My Kitchen Year

Starred review from July 6, 2015
When the doors closed at Gourmet magazine in 2009, editor-in-chief Reichl comes to terms with her professional upheaval by plunging herself into her greatest pleasure—cooking. Reichl gets reacquainted with her kitchen and the joy of cooking for herself and others. The year of healing and rediscovery journaled in this cookbook reveals the simple pleasures that the former New York Times restaurant critic and James Beard Award–winner recaptures when she steps back into her home kitchen, where it all started. Her recipes, introduced by haiku-like images of smells, tastes, sounds, and cityscape, read like kitchen conversations and have an inviting, informal cook-along-with-Ruth tone. The recipes are arranged by season and include comforting dishes such as roasted tomato soup, corn pudding, fried chicken, grilled cheese with leeks, and hamburgers on potato buns. There’s plenty of international fare: pastas, lemony hummus, Yanghuo-style dumplings, spicy Korean shrimp, and vegetable rice sticks. The dishes are clearly fun and uplifting for Reichl, and the unexpected shift from culinary guru to happy home cook chases her blues away. Reichl reminds readers that getting lost in a recipe can be excellent therapy. Agent: Kathy Robbins, Robbins Office.

Starred review from September 1, 2015
For seven decades, Gourmet magazine dominated its market, the go-to source for worldwide food and travel. Then the Internet revolution brought it down, and the audience it had cultivated turned to snappier graphics, less magisterial cooking advice, and casually entertaining food television. Reichl came to the magazine after establishing a national reputation as restaurant critic for the New York Times. Despite Reichl's efforts to expand Gourmet's reach, the publisher abruptly terminated what had become an institution. Reichl took the magazine's demise personally. While recounting stressful, depressing activities surrounding the shutdown of operations, Reichl offers seasonally ordered recipes she prepared during those very dark days as she contemplated her future. Some dishes are as simple as sticks of raw Japanese yam; short ribs demand three days. Most can be quickly brought to table from pantry ingredients. Gourmet has folded, but not Reichl. Let's hope this is not her last book. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Reichl has written some classics in food literature, including Tender at the Bone (1998); therefore, much attention will be accorded her latest book.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)

April 15, 2015

Reichl wrote her first cookbook at 21 and was restaurant critic of both the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times, then served as Gourmet's editor in chief for ten years. When that magazine suddenly folded, she sought solace by heading to her country home with her husband and spending a year rediscovering the kitchen comforts. Here's what she cooked; with a 100,000-copy first printing and a ten-city tour.

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