In episode 84, we talked about the lack of cookbook criticism. Today, we'll revisit the topic with someone writing and publishing cookbook reviews on her website, Cooks Without Borders. Welcome to Everything Cook Books, the podcast for writers, readers, and cooks. I am Molly Stevens, and today I am here with Kate Lehi. Hello, Kate. Hey, Molly. One of the things I love about having so many episodes, you know, well, I both love and also, I want to go back and like finish conversations or revisit a conversation because I have more thoughts on it, and that must happen to you. Oh, absolutely. Sometimes as soon as you stop recording, you're like, "Ah, no, I have to make a great thing." I should have said that. I don't want to say. Yeah, well, after we did episode 84, where we talked about cookbook reviews. The lack of cookbook reviews, right? Yeah, there's just not a lot of them out there. We heard from someone who reviews cookbooks. Leslie Brenner reached out to us and said that actually she does write cookbook reviews and publishes them on her website. And so we've gone back and forth and sort of carried on this conversation. And so today we thought it'd be really fun to bring Leslie on and talk to her. It's great because she's not only reviewed cookbooks, like she's an experienced reviewer of all things, especially like coming from restaurants. You know, so I think there's a lot all of us can learn about what goes into a really good cookbook review and why we should create them as authors to help us get better. Yeah. She brings a wealth of knowledge of the food industry. As you said, diverse vantage points. She has worked as a restaurant critic, a journalist, an editor, writer, publisher, restaurant consultant, entrepreneur, all the things, all the things, and then some. She has authored six books from nonfiction to fiction. She's won too many awards to list and she is the founder and publisher of Cooks Without Borders, which is the website that I mentioned that goes deep into the story behind food and food culture and where you'll find her cookbook reviews. So let's get to Leslie. Well, Leslie Brenner, welcome to Everything Cookbooks. Thank you so much. I'm so happy to be here with you. Well, I feel like it's been a long time getting to this point. You say something on your website about how you love to geek out or this is for people who geek out about cookbooks and it's like, that's for your people. Yeah, yes, here. But we're going to start a little bit at the beginning as we like to. You have written in so many genres across your career, so many genres in the food and wine space. So what came first for you, the writing or the cooking? Oh, you know, I've never been asked that before, which is so funny. I guess the cooking came first because when I was in high school, I used to cut school with my best friend and we didn't go out and do wild things. We stayed home and cooked. Wow. But I was kind of a latchkey kid and so that was kind of thrilling for me. I went to a sort of awful public school in the San Fernando Valley in Southern California and was not into writing at all at the point. Yeah, I think the first time I wrote in any serious kind of way was once I got to college and realized that I could kind of write. The cooking proceeded, but the writing kind of quickly caught up because as an undergraduate, after trying out a hundred different majors, including art history, religious studies, international relations, I wound up as an English major, which was American and English lit. And then I completed all those requirements and then I did creative writing. Wow. And you ended up getting your MFA as well, right? I did. I did a few years later as a young adult. I went to New York and did the MFA program at Columbia. My mind is like racing in the direction of those childhood of you and your best friend. I had a similar best friend and we, I mean, to this day, we still make egg salad sandwich according to the way we did it when we were in high school. Oh my god. But it also makes me think of a lot of your writing is so tied to food memory and where these recipes come from, not just for yourself, but for the people you talk about on Cooks Without Borders, your website. And that sparks a lot when I'm thinking about how you shape those food memories so early on, how they were tied to this time. Speaking of Cooks Without Borders, what made you decide to start this website, what, in 2015? Yeah, I launched it in very late. Well, I guess I started writing the posts in late 2015 and then actually launched it in 2016. But what made me do it was a couple things. One was that I was working in journalism and at the time I was restaurant critic at the Dallas Morning News, which was a post I had already held for a bunch of years. I felt that I had hit a glass ceiling as a journalist. And even if I could move around at the paper, I was at, you know, they wouldn't let me move out of food because they liked what I was doing. So I was at the top of the pay thing and I just, I couldn't do anything else. So there was the fact that the newspaper business was really falling apart. And I thought, you know, I just want to create something that for me will be almost like an insurance policy and not a financial one as much as something for me to do if I have to exit this, just something that can be my own. So that was really important to me. And then Donald Trump came down that escalator and, you know, announced that he wanted to put a big wall between the United States and Mexico. And I thought, I think that's the opposite of what we should do. I think that tearing down walls and borders is actually a better way to harmony in the world. And that's how the idea for cooks without borders was born. I thought, okay, that's what it has to be. Well, that explains the icon. I was looking