The first thing I remember... 

from my childhood is my mom reading Pippi Longstocking to me. My mom was a dreamer and a passionate reader and instilled in me the same desire to be transported to another world through a good story.

The first night I ever spent away from home was at summer writing camp. I was terrified at first to be alone until I realized I was surrounded by people who shared the same devotion to reading and writing as I did. These were my people, my tribe. At university, it seemed only natural to enroll as an English major because it meant I could read and write, read and write, read and write my way to a degree.

Culinary school and working as a chef made no sense... 

to my mom. She couldn't understand why I wasn't writing for a living since this was the only thing I ever wanted to do. But I love to cook as much as I love to write and once I wrote my first cookbook, it finally made sense to my mom, and to me.

I never feel like I'm working when I'm writing a cookbook, even though the process entails a ridiculous amount of work. Telling the stories of the people I meet, writing recipes inspired by the ingredients and cooking techniques I discover, and journeying to the planet's far flung places to taste something unusual and get a little lost conjures the magic readers and writers all know about, the white hot light sparked when you surrender to a good story.

Cookbooks and Other Recent Writing Work…

Chaat: Recipes From the Kitchens, Markets and Railways of India

Recipient of the IACP award for Culinary Travel in 2021.

The word chaat means “to lick” and these iconic Indian street food snacks are utterly lickable! There are thousand of chaats available throughout India; their tangy, sweet, sour and spicy flavor profiles a beloved staple in every corner of the country. Historically, a unique chaat was served at every Indian train. Chaat, co-written with chef Maneet Chauhan, explores India’s dizzying chaat culture through the lens of an epic train journey to every corner of this vast and extraordinary nation. The book was published by Clarkson Potter in the fall of 2020. The book was shortlisted for The Art of Eating Prize as the best food book of the year. It appeared in, among others, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Conde Nast Traveler, Food & Wine, The Guardian, Travel + Leisure, Bon Appetit, Wired, Salon, Saveur, Dallas Morning News, Boston Globe, TASTE, Imbibe, San Francisco Gate, and MSN. The American Library Association selected it as one of the twelve essential cookbooks for American libraries in 2020. It was listed as one of Amazon’s best cookbooks of 2020 and was nominated as a finalist for the IACP 2021 cookbook awards.

The Monastery Cookbook: Recipes and Stories From Monasteries, Temples, Mosques, and Synagogues Around the World

This is a passion project I've dreamt about writing for years. For the past few years, the photographer Kristin Teig and I traveled to nearly a dozen different countries to research and photograph the food traditions of monasteries, temples, mosques, and synagogues where many of our ancient recipes and cooking techniques were born. The book will be published by W.W. Norton in the fall of 2022.

I wrote a feature story inspired by the book entitled “Keepers of the Flame” for the January, 2021 issue of Food & Wine magazine.

Recipes and Stories From Ireland's Wild Atlantic Way

Years ago, when I was living in New York City and in need of wide open spaces, I met a man from Ireland at The Oxford Symposium on Food & Cookery. He was the head of Ireland's food tourism board and while I think he was joking when he told me I should move to Ireland to write about The Wild Atlantic Way, a coastal driving route spanning the entirety of Ireland's western coast, I took him up on it and spent two years living in the rural west while writing this book. 

I lived in a nearly three hundred year old stone house on the shore of Lough Mask (the best trout fishing lake in Europe, by the way) next door to a seventy year old Connemara sheep farmer named Tony on one side and Raychel on the other side, a chef who became one of my most beloved friends.

I could never get over the hike a few miles from my house that ended at the foot of Ashford Castle or the incredible food producers I met while I traversed the Wild Atlantic Way countless times for my research.

I still catch my breath when I visit or think about Ireland and I always will. It's bewitching mossy forests and tender-hearted people soften my heart and make my spirit feel gentle yet invincible. Tenacious and wise. 

The Hygge Life: Embracing the Nordic Art of Coziness

This is the second book I've written with the Icelandic chef (and my soul brother) Gunnar Karl Gislason, a person who embodies the hygge spirit of warmth and coziness from beard to toe. It was published by Ten Speed Press in 2017 and was profiled by Vogue, Food & Wine, The Detroit News, and The Time Picayune, among others. I was inspired through my research for the book and years of living and traveling extensively throughout Scandinavia to launch The Hygge Workshop in order to share with others the cozy art of hygge living.

North: The New Nordic Cuisine of Iceland

I first traveled to Iceland two weeks after the nation's 2008 economic collapse, long before the country became a coveted destination for travelers and even longer before it experienced the culinary Renaissance currently underway.

