America's Test Kitchen is known for books that deliver reliable recipes with rigor. This season, they have a big new book that adds a layer of storytelling called "When Southern Women Cook" and we're going to talk about it. Welcome to Everything Cookbooks, the podcast for writers, readers, and cooks. This is Kristen Donnelly, and today I'm here with Molly Stevens. Hey Molly. Hello Kristen. I'm really excited about this new book from America's Test Kitchen because it kind of breaks the mold from what we expect from that brand. It's called "When Southern Women Cook, History, Lore, and 300 Wapping Recipes." And I think it's the history and lore part that we are, I mean, I must say I don't follow their magazine cooks country as closely as I might. I know they do some of that, but in their magazine, the history and lore bit are certainly the lore, but certainly not their books. I turn to them as recipe delivery machines. I mean, they really, these are rigorously tested, scientifically based, lots of illustration, lots of technique. So yeah, I don't think of them as giving us lots of storytelling. Yeah, and it's also interesting because a lot of times these books come with just coming from America's Test Kitchen. There's not necessarily an author, or even maybe there's an editor's name inside the book, but you don't see it as much on the cover. This book actually has Tony tip to Martin, who is the editor and chief of cooks country. She wrote the forward, so her name is on the cover. And she's also the author of James Beard award-winning books like Jubilee, Duke joints, jazz clubs and juice, and the Jemima code. There's also Morgan Bowling, who's the executive editor of creative content for cooks country, and she's on the cover as the editor. So this is kind of an interesting change. Yeah, like personal voice, personal perspective inside the ATK brand. Today, we actually have Tony and Morgan on as guests. You know, I've put together a lot of big books. I know you've put together some big books, Molly, just from a pure project management point of view. I'm really excited to talk to them. Yeah. I mean, not only 300 recipes, but they have contributors from, I think, 70 or so essays and interviews woven into these recipes. So it's just from me, like, I'm imagining your spreadsheet. Yeah. It's an enormous project. Yeah. And I feel like it's a big swing for ATK too. Yeah. I'm also just curious, like, internally how it worked, you know, getting this idea from idea to publication and how does that work? And are there like internal gatekeepers, you know? Right. And I'm also interested because Tony went to America's Test Kitchen, which is a close country in 2020. And to me, it feels like this has sort of evolved, obviously, as has, you know, the impact that the cheese had there. So I'm super excited that we're going to talk to them both today. Let's get to it. Well, Morgan and Tony, thank you so much for being here with us at Everything Cookbook. We are so happy. We are excited to be here. Thanks for having us. Yeah, so excited. And congratulations on this accomplishment, this book. It's pretty incredible what Morgan has achieved here. Like, well, we've all achieved. There've been a lot of, a lot of women and men behind this book, but mostly women. I can't wait to get into that because it's big. And you can tell that there are so many people who have touched it, and yet it feels so cohesive. So the first question I have to ask, though, is the title, When Southern Women Cook, I'm curious, was that at all inspired by when French women cook? Yes, it absolutely was. It was a working title. So it was not intended to be the final title. But when we began talking about this as a concept, that was the framework for me. So I just kind of used that around the office and it stuck. I like it. Yeah, I think we all kind of loved it and it felt very appropriate. And it does have a little bit of recognition behind it. So it just felt like a really good fit. It's interesting because I hadn't thought of that book for, was 1982, I think. Yeah. You know, cast my mind back to that. And I was remembering when I discovered it, how groundbreaking it was because it was this combining metal and common memoir and culture and history. It just was very interesting. And then how she came back up with that tastemaker's book about her story. It's a good title. Yes, I've been a fan of hers for some years as you point out back to the 80s when I was beginning my career. So her work really resonated for me in terms of the work that I want to do and that I've been doing from marginalized and underrepresented people. And so it was really like it just was floating around in my head, as I said, and everybody liked it. So it's great. I read that Morgan this book was your idea. I don't know that we could say like it started with anyone. I think like as far as I, it was sort of a mix, at least my understanding. And Tony, feel free to like correct or chime in at any point. But I think Tony had brainstormed something like this with some of her network at different points. And it had just sort of been a floating idea. And then like in a separate timeline, I was working at the test kitchen. And I have a separate passion for women's work and like understanding the stories of women. I volunteered at a women's center. It's like very important to me. I think like there was just a random time that Tony and I were checking in and I sort of like started dropping things about like, they're so cool to combine women and food. I just don't really know how to do that. She suggested I go out to La Cosina in San