at your logo earlier. It's a great logo with the line drawings, but there's a little globe in the first oh, right? Yeah. And the funny thing about that logo and also the design of the site, that best friend of mine from high school who I cut school to cook with is the designer of cooks without borders. She did the logo. She designed the site. She's my design partner. So we're still like super, super close and it has been incredible to work with her. That's really amazing. I love these stories of like friendship. You know, you stay friends for so long. I feel like right now we're in like this time of like people are talking about loneliness. And it just makes those like long term friendships even more valuable. But so you have cooks without borders. And at first, are you just kind of tinkering it? You're still at the Dallas morning news, but you're sort of building out cooks without borders. What happened next? Well, before I left, it was actually really interesting what happened. I was reporting to an editor. We did not have a great relationship. She only wanted me writing restaurant stories. She didn't want me writing any cooking stories. She was in charge of both coverage areas. It was frustrating to me because I love cooking. And as a restaurant critic, you know, I was dining out five or six nights a week and I just really missed cooking. So that was part of the impetus as well. Soon after I launched cooks without borders, she took a buyout. I got a new editor who I loved. I had worked with him before. And he actually was assigning me cooking stories for a magazine he had been running through the paper. And he said, Oh my God, you launched this website. Can we collaborate? You can do cooking stories for the paper. And then we'll link back to recipes that cooks without borders. So it was really fantastic. And it really helped me build, you know, a readership for the site. And then when I, you know, when I left the paper in 2017, they wanted me to continue doing those those stories now and then. So that was pretty great as well. We want to talk to you, especially about the cookbook reviewing part of cooks without borders. But before we dive into that, maybe you could explain a little bit for people who may not be familiar with the site because just what you're talking about there, this sort of how you would describe like this site and what made me think of it is you're talking about the newspaper coverage. Like they want restaurants and you want to write about cooking. And there's all these different aspects of writing about food and culture and how they sometimes weave together and sometimes don't just wear as cooks without borders on that spectrum. I would describe cooks without borders as an international cooking destination. It's really not about restaurants at all. I might mention one now and again, but really not very often. It's really focused on home cooks and home cooking around the world. Cookbook reviews are a big part of it. But it's basically stories and recipes coming out of those stories. Sometimes the recipes come out of a cookbook review. Sometimes the recipes come out of my own exploration of a particular cuisine or just some ingredient that I'm fascinated by at the moment. I'm so interested about just like being a restaurant critic. That world is so well, it's so intense. There's a lot of responsibility that goes with it. Then you end up knowing all the players in this very specific way in the city. And then when it comes to cookbook reviewing, I'm curious to know if there's any similarities or if they're just completely vastly different from each other. Well, the similarity is this. You do get to know all the players in a community when you're a restaurant critic. But when I took the job as restaurant critic at the Dallas Morning News, that had been after years of saying, "I would never, ever, ever, ever, ever be a restaurant critic." Really? Yes. And you were coming from the LA Times, right? I was. I was. Where you were covering what we're talking cooking more than restaurants. I was covering everything. Everything. I was a section editor. And that was a position I loved because I got to edit, which I love. But I also got to write just whenever I felt like it and didn't have to if I didn't feel like it. Sounds like a dream job. It was. I never would have left it, but the paper imploded. I also would write what we called secondary reviews, you know, sort of more under the radar places. That was an amazing time in LA for that kind of coverage and covering the not glitzy places was super fun. So I had a lot of experience. I knew what the job was. And I knew what the pressure of a weekly review was. And the pressure of eating like that and what it does to your body is really harsh. And recently, Pete Wells wrote about it and a few other exiting critics have written about how difficult that is. But so I knew that going in. My reviews tended to be really funny there or attempted to be. And I think they landed pretty well. But you know, and then I get all these letters saying, Oh my God, you should be like, you know what? It's really easy to do that three times a year. It is nearly impossible to do that 50 times a year. So I always said I'll never be a restaurant critic. And then, you know, the economy imploded in 2008. And then the Association of Food Journalists had just given us a first place prize for our section coverage after I was laid off. And I wrote them a note saying how much it meant to me. And I wouldn't be able to be at the award ceremony in the year, but thanking them. And they and they said, Well, you know, we love your note. Can we publish it in our next newsletter? So then I met home unemployed. And I read the newsletter, you know, with my note reprinted. And the next item is the Dallas Morning News is looking for a