To be candid, the culinary scene in Iceland was dreadful during that first trip. I was there profiling chefs for Art Culinaire Magazine and was quickly losing hope.

The collapse was shuttering restaurant doors faster than I could profile them. It was a time when locals valued imports over their own pristine raw ingredients, when the traditions of yesterday were being forgotten, replaced by industrial techniques that left no room for the customs Icelanders had relied upon for millennia to survive. 

Thankfully, there was a bright light beaming from chef Gunnar Karl Gislason of Dill, the first restaurant in Iceland to earn a Michelin star. Gunnar was the last chef I profiled during that trip and was carrying a basket of freshly foraged angelica through a field when I saw him for the first time.

Hope was restored. 

Gunnar was on the cusp of virtually single-handedly revolutionizing the food scene in Iceland. He transformed the nation's culinary future by looking to the past for inspiration.

It was here that our story began. 

It's an ongoing adventure that's inspired me to visit Iceland over fifty times (and counting), drive around the country to meet its food producers countless times, and find inspiration again and again in a country of unparalleled beauty where good food now abounds thanks to Gunnar's vision and the conviction and courage of its food producers.

North, published in 2014, is our love letter to a nation that has become my second home and to the people who valiantly keep its food traditions alive.

I am so grateful to the cookbook editor Jenny Wapner at Ten Speed Press for believing in this book from the very beginning and to Noma's Rene Redzepi for penning the book's foreword. North won the IACP’s Judge’s Choice Award in 2015 and was featured on NPR’s America’s Test Kitchen, Andrew Zimmern, Food & Wine, and Lonely Planet, among others.

North opened a door in my life that will never close. It's the passageway to Iceland that I travel through again and again, whenever I'm in need of glacial wind on my face, a fierce and insistent beauty in my heart, whenever I need to dream wildly, whenever I need to feel brave. 

Fiery.

Fully alive. 

Cuba! Recipes and Stories From the Cuban Kitchen

Traveling to Cuba to meet and write about the nation's home cooks, farmers, chefs, and food producers was one of the highlights of my cooking and writing life. The book, which was published by Ten Speed Press in 2016, was co-written with the photographer Dan Goldberg whose gorgeous imagery populates the book and the extraordinary food and prop stylist  Andrea Kuhn. The book was featured in Bon Appetit, Food 52, Vogue and Publishers Weekly, among others.

Come In, We're Closed: An Invitation to Staff Meals at the World's Best Restaurants

My first book was co-written with fellow chef and author Christine Carroll, founder of CulinaryCorps. We met in New Orleans during culinary school where we traveled  as scholarship winners for Share Our Strength whose mission is to end childhood hunger in America through its No Kid Hungry campaign.

We were matched up as roommates during the event; little did we know that this fortuitous meeting would lead us to write our first cookbook about one of the restaurant traditions we most enjoyed as cooks, the family meal. It was one of the things I most looked forward to when I was cooking at Heston Blumenthal’s restaurant The Fat Duck in Bray, England

I traveled to 25 locations to research the book, Christine tested the recipes the chefs gave to us, and we wrote the manuscript together. My whirlwind adventure led me to restaurant kitchens throughout the world to profile family meals at some of the planet’s most celebrated dining destinations including Andoni Aduriz's Mugaritz, Sean Brock's McCrady's, Juan Mari and Elena Arzak's Arzak, Fergus Henderson's St. John, Michel Bras, Thomas Keller's Ad Hoc, and The Fat Duck.

The book was published by Running Press in 2012 and includes a foreword by Ferran Adria, who hosted a formidable staff meal of his own at el Bulli. It was nominated for a James Beard Award in the professional cooking category and was featured in, among others, NPR’s All Things Considered, Rachael Ray Magazine, The Kitchn. It was selected by The New York Times as one of the best holiday food gifts of 2012.

My story in the January 2021 issue of Food & Wine inspired by a cookbook I'm writing for W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. exploring the recipes and culinary traditions of temples, mosques, synagogues and monasteries around the world.

The story explores four location that left an indelible mark, the Zen Buddhist monastery of Eiheji in Japan, the Maronite Catholic monastery of Saint Anthony of Qozhaya in Lebanon, the Tibetan Buddhist monastery of Thikse in the Indian Himalayas and the Benedictine Catholic monastery of Keur Moussa in Senegal.

Thank you to four chefs I deeply admire Cortney Burns, Chef Pierre Thiam, Shinobu Namae and Ana Sortun for sharing your own stories of monastic inspiration and to Kristin Teig and Victor Protasio for your sublime imagery.