Francisco and like interview with them and like talk to them about what they were doing. And I started to see like some of the different ways that you can. And I also just think working with Tony and like understand like, I don't think I had a full understanding of how you could combine these sort of stories with food because I was so like recipes or what I know. And so then I think once all those things sort of started coming together and then Tony and I started brainstorming this idea and how we combine our like passions and backgrounds and her ability to bring stories into food. And then my passion for both recipes and women and tons of stories of women. And it just sort of like hit it a really good time. Like our company wanted to do a southern book. I'm from the south. It just sort of all came together. Both like Tony and me hit sparks at different times. I came together and like had the sort of fire happen of this book. Nice. I'm curious like internally, do you have to then pitch the concept in a sense? Or how does that work? Well, it's a little bit complicated. At the time that I came to work for America's Test Kitchen, I had just signed a two book deal with Penguin Random House. So I came with some pretty particular ideas for what I wanted to do to evolve the Cooks Country brand. And as Morgan points out, that involved bringing the stories of more of the underrepresented voices into the magazine. We were already telling amazing recipe stories. And our tagline at the time was the stories behind, you know, like America's favorite recipes or something like that. But I had a different perspective on what it meant to tell a story. So part of my arrangement working here obviously was I couldn't publish another book because of my contract. But as Morgan said, all of these other things were percolating along the way, her interest, the company's interest in producing a book with me, my confinement by Random House, but their relationship with Random House was a lot going on. The spark for me, as I write in the introduction, as it relates to women, occurred some years ago when I was president of Southern Foodways Alliance. And I just started to develop really intimate relationships with Southern women. I listened to them describing their concerns, their issues over meals in the hallway between sessions in the ladies' room. Like we just had late at night pajama parties. We were constantly churning over this same concept that we felt like women's voices were not being heard. There was one time we were at a conference and gathered in, I think it was Ronnie Lundy's hotel room, like, and it was late at night, Virginia Willis ordered food. Like we were, it was just very womanish, right? This idea that we were trying to problem solve in the extra hours. Like not, we'd already been at a session, at sessions all day at conference, but here we were as women feeling like there's still so much more work to do. And we were trying to achieve it late at night. That evening just stuck with me for a really long time when ATK wanted a Southern book and Morgan had, as she said, been talking about her women's work. I initially thought this would be a book for Morgan to write. Like I was just saying, why don't you use this concept to empower your women about one thing led to another and the company was interested in it. So it's great. I love what you're saying about that after hours women's party problem solving. And I think Morgan, it's something you write in the introduction about how to give women space in a world that tells us to be smaller and sort of amplify those voices, to take those voices out of the hotel room after hours, but to put them on the front stage. And it's very powerful throughout the book too. Yeah, and many of the women that were in those sessions, whatever conference we were at, not just SFA, but whether we were at ISCP or any other food gathering, it was the same group of us all of the time. So, you know, the conversations just continued to develop. It was so lovely to see their responses and their willingness to jump in in whatever way was reasonable for them. And so that's why we have such a diversity of approach as well. You know, we didn't ask everybody to just write the same essay. We gave them the space to be who they were in their own sphere and turned out to be really powerful. But I think that's confusing to people. They expect, you know, anthologies to all read the same. And we wanted to make sure this was still very much a cookbook. Right. So, Kristin and I were talking about this, that there's contributors that have, it's a Q&A with some. It's an essay by others. It's a, I mean, there's a lot of, as you say, a diversity of those contributions. And somewhere, it's like, it seems like it's their recipe. You know, many of the recipes are coming from ATK or Cook's Country. But I saw some that were like, this recipe is from so and so. So, how did that process of pulling that all together work? I mean, how long? It feels like, I guess the idea started many years ago. But then once you got the green light, I would say it's been a two-year process. So, like, we didn't necessarily have to pitch it, but we did work with our in-house team to write a proposal and make sure everyone was on the same page. And I think Tony and I sort of joke that, like, we had a very clear vision of what we wanted to be. And a lot of people did not totally understand what we were saying until, like, we started seeing it come together. And then we really got people to, like, get more excited about the concept. But it's very different for our company to do something