restaurant critic. Wow. So I like quickly shot off my resume. Suddenly, being a restaurant critic sounded wonderful. Wow. But I thought I can only do that. That is a job that nobody should have more than five years. And that was my plan. And I really wanted to leave the paper and become a restaurant consultant. But it was it was very difficult mainly for reasons of journalistic ethics. When I've thought about what it takes to write great restaurant reviews, it does take a toll on your body. You have to eat food that you're not necessarily craving. You're just eating it because you need to see if like this will help the broader audience think about this, this restaurant. Maybe this will be to their taste. It's not about your personal taste. It's objectively looking at the restaurant. And if they're executing certain things really well, is it worth the, you know, somebody to come in and dine there? And what they might experience. So you're not putting yourself first. I don't think people always understand that. And I do think there might be a tie here too, because when you're cooking from cookbooks, sometimes if you're thinking about a review, you might have to pick recipes that you're like, this is probably a really important recipe for this book. It's not one that I would necessarily want to make for myself, but I've got to have to make the difference is like you're cooking at home. It's just naturally sort of more relaxed, healthier. You're doing it on your own pace rather than having this deadline, having to eat at this restaurant three times this week just so you can get all the notes, all that. I would be exhausted. I mean, five years, I could do it. I don't think I could do it one year. But you're also developing a critical, an ability to look at something. I mean, Kate, I think you're getting exactly two that you've developed a critical eye, an ability to see something, not just through your own. Obviously, you have to have a very developed sense of your own, but how this will appeal to everybody, which is not something I don't think everybody innately has, and to be as objective. I mean, it's objective, subjective. We could discuss the finer points of that, but this ability to sort of put it into a context, to put it into a greater cultural context, like, where does this restaurant belong, or how does this cookbook fit into the genre? What's it contributing, that type of thing? Yeah, a couple things about that. I think these are all really, really great points. And it kind of gets back to something that I learned in my MFA program. And for that, we wrote book reviews. One of the classes was book review writing. My big lesson in that course was, what are the author's intentions? Really thinking about that. Has the author expressed what they want to express? Also, when you write a review, you want to give a vicarious experience to the reader without giving too much away, when it's a book. But you want to give them the sense of what it's like to read the book without giving away the whole plot. And so I brought that to restaurant criticism, because I think there's an exact parallel there. So what's the restaurant tour, or chef's intention? Are they expressing that? Is the restaurant a full expression of what seems to be that intention? And also, really importantly, providing a vicarious experience for the reader. Because while some of our readers would be going to the restaurant I was reviewing or not, depending on how positive the review was, probably most of them wouldn't at all. But I wanted to give them the experience of being in the restaurant and a fun vicarious experience at that. So that's why it's a difficult writing assignment week after week after week. You have to give without being boring and using the same expressions over and over again. And how many times can you say delicious? Like, okay, stop. You know, what is it like? And so one other thing about reviewing restaurants and knowing all the players is at some point it became very difficult psychically for me to always be the guy who was telling them what they weren't doing as well as they could. I always tried to be really constructive in my criticism. But still, it's really psychically hard to be that guy. And that is exactly the problem that I'm having with cookbook reviews. Because when I started doing this, it was really important to me not to be that guy. So I only wanted to write positive reviews. That means I'm only any reviewer you read on cooks without borders is at least generally a recommendation. I might take issue with certain things or point out areas where I felt the book could be stronger. But generally, it's a strong recommendation. And now I feel like I'm at a really difficult point that has really affected my ability to write the reviews because I feel like there are so many lousy cookbooks being published even by really good writers and really good cooks that like if it's only going to be positive, I have very little to review. Wow. I mean, this conversation is blowing my mind. I think there's so many things to take away. One is an MFA program giving you sort of this foundation for writing reviews. The idea of a reader reading a review to sort of live vicariously, say, if this book is for them or if this restaurant is for them. Or even if they don't go to that restaurant kind of feeling like they've been there, that they've felt something there, that it's entertainment too because you have to draw them in. They got to read the whole review. It's really hard to write a captivating review. So you're not going to write a book report. You're not going to write like a boring sort of, "I went to this restaurant and this was good and this wasn't. Thigh." It's a lot you're doing behind the scenes, I think, to make it captivating. Yeah. I also think that there's a place for