story-driven, comforting, inviting, and human. The layout is very simple, and that minimalism works with the design which is really carried by reportage style photography of Toby Glanville. Glanville’s point of view is so unique – as someone who has also worked in portraiture and documentary, his photos bring an intimacy to the book. It almost feels like a ‘day in the life of’ Rose Bakery. In this same genre, I’d add a cookbook called Atelier September which is from a café in Copenhagen, which I visited a couple of years ago. The cookbook is published by the indie publishers Apartamento and it is such a special production – it is oversized, with gorgeous art direction, lots of negative space in the design, and a very strong sense of place.

The other big draw for me is writing. I love a cookbook I can get lost in, to be satiated and comforted by both the food and the words. No one brings more romance to food writing than Nigella Lawson. Her books would be my desert island picks. Her writing transports me. Her recipes are just as captivating. It is hard to choose which book of hers I love the most, and my answer changes constantly, but today I will say Cook, Eat, Repeat because her brilliant essay about ‘brown food’ is on my mind. I also love the sandwich loaf recipe in that book. Alongside Nigella, my other food writing hero is Diana Henry, who has such a vivid way of bringing contrast and nuance to her descriptions of food, places and people. I started collecting her writing and recipes when I lived in London 20 years ago – I would clip her recipes from the Telegraph and paste them into a scrapbook. I love all her books but How To Eat A Peach, her book about menus, is one that I pick up constantly, maybe because I love the furry cover (to mimic peach skin, of course).

I don’t have time to cook a lot from cookbooks nowadays. That is because most of the time, I am cooking dishes from my own personal repertoire, which happens to be the recipes in my books! But if I am to dive into a cookbook, I will pick up Sebze by Özlem Warren. It is full of vegetarian Turkish recipes and it’s full of the flavors and food I want to eat. So many vegetable filled recipes which honestly remind me of the Turkish food we have in Sydney. I also adore Rachel Roddy’s A-Z of Pasta. I love the way she writes recipes, so pared back and succinct. Often when I’m lacking inspiration, I will turn to that book. Her fava bean paccheri and pasta with lentils are two family faves.

I’m not a huge baker so I’m all about simplicity and recipes that I know are 100% going to work. Lately, these two have not let me down – Fat & Flour by Nicole Rucker and Sift by Nicola Lamb.

The cookbook I wish I’d written? The Vegan Chinese Kitchen by Hannah Che has provided context to so many of the dishes I grew up eating. When you grow up only knowing the names of foods in another language, it is difficult to translate these foods to our Western upbringing and vernacular. I love that Hannah has brought so many of these dishes to life for me, so I now have a point of reference for them.

As someone who deeply loves the art and tradition of cookbooks, coming up with a list of ‘favorites’ is very difficult, a near impossible task. So, whenever I am asked this question, I try to give myself the freedom and grace to offer the books that are speaking to me, at this moment. This is my list of ‘favorites’ today, but tomorrow, it might be something completely different. That is the beauty of a good cookbook, they evolve and grow with us as we get older, as our palate changes, as we discover new cravings.

If you’re in the US, you should also check out the super cool preorder bonus Hetty is running in partnership with independent cookbook stores!

Participating stores:
Book Larder / Now Serving / Kitchen Arts and Letters / Archestratus / Bold Fork Books / Vivienne Culinary / Read It & Eat / Omnivore Books on Food / Binding Agents

If you're into baking, you need no introduction for Rose Levy Beranbaum. She's an absolute legend: author of The Cake Bible, six-time James Beard Award winner, and newly inducted member of the James Beard Cookbook Hall of Fame. The Washington Post called her "the Diva of Desserts" – someone so obsessed with baking perfection that "if God is in the details, as the aphorism goes, then Beranbaum must have one foot in heaven."

Rose has published fourteen books including her complete "Bible" series: The Cake Bible, The Pie and Pastry Bible, The Bread Bible, The Baking Bible, and The Cookie Bible. Her most recent project was The Cake Bible 35th Anniversary Edition in 2024. She also pioneered the reverse creaming technique that revolutionized cake-making, and her blog Real Baking with Rose has been answering bakers' questions since 2005.

Rose is indisputably one of the most influential bakers of the last century. So we wanted to know: who influences Rose? what cookbooks does she love?

(Also, you’re going to want to read to the end! Rose drops an exciting bit of news on what she’s working on now!)

In Rose’s Words:

My collection of more than 1,500 cookbooks goes back a long way, and I am currently choosing and packing most of them to donate to the Cambridge Culinary School Library, where they will be used actively by the students. The process is a little painful, akin to parting with old friends, but at the same time enjoyable to become reacquainted with them and view the progression and trends of over 60 years of cookbooks.

My very first cookbook was a paperback by James Beard (The James Beard Cookbook). The second was The Joy of Cooking. I have every cookbook Maida Heatter wrote and many of Julia Child’s and Jacques Pepin’s, especially La Méthode and La Technique, which I used for teaching my hors d’oeuvre class when I had the Cordon Rose Cooking School. Other books I turn to are Jean Anderson’s Doubleday Cookbook, Peter Reinhart’s The Bread Baker’s Apprentice, Marcella Hazan’s Essentials of Italian Cooking, and Madhur Jaffrey’s Indian Cookery. These cookbooks are among the ones I am keeping in addition to many others that were signed by the authors.

