Kafka’s blogging
August 1st, 2007
We’ve made no secret of our love for Barbara Kafka, and we’re excited to see that she now has a blog. (Click on “BLOG” in left sidebar.)
A writer and teacher whose passion is food and cooking, Barbara’s won great crowds of fans for her clear, vivid prose and her battle-tested recipes. The best thing you can say about a recipe is that it works, and in our experience, Barbara’s recipes work.
Her book Vegetable Love won the 2006 IACP award for Best Single Subject Cookbook, and this past spring she received the James Beard Foundation lifetime achievement award. (She also wrote a beautiful, hilarious foreword to Beard’s Theory & Practice of Good Cooking. To have been a fly on the wall for some of their debates…)
Last December, Brys and I had the pleasure of spending a few hours with Barbara to talk about Cookthink. Always generous with her readers, she gave us three hours of frank criticism that snapped us out of our egregious recipe-ese. Barbara reminded us that seasonings can’t be “adjusted” and — in one of the more memorable moments we’ve had since starting Cookthink — that when choosing our words, we should always “think ‘fuck’, not ‘copulate.’”
August 1st, 2007 at 3:36 pm
Barbara Kafka has a blog
Barbara Kafka has made the move from her many wonderful cookbooks to the digital age - she’s started a blog. Her wonderfully pithy style is sure to be an advantage in the blogosphere!
August 1st, 2007 at 4:02 pm
I am so jealous that you spent three hours with Barbara Kafka! She’s one of my dream dinner companions.
August 3rd, 2007 at 11:00 am
[…] For the past couple of months, we’ve been writing recipes that highlight the clean, cool flavor of unadulterated summer vegetables: cold soups, simple salads, quick sautés. Yesterday afternoon, I was craving a contrast to all that — something rich and meaty roasted in the oven. I decided on chicken. (Looks like I’m not the only one craving chicken this time of year.) Chip’s post earlier in the week about our meeting with Barbara Kafka reminded me of her preference for high-heat roasting. In her book Roasting, Kafka suggests cranking the oven to 500 degrees for almost every dish. What a way to go — the intense heat of the oven gives just about anything you put in there a heady roasted flavor. […]
November 17th, 2007 at 5:03 pm
A LITTLE LATE…BUT MANY THANKS TO ALL. Keep on enjoying and cooking. Best Barbara