these reviews, criticism, and whether we're talking restaurants or cookbooks, you can read them just to find out where we are culturally. Yeah. What's happening in cookbooks? I'm going to read cookbook reviews just to find out what's happening in the cookbook world. What's going on? We talked about this back in our episode 84, that cookbook authors can learn a lot from reading cookbook reviews. The trouble is, as we pointed out in our earlier discussion, there's not a lot of it being done. So I'm curious, Leslie, when you started Cooks Without Borders, did you know that cookbook reviewing would be a part of it? I did. Cookbook reviewing was a huge important part of our coverage when I was at the LA Times. And I got into some serious trouble for a few cookbook reviews that I did. Can you talk about it either? Yeah. One of them was Anthony Bourdain. He did not like to be criticized. I wrote what I thought was a pretty funny review of his first cookbook. I didn't like it and spent the next, you know, many, many years attacking me publicly because of it. Wow. Another example was Ludovic Lefebvre, who I also wrote a pretty humorous and tough review of his first cookbook, Crave. He, on the other hand, had a great sense of humor about it and asked me to blurb his, when he, you know, published his second edition and like really was so gracious. But Molly, I love what you just said about the context because it's something that I really, I always kept that in mind as a restaurant critic. And that felt like very much a part of my mission at that point was putting these restaurants in a cultural context. And I feel like sometimes I forget to do it as a cookbook reviewer. And I'm so, I'm really glad that you said that because it's just a really good reminder of like, yes, this is a thing that I can do. So thank you. What's fun to have just been thinking about criticism. And we, you know, I remember reading criticism when I was in college and graduate school. And we were reading it for more than just what the subject was. We were reading it to learn how to come at the world with a critical eye, how to figure things out for ourselves, how to make, you know, value decisions based on what we're seeing in front of us. You know, I struggle with it all the time. It's like, especially in today's world, like, do I like something because everybody likes it? Or do I like it because I actually like it? You know, I mean, we've all gone to art museum and stood there and been like, I don't know. And there's kind of kind of wonderful, you know, to develop that ability within yourself. So I think what kicked off this whole conversation for us on the podcast was that Tim Razzarack blog post that said that, you know, cookbooks aren't taken seriously. I'm like, hell they are. Yes, they are. We take them very seriously. But in order to do so, it's important that people like yourself write about them and call them to task. But, you know, if we get into the nitty gritty of reviewing cookbooks, because we've all agreed there's not a lot of it out there, serious cookbook reviewing. So let's talk about how you do it. Like, how do you decide which books to review? Yeah, that's right there. A huge question because there's so many, I don't know if there's more coming out every year, but it kind of feels that way. It does kind of feel that way. I mean, you know, in preparation for this, for this podcast, I, you know, I was like, oh, what is coming, like, I've been so busy, what is coming out this fall that I'm excited about and just kind of reviewing and oh my God, the hundreds of titles, it's just, it's really overwhelming. So the first thing I do is call through everything that's coming out. And I don't have any magic way of doing that. You know, sometimes it's just going on Amazon and see like upcoming whatever's and sometimes it's reading, you know, people like Paula Forbes who write about it. So the good thing is like, at least cook cooks without borders is a defined kind of coverage area, right? So it's really cookbooks that illuminate the cooking of various cultures in some way. And the culture might be American, but a lot of these single subject books I don't pay that much attention to because I'd like them to be a little more focused on a culture in order to cover it. And I'm sure there's a lot of exceptions there. You know, if it's somebody who's really well known, whose recipes I love, who I think the readership would love, I'll cover that. That's how I start. And then I get the book and then I just start flipping through. I probably read the introduction pretty quickly. But sometimes before that, I just start flipping through and putting post-its on recipes that look interesting to me. And then if there are a lot of them, I'll go back and really read the introduction and read the significant material to see, you know, like, what's the point of view? Is it how interesting is this? And then I'll try to eyeball a couple of recipes to see like, are they going to work? And then if it kind of checks all those boxes, I just start testing recipes. And I'll usually have a few cookbooks that I'm testing for simultaneously, because, you know, you don't want to eat the same food every single night. Yeah, so then I just start testing. A lot of the time something gets eliminated if there are just too many misses. What would be a miss? A miss for me would be it's actually kind of an interesting one, because it's in a book that I'm having a really hard time with, but I decided to review. And that's Rosa Jackson's Niswaz, which Molly, I know you blurbed. I did. You know, I picked up that book. I was immediately attracted by it. I love so much about it. I love her writing. I love her point of view. I love her experience. I loved the first couple recipes I tested. And then I got to a recipe for rack