When I wrote The Cake Bible, published in 1988, cookbooks had a very small presence in bookstore sections. Over the years they have expanded significantly. My book was the first that gave weights in addition to volume. Now, almost all baking books have weights and a new book Bread, by Richard Hart, has only gram weights and no volume at all!

Harold McGee's On Food and Cooking, is one of my most treasured books which I am keeping. My late husband once told me that one can’t be considered a professional without understanding the composition of the ingredients used. It also serves to enable one to create new recipes. It occurred to me one day that the word author stems from authority and I looked up the definition: “Authority is the official permission or right to act, often on behalf of another. It can also mean being an authority on a subject: Being an authority on a subject means possessing deep and extensive knowledge, expertise, and influence in a specific field, enabling one to offer informed opinions, guidance, and leadership. An authority is typically recognized by their peers and the broader community as a reliable source of information and insights.”

Books by authors which are considered to be “scientific” are the ones I refer to the most often. Shirley Corriher’s Cookwise and Bakewise are two such examples. More recent ones are Sift by Nicola Lamb, and The Elements of Baking by Katarina Cermelj. King Arthur cookbooks are also among my most trusted. One of my most admired authors who seamlessly marries science and amazing cooking is Nik Sharma. Four other authors I admire greatly are Erin Jeanne McDowell, Zoë François, Sarah Kieffer, and Claire Saffitz, who not only have a deep understanding of how baking works, but also a great originality and sense of design. And as an appreciator of inspired writing in addition to baking, David Lebovitz is one of the leaders of the pack! Another gifted writer is Marissa Rothkopf Bates, whose first book The Secret Life of Chocolate Chip Cookies just launched and I so enjoy her writing and recipes that I wrote the foreword to this book. I love Joanne Chang’s books so much I contributed my new favorite chocolate cookie to her upcoming one! And speaking of wonderful writers and bakers, Helen Goh has a new book that just launched in the UK and will launch in the US in October, Baking & The Meaning of Life, and I can’t wait to see it! I’m also looking forward to seeing Dorie Greenspan’s upcoming Dorie’s Anytime Cakes that is graced by the most beautiful color illustrations. This could be a trend—my upcoming memoir, which will be titled Ma Vie en Rose, will have an oil painting of me on the cover instead of a photo!

There are many other promising and talented authors out there but having been buried for three years working on The Cake Bible 35^th Anniversary Edition I have not had the chance to explore their books.

I thought a lot about what a first post for the CookShelf newsletter should be. Not in a good way — in a spinning, overthinking way. Should I tell my cooking story, or write an essay about why cooking from cookbooks is worth your time?

In the end, I figured it was better to just jump right in. Bits and pieces of my story and my opinions about cookbooks will be scattered throughout this newsletter in time, and that’s enough of that. You can read a bit more about the plans for this newsletter on our About page. The tl;dr is: sometimes (like this time!) I’ll write about ingredients I love and recipes that feature them, and sometimes we’ll have guest cookbook authors or Substack recipe creators come and tell us about the cookbooks they love. I’m excited to highlight new and trending cookbooks, but also the older classics or hidden gems that influenced many of us along the way.

(One last disclaimer before I jump in: All the same reasons that made me start this newsletter — a love of cookbooks and a desire to use them more — also made me decide to build an app for searching your cookbooks. So while this newsletter is *not* intended to just be an ad for the CookShelf app, if you are interested you can learn more and sign up to try the beta app here.)

That said… let’s talk about snap peas!!

Snap peas are one of those things, like strawberries and tomatoes, where quality and freshness really do matter. Not to say I don’t sometimes also love a snap pea from Safeway in November — but we have to acknowledge it’s a totally different (inferior) thing. A great snap pea is sweet, crisp, and has thick juicy walls (do we call them walls? shells? I don’t know, but I think you know what I mean) and tender peas inside. It’s a thing of beauty all by itself.

It’s also pretty great in a million other (not-all-by-itself) preparations. So let’s dive into the snap pea series: what I’ve been cooking since snap peas first hit the farmer’s market in May. And don’t worry, they’re at their peak all through July in many places, including here in Seattle.

Miso-maple sugar snap pea, turnip and strawberry salad

from Tenderheart by Hetty McKinnon

Hetty McKinnon is a bit of a hero for me. Every one of her recipes is something I’d be delighted to eat at a restaurant, while somehow also being approachable to make at home, often on a weeknight. This salad is one of those unexpected yet unpretentious combinations — though maybe it shouldn’t be unexpected, given how it brings together these perfect elements of June: snap peas, salad turnips, strawberries, mint. I’m not a big quinoa person — too often it feels to me like diet food or something — but this dish makes me think maybe I’m missing out. It’s hearty, it’s fresh, it’s wholesome, and that miso-maple dressing makes you keep wanting to take another bite. I loved it with a little crumbled feta as well, which turns it from not-quite-enough-for-dinner (for me) to a perfect dinner.