like this. Which is exciting and so cool that they were willing to jump on and try this out. Yeah. So, it was a huge process. I think we started by building the table of contents. And then there was, like, a big mix with that of, like, seeing what we already had done internally, where we, like, maybe needed to re-evaluate some of the stuff we did years ago that wasn't as accurate or as culturally representative as we wanted it to be. We worked with a historical consultant, Casey Heistmith. She co-authored a book with Marcy, Co. and Ferris, too. And she also did her PhD in American history with her, like, focus on women and food. So, she was, like, this amazing resource for this. So, she helped us go through and, like, figure out exactly what story we wanted to tell for each recipe. And then Tony and I would meet and have these, like, hour-long meetings where we're, like, "Okay, should we write this one? Should we have someone else write this one? Who would be a good fit for this?" I think we're really lucky that, like, Tony has this great network of people sharing. He knows a lot of people. Casey also had a really great network of people who were willing, like, so we could, it was a little easier probably than the average person to be able to reach out to them. But there was a lot of mixing and matching. And, like, I mean, we tried, like, sort of a general piece that we were thinking about as, like, we wanted to make sure we had a really nice diverse mix of people contributing, like, in, like, all senses of that, like, a big piece of this book that we all felt was really important was trying to tell a really, like, I don't think you can be comprehensive in the story of the South, but, like, trying to give a more broad view of what it means. Like, it's not just fried chicken and biscuits. And we got all that, and it's delicious, but, like, we also have a lot more. So, like, we wanted to represent a lot of the different populations that exist in the South. And we also, like, just wanted some really amazing chefs, but we also want to representation from people who are cookbook authors, and maybe people who are farmers, at least getting to tell these tales of all the different people who are in the food world. So, there was a lot of mixing and matching and, like, re-evaluating, and then we'd, like, come up with a plan, and then we'd call that person, and maybe, like, well, actually, I kind of want to talk about this instead, and we'd see if that fit. If chefs didn't have time or, like, didn't want to write, like, that's where a lot of the Q&As came in, or if someone was really busy, like, or just had, like, a lot on their plate already, we would often do a Q&A because it was a little easier for them. It's really an extension of the work that was begun by, even before Southern Food Waste Alliance, by Jean Bolt and Edna Lewis, who had, some years ago, conceived of this idea that there was more of a story to tell about the American South than the ways that it had been represented, and that's true, certainly, through Edna's work, and the way that she gave the world a sense of respect for country cooking, right? Prior to that, all we ever heard was cooking with too much smoky, fatty meat. Everything is overly sweet and salted. She really had a fresh approach that was rooted in historically healthy eating to begin with, right? It wasn't contrived or trendy, what she was proposing, and Jean Bolt was a newspaper food editor, so she understood the value of accuracy and storytelling, and so together, they conceived of this organization some years ago that would provide an opportunity for people to gather and to discuss more of the realities of Southern Food and Southern Living than traditional media allowed. For whatever reason, that organization didn't take off, and my theory as an outsider, not being Southern, my theory at the time was that Southerners are very proud of their food and their particular way, even though they're all basically making the same thing. Somebody's biscuits are always better than the other person's biscuits, and I think there was probably, at least what I saw in the organization of SFA, which did survive, was it sort of took somebody from the outside to say, "Okay, that's all really great. I hear you, and I really respect Natalie's way or Ronnie's way, but let's think about the greater good that we're trying to achieve here and not get mired in the individual and think more about the group." And what that meant for SFA was that we spent a lot of time behind the scenes what I have irreverently called bean counting, but like we made sure, as Morgan is describing, we made sure there was representation, and those could be course conversations outside of the community that's charged with delivering it. In our case, she got into that experience with me and started to understand if I asked, "Are there enough women from this region? Are there enough women from this culture? Are there, like, that kind of representation, I think, is what is troubling us in the outer world?" People are just not accustomed to having that level of frank honesty, but we did that. We did that at SFA, and I continued that in the rest of my work and helped Morgan see that it can be a little bit challenging and frightening at first, because it seems like you're being critical or judgmental or whatever negative word you want to apply to it. But at the end of the day, it's really a matter of making things equitable and ensuring there are enough voices at the table. It's the work behind getting all the voices. Yeah. There's so much I could talk about here off my