of lamb that had you cook the rack of lamb in a 350 degree oven for something like 40 or 45 minutes to a temperature of one, I think it said 150 to 160, which she described would be less than Rosie Pink, but really kind of, I can't remember the exact wording, but I thought, Oh, is she cooking that to medium or medium? Well, but no, it was just clearly all wrong. And there were other problems in it besides. And I thought, you know, and I had already bought the racks of lamb and they cost me a small fortune. So I thought, well, I'm going to make this, but this particular recipe, I'm not going to follow her directions. I'm going to adjust and figure out later how to, you know, because when I started doing this, I would do that. And when I, when I reviewed for the LA Times, I would always do that, like, follow each recipe to the tea and then kind of report what would happen. But I don't want to waste food. I will eat things that are less than fabulous, but like that I was going to ruin that lamb. And I, there was no way I was going to do that. So, you know, so, so, so that kind of thing. So a MISC would be something where there's something wrong with the instruction that you know is going to throw something off. There's something like there's red flags in there that would be a miss. Like when you say, Oh, these are good recipes and this one is a clunker. It needs adjustments. Exactly. Yeah. What you're saying about this lamb and how, because I know when I worked on those best American series, I would do the same thing. I would follow a recipe to the tea knowing this is not going to work. But there is a moment where there's something in there. It's like, well, maybe, and this is not an example, the rack of lamb is not an example, because we all know if you cook a rack of lamb for too long, it will be overdone. There's nothing that's going to mitigate that situation. But there are, there are some discoveries sometimes when you're doing something with a technique that you've never done before, where you really do suspend what you think is your experience and just go for it. And you're like, Oh, who knew that would work. But as an experienced cook, when you're reading recipes and knowing, as Kate says, that this is just going to be a miss. And it also brings up the point that you're testing these out of your own dime. If you're buying all the ingredients, you want to eat those. It's not like you're in a test kitchen, you're using somebody else's budget, your offsite, you're not at home. If it doesn't work, if it's inedible, it goes in the compost, you know, it's not, it's different when you're doing it at home. And it's something that you want to end up with, something you're going to eat that night or that day. That adds another layer. Cookbook reviewing is expensive, no matter how you do it. It's extremely expensive. And you know, and typically all tests, you know, I'd say six to eight recipes per book would be, would be typical, sometimes more. And especially as, you know, groceries have gotten more and more expensive, it's really, it's really expensive. And then usually, or often, I buy the book, sometimes I try to get review copies, but you know, the publicists are not always responsive or, you know, whatever. And sometimes it's just easier for me to buy it. So there's that cost, there's the labor, it is hard. But you know, part of what used to keep me going as a restaurant critic was, you know, our readers are going to go to these restaurants and spend their hard-earned cash dining there. So I'm doing them a service by letting them know if there are serious issues. I don't want them to waste their money. Similarly, I feel like with cookbook reviews, people go out and they buy all these ingredients and they take their time and they invite their friends over or they cook for their families. Oh my goodness, you could just imagine somebody buying a rack of lamb for a romantic dinner or to invite their friend, you know, whatever. And then they don't know, they can't eyeball the recipe necessarily and know that that's going to be overcooked. So the more it goes, the more I feel like I have to get over my not wanting to be that guy. Because I think for readers, it's important. It's such a tricky business because if you're writing a review of a novel and it was mostly good, you really enjoyed it or, you know, it's well written, it's well crafted, the languages, there's a scene or two that kind of fall flat or you didn't buy in or the persimmon tastes like a melon or whatever. I still don't think a persimmon tastes like a melon. I don't care if everyone buys tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. It's a great book. For some, it doesn't taste like melon. But you can overall endorse the book. And with cookbook, and I guess the question is, so what do you do if you've got overall, the voice is good, the design you like, you know, it's a very appealing package. And you found a lot of recipes that you really do work and are bringing, you know, fresh and interesting flavors into your kitchen. That's the tricky thing with the cookbook because if somebody opens it up and the first one they make is the rack of lamb, they're probably going to walk away from that book and cook from it again. You know, where I'm kind of coming to is, you know, and I do want to come, I've decided I'm covering that book and it's going to be a generally positive review, but I'm going to say that there are some stumbles. Whereas in the past, I might have either not reviewed it because there were too many stumbles or kind of mentioned those stumbles towards the end of the review without signaling it higher up. I think where I'm coming to is I'm going to signal it maybe in the in the headline. And the headline will be largely positive, but with the however, in the headline. So in the past, you wouldn't have maybe covered the book. Yeah. In the past, I would write like many of the cookbook reviews on cooks without borders are kind of labeled cookbooks we love. And notice that. Yeah. So maybe I'll still do that, but I'm going to do more reviews that just have a headline that's kind of more all encompassing without saying the love word. But for that particular book, I'm really glad to have it in my life. I'm going to keep it. I'm going to keep cooking from it. So I think people should know about it. And I think she should be really happy about the book. But I also think that maybe next time she writes a cookbook, maybe she'll get better support from a copy editor or, you know, whatever it is, or from a recipe testing. Like, I hope that there's a positive takeaway. If I wrote a cookbook and there were mistakes in it, I would want to know. I kind of feel like where I've come to recently about this is I'm going to write a review where if I wound up having lunch with the author, just the two of us, I would feel comfortable sitting there. That is really good. And I think that's something we talked about in our episode that for any of us to write cookbook reviews, it would be really hard because sometimes you would want to be really honest, but then we have this sort of like in the food world, we have to be nice all the time. But I like that you would still feel comfortable sitting across the table from somebody, even if you had written those reviews and there's the lamp, but there's also these other great recipes that you really enjoyed. And then that, I think if it sounds fair, then it doesn't feel like a takedown piece. You know, I think that's the difference. And I think, you know, authors, it's a strange place to be because in one sense, there are a lot of reviews. They're not really reviews, they're opinions. And at the same time, there's like not any reviews. So it's like, you know, for novelists, they have good reads for cookbook authors, I guess it's mostly Amazon reviews. But you know, a lot of times, those one star reviews could be because of the packaging, you know, so it's just a weird place to be. I wanted to ask about cookbook reviews, how important is the author voice? For me, it depends on the type of book it is. For something that's really encyclopedic or referencing, I don't think I need that voice as much. But for something personal, like I'm thinking about Frankie Gaugh's book, first generation, I loved his voice. I just wanted to hang out with him in the kitchen. And so did I forgive things because of that? I think I was, I mean, I just felt like it was such a great read and so wonderful to be with that it made me love his recipes more. Interesting. They did work. So that helped. But I didn't, you know, it wasn't like blow you away recipes, but I felt like I was let in on his childhood and his relationship with his grandma. And I felt like I was really that person. And with him in the kitchen, when I was cooking these recipes because of his voice. So it just really depends. Right. It's a whole package. What are you getting the book for? Yeah. I'm interested about the mechanics of writing reviews because, and I don't know how many you'll do any like in a year about how many reviews because you've also do a lot of other essays and posts and things about cooking and they're not cookbook. But some seem very structured. Like you start by giving us the background or some context and sometimes like background or as a subhead you use. And then why we love this book or why you're endorsing this book and then some specifics about recipes and then sort of in the end, you'll mention maybe your quibbles or pet peeves or things like that, which is, it seems a very organized way to break down their user friendly. You're like, all right, here's the book. Here's who this person is or who this cuisine fits in. Here's an overview. These are the recipes you should try and then, oh, this or that might not work. Do you play around with those mechanics and do you have a word count in mind? Yeah, I don't have a word count in mind. Those reviews that you're talking about, those are the cookbooks we love reviews. They're structured like that. And they're so much easier to write than the other reviews, the more like essayistic reviews, way harder to write. And I think probably how many am I writing per year? It's really hard to say. I've never counted them up. I feel like it goes in waves. Sometimes I'll just do tons of testing and then write a few reviews. Sometimes I'll go months without publishing a review. And sometimes you put a few books in one review too. Yeah. I did that with Frankie Gosar review. I put it with two other Taiwanese slash Taiwanese American books. And sometimes that's a nice way of rounding up books that I might not feel like giving a full review or they're more problematic. And so just putting them together with a maybe that's a little bit of that contexty thing. Even if I'm not overtly talking about the context, I'm just saying like, hey, recently there's been a lot of Taiwanese American books published. Here's some really interesting ones. Yeah, that's actually a good point because I think sometimes authors, they hear that somebody else is writing a book that sounds sort of similar to theirs. They freak out. They're like, oh no. But at the same time, if these books kind of come out around the same period of time, they might be more likely to be reviewed, to be written about in the media, to be talked about. And so it's sort of like sometimes more is not like it's not like because this book sells that one won't. Sometimes it's just like it just bringing attention to the entire category. Yeah, kind of zeitgeisty. I think I think that's a game that cookbook authors can play a little bit because when you're when you're pitching your cookbook, when you're writing your proposal and stuff, you have to pretend like, this has never been written about and it's, you know, I'm going to be the, you know, you got to sell that really hard. But then actually, I do think it's helpful. Like if it turns out other people have been doing similar work, you know, we're covering similar topics at the same time, I think there's definitely power and numbers there. Yeah. When you're doing these reviews, you get to see so many different types of books and you're really looking at it from an objective point of view. I mean, oftentimes I think authors, we go like, oh, our friend's book, we have to like buy it, we're going to like look at it, but we're not looking at it with a critical eye. What are certain things that you see that you wished more authors would do? I mean, I was thinking about the Jose Andres review of his most recent Mediterranean cookbook in it's a positive review. And then you had these really helpful things like, I wish there were metric measurements or, you know, the yields are a little bit squishy. So what can we do better? I do wish that more writers would use both metric and, well, either just metric or metric and English system. I mean, it's 2024, like, please, it's in, you know, and then and weights. It's just so much easier and more accurate to use to use weight. So that's one thing. A lot of the time the misses are could be copy editing misses or, or misses that a good editor would catch, which could be temperature misses or a failure to talk about using too many bowls, like, you know, or too many pots and pans or like, think about this as a home cook, like, are you going to really grab a new pan that you're going to then have to wash or can you actually just do it in that same pan? Is that little bit of olive oil and they're going to really bother anything? No, probably not. Oh, things like sometimes you'll have an instruction that will give a metric and an English and they won't, they'll be totally out of whack. So which one do I look at? And I'll usually choose the weight one, but it could feel random or missing ingredients or an ingredient that is in the ingredient list. Yeah, it never gets mentioned in the instructions. How did I incorporate that? There's one of those, a big one in Nancy Silverton's last book, which a giant emotional struggle with that book, which I probably should review. Yeah, I bet, especially with your background at the times and in LA. Those are the tricky things to do grapple with as a reviewer, but I do agree, especially with baking books. I want to know what one cup of flour is in your world, because one cup of flour in my world is probably 140 grams. And some people, it's 128 grams, it's really different. So I agree. I think grams are kind of here to say, but I do think it would be nice to have a little bit more help on the backend, making sure it all lined up. Yeah. I mean, do you think we need more instructions than we used to in cookbooks, especially when we're cooking around the world and we're cooking out of our own backgrounds, we might be unfamiliar? Does that mean that these recipes have to do a heavier lift in explaining things to the home cook? I think they probably do. I mean, a lot of people are just getting into the kitchen for the first time, and maybe their mom didn't cook, or their dad didn't cook, or they weren't shown how to do these things. And yeah, if it's a different culture, I just throw everything out the window and assume I knew nothing and follow instructions and learn a ton that way. So hand holding is great. One of the things I love about the work that you do, Leslie, is that you seem to willingly go down rabbit holes. And I'm wondering is as you, I think Kate, you and I, and Leslie could sit here and talk pet peeves for way too long, but I'm wondering what cookbook trends you're loving or what you're seeing that's really exciting, because you're still doing it. I mean, you seem to love and bring a lot of joy to the work as well. Yeah, I guess I feel like I'm really happy to see more plant-based books, or even even books that aren't plant-based, but books where vegetables are starring players, maybe alongside meats as well, but just like way more attention paid to them. I love that. And by the same token, what I don't love is plant-based books that then tell us to use like highly processed fake meats. Like if I see that, I'm going to put the book away. I'm not interested. And I also love the trend. I'd love to know what you guys think about this of chefs channeling home cooks a little more, like channeling their own inner home cook a little more, and I'm thinking about Tukasa Mikasa from Enrique Overa and Team. Really, Judy Rogers always did. She was cooking, you know, maybe in her restaurant she cooked like a home cook too, but that trend, like chefs are finally over trying to make us do, or a lot of chefs are. They've gone beyond like, you need to do tweezer food at home. Like, no, we don't. I think partly that's because publishers don't want it anymore. I think that has a positive effect, home cooks. I think that's true. And then because a chef recipe could have like three amazing ideas for a home cook, but if they're buried in a complicated, long recipe, we'll miss them completely. And if they just highlight one and really blow that out into a simpler recipe, we'll become better cooks. They get their idea across and everyone will sort of wins. Those are the best kind of chef cookbooks, I think. Exactly. The family meal. Yes. Right. Exactly. Yeah. Any books coming this fall that are on your radar? I am excited about Steve Sando's The Bean Book because I love beans. I'm the beanest. That's the Rancho Gordo book. Yes. I'm excited about a title called Our South Black Food Through My Lens by Ashley Shanti. I heard her interviewed on NPR and it was such a great interview. She was so interesting. She's from Appalachia and just kind of talking about black culture in Appalachia was super interesting and looking forward to that. Joe Yeonin's book Mastering in the Art of Plant Based Cooking. I'm excited about because I love Joe Yeonin. He's smart and great pallet. The Memory of Taste, Vietnamese American Recipes from Fuqua, Oakland, and The Spaces Between by Two David Fu and Soliho. I can't help but be excited about Otto Langie comfort, even though Otto Langie doesn't need any publicity. But there you go. Crazy Water Pickled Lemons by Diana Henry because her books are always great. Yeah, very excited for that. Food of Life is getting a 40th anniversary reissue. Really? Yeah. I don't know if there are any new recipes in it or new, I don't know how reworked it'll be, but Najmea Mangalij, I never know if I'm doing her name justice, but she's so fantastic. I love her to that. So I'm excited about that too. No, that's great. I think we're seeing more of these. I know Jim Laye's bread book is coming back out and I'm not sure what it says. But I don't remember seeing as many kind of reissues or anniversary editions. It means that backlists are going strong. That's what that means. Yeah, I like it. Yeah, I was just about to say that and maybe that's an important trend because what's better than a great backlist book? It has history, the recipes probably work or it wouldn't be continued to be purchased for all these years. And I hate that they get not talked about. That's why I'll sometimes review a book that's 10 years old or whatever, because they're still important books. If it's been a successful backlist, it's probably had a few editions and they've corrected some of the mistakes that it popped up. And authors, if you're listening to this and you have a mistake in your book, you just email your editor, they'll put it on a file and then when it's time to reprint that book, they can just put that in. I learned that tip and it's a really good one. Yeah, that's fantastic. And that's also something that maybe could make it easier for me to have lunch with those people. Because I'll say, listen, when your book is reprinted, which it will be, be sure to excite things. Yeah, I have one of the first editions of one of my books and then the front page, I have just their notes that I've written down. One was a type setting problem. One was, I mentioned wine and then it turns the vinegar somewhere during the recipe, like things like that. And now in the edition, it's been successful enough to be printed several times. Those mistakes are corrected. Right. Some of those mistakes, as we all know, are author generated, but some of them are later on in the process they're introduced. Sure. We've taken up a lot of your time last week and we were going to ask, we talked to a lot of multi-hyphen individuals on the show, but you wear a lot of hats and we will link to your newsletter and other projects in the show notes. But is there anything else you're working on now that you'd like to mention before we let you go? Well, first, I would just want to say that, oh my god, this has been so much fun. I love you guys and I love your podcast and it's such an honor to be here and I love talking to you both. I just started a gig working with Italy and Dallas, which is super fun. Oh, awesome. Yeah, so I'm doing in-store activations for them. What is an in-store activation? Yeah, that's so jargony. That's so business jargony. That's okay. I just can't live in a woods in Vermont. I don't know what in-store activation is. Yeah, events. Okay. They have asked me to sort of bring in my network of friends in the business, chefs and restaurateurs and food producers and farmers and bring them into the store and do an event with them. That's really going to be fun, I think. Also, I'm writing a weekly newsletter for them, just a Dallas specific Italy newsletter focusing on, and it came about because I'm like, you know, I find so many products in the store that are such great products that I love and do people know what to do with these, I doubt it. Can I just tell them what I would do with them? They're like, okay, so I'm excited about that. Michelin just arrived in Texas. I'm helping some restaurants be ready for the inspectors. There's some pun I can't make about the Texas Star and the Michelin Star. Oh, the Lone Star. So many stars. Maybe Leslie will figure it out and put it in one of her newsletters. Yeah. This was so fun, Leslie. Thank you for letting us pick your brain. Thanks for coming on. Wonderful. Thank you again. Thank you for listening to Everything Cookbooks. For more episodes and ways to contact us, go to our website, everythingcookbooks.com. The show is available wherever you get your audio, and if you like what you hear, please do leave us a review. It really helps. Any book mentioned on the show can be found on our affiliate page at bookshop.org. Thank you to our editor, Abby Circatella, and until next time, keep on writing, reading, and cooking.
Molly and Kate dive back into the topic of cookbook reviews as they chat with Leslie Brenner, an experienced critic, journalist, editor and consultant in the food media space. Leslie shares how she got into food writing, the inspiration and motivation behind her website and why she focuses on the home cook. She speaks on the mental and physical toll of restaurant reviewing and why she sees cookbook reviews as important before explaining her process and the mechanics involved as well as the rule she abides by while bringing a critical eye to the work. She talks about the role voice plays, the red flags she looks for and what she wishes authors would do before sharing the upcoming cookbook trends and titles she is excited to see in the marketplace.