Sugar snap peas with pickled cherries and peanuts

from Six Seasons by Joshua McFaddon

Six Seasons is a book that promises and delivers on hyper-seasonality, and snap peas and cherries are, in fact, both perfect at the same time. Joshua McFadden lists this as “spring,” though at least in the Pacific Northwest I find that both of these don’t even really start until June, and are excellent through most of July, so it’s a bit of a crossover season. I had never thought to put cherries and snap peas together — and certainly would not have thought to add peanuts and basil. (I’m not sure why, but I seem to only put peanuts in Southeast Asian food. This seems like a mistake.) For our mildly-allergic-to-peanuts friend, we also had a bowl with Marcona almonds, and I can confirm it was at least as good. It goes perfectly with lamb or pork chops on the grill.

Lemon farfalle with spring pea ragu

from Flour + Water by Thomas McNaughton

Let me be clear: this is not a weeknight recipe. I know this definitively because I made it on a weeknight, and my children did not go to bed at their assigned bedtime or even very close. But we all had a great time and a great meal. And that is the type of night this is for: when you’re in the mood to take on a project, and ideally have a few pairs of hands for rolling and folding pasta, prepping snap peas, etc.

Because this recipe is definitely a project. You shell the English peas, take the strings out of the snap peas, blanch some spinach and peas, make a pea and parmigiano broth, use some of that broth and blanched veggies to make a pea puree. Oh yeah, and you also make the pasta dough with some very finely chopped parsley and lemon zest, roll it out, cut into little squares, and fold each into butterflies (or bowties, if you prefer). It’s a lot. But if you’re in the mood, it’s also really fun, and the payoff is there: it’s the brightest, springiest (or early summeriest, most elegant pasta. It’s a real celebration of season.

Sugar snap pea and new potato salad with crumbled egg and sardines

from Six Seasons by Joshua McFadden

This is a second dish from Six Seasons, yes, but he does have a whole section on Snap Peas so I couldn’t really help it. This one did not photograph so well (food styling/photography are skills, where, shall we say, I’m early in my learning journey), but wow was it GOOD. I love sardines, and I’m not sure why I feel compelled to say this, but I also loved sardines before tinned fish was Cool Girl cool. The way the sardines mash up with the egg and potato and bright spots of mint and snap peas was so satisfying — another meal that feels light and fresh, but also is plenty hearty to be in a meal in itself.

Sugar snap pea-infused Plymouth gin

from Death & Co by Nick Fauchald, Alex Day, and David Kaplan

I love a brightly vegetal flavor in a gin drink, and so when I saw that Death & Co. had a recipe for snap pea gin I had to give it a shot. It’s Plymouth gin mixed with chopped snap peas (I actually used a stick blender for a couple pulses to “chop” them, and was happy with the outcome) for a few hours, and strained.

Death & Co. has one recipe featuring this gin, called Tenement Yard, but it has orgeat, which I was out of. So the first drink I tried with this was a concoction with plenty of lemon juice, some BraVo Douglas Fir Liqueur, and some Dolin Blanc vermouth. It was pretty delicious. Later that week I went for a classic martini with a twist, but subbing in this gin, which gave it a subtly sweet “green” flavor. I’m into it, but I think next time I’d like the snap peas stay in the gin longer for an even more pronounced flavor.

Le Grand Aïoli (a.k.a. Aïoli, petit to monstre)

from Le Sud by Rebekah Peppler

I recently went to Southern France — Le Sud itself! At least half the trip was inspired by Rebekah Peppler’s A+ travel recs Substack, Shortlisted. One of the most revelatory dishes on that trip was something like this one, served right on the rocky shoreline looking over the Mediterranean (one of Rebekah’s recs, Tuba Club). Just a veggie platter. But the veggies! They were so perfect! And, crucially, many/most of them were blanched and chilled. Why do we insist that a veggie platter must be raw?? I never thought about this deeply before and now I think about it too much.

Anyway, the above is not something you really need a recipe for: Mix the raw (radicchio, radish), and the lightly blanched vegetables to just crisp-tender (snap peas, of course, and green peans and asparagus), and pair with a big bowl of aioli (mine has chive blossoms on the top, because chives were blooming so why not).

The inspiration here was Rebekah Peppler twice over — first the restaurant she recommended in her newsletter, and then her gorgeous book Le Sud. If you want to travel to Southern France without the actually going anywhere, just leaf through this book, make a big bowl of garlicky aioli, blanch some veggies, and enjoy with a glass of rosé.

Bonus: Orecchiette with bacon, snap peas, and ricotta

from Cook This Book by Molly Baz

I was going to be all done with the snap pea recipes, but I just happened to have exactly all the ingredients for this one: fresh orecchiette (impulse purchased at my local co-op which I love), the precise right amount of snap peas and bacon, and some high-quality ricotta. It’s cheesy, peppery, rich with bacon, and the snap peas offer a nice crunch and freshness. The only thing I’d do differently myself is probably double the snap peas — a matter of taste for sure, but as established, I do love snap peas.