mind because of 300 recipes in this book, which is no small feat. And yet, I can imagine that was limiting in itself, but did you know going in? Did you have a number in mind? That was actually from the Test Kitchen. That was part of sort of the proposal, bargain, that we had. I mean, I think we have a huge proportion of the cookbooks on the marketplace now at America's Test Kitchen. And so we've had a lot of success with this idea of having a large number. And we have a huge archive that was part of the requirement with this book was 300 plus, but it is funny. It sounds so overwhelming. It definitely became limited. When we started going through the archives of southern recipes we have built in this company before, I think it was like over 600 that we had had. So like, we didn't want to include all of those because we had a huge number of New Orleans recipes. And like, Grandin, New Orleans has amazing food. And like, I want to tell as many of those stories as we possibly can, but it would have felt really out of balance. Had we just like dumped everything in there? Plus, we had to go through and filter like some of the stories that had women in the forefront in them. It was a lot more filtering. It definitely was limiting. Like, actually at the end, we had to cut a few things for page count. We landed at like something like 340 or 350 recipes. And we're hoping we could just kind of fit them in. I would have to go back and look at the exact number. It's a little over 300. So we did have to trim a lot. And some of them, like, you feel like you close to them. Like, yeah. So we had a few things that you like, you're really excited about. And you're like, well, but we kind of start touching on this story. Or like, this one's sort of related to this. Or can we slide this essay here so that we can like, keep this essay, but like, lose that recipe. So it definitely was limiting at times, but 300 is a lot of good recipes still. So I'm excited about it. It's just like, yeah, there were definitely times where it felt like you're like picking between your favorites. And that is true of the storytelling as well. We initially had proposed twice as many authors. Oh, wow. And contractually, we were told we could do that. And that felt fully encompassing for me in terms of all of my peers and friends and the voices that I felt like were important to represent the full story. But over time, it became evident that with that many recipes and that many stories, like it would just have been overwhelming. So we contemplated, is this a two part volume? Like, do we tell certain parts and leave like certain foods? Like, that's an interesting to development to question whether you only go from A to M alphabetically, and then you pick up whatever the category and organization might be. We questioned whether we should just try to divide this content or streamline, especially with an institution that really wasn't fully clear about what we were doing, why it was taking us so long, you know, concern about the mismatching of voices, the appropriateness of the voices. To Morgan's point, her affinity for the recipes was my same experience for the people, right? I'm at the 11th hour, making sure that we've checked as many boxes as we can. And even with that, we're aware there's just so many stories yet to be told. So we just had to come to terms with that and accept that we told the most interesting stories that we could. We gave as much credit as we could. Yeah. John Edgerton taught me that my job was to introduce a concept and then hope that the next generation or the people that come after me will pick up that mantle and do something really amazing with it, but I don't have to deliver it all. And that's been really wise counsel. It's allowed me to accept the limitations of whichever one of my projects I'm working on, that it can't do it all. And that's what makes room for the next. I love that for any project as such wise words. I am curious in that curation process. There's still the eight fried chicken and eight biscuits, right? And six cornbread. And did each feel so like super necessary first telling a certain story or I guess achieving something colonarily. Yeah. So I think we started pulling, like I said, all the recipes we had from our archives, but then also like working with Casey and Tony, like we got more insight on like, okay, well, should we have a biscuit that specifically Shirley core her biscuits? But then it was like, okay, well, cream biscuits are sort of like those. So can we mention her and that head note? So there was a little bit more like puzzling. Where can we like ladder up between like, where can we tell this story in this recipe and like make sure we're touching all of it? We had to cherry pick who we put especially in biscuits and bread. There's so many people who like, especially like even for the end the last few weeks. Remember Tony and I being like, Oh gosh, where do we put this person? Like the biscuit and bread check are so cool. We did try to tell as many stories as we could. We also do have a really specific mind for the fact we do want people to cook out of this cookbook. I've been working at America's Test Kitchen and Cook's country for 10 years. So I know a lot of our recipes pretty well. There was also a little bit of like, okay, well, I know this cat in the pan biscuit. We can talk a little bit about Virginia Willis because she helped inspire that recipe and it's such an easy, good intro recipe. It makes a brief biscuit. Like, so like that one feels like it needs to be in here. Sort of a lot of them, we were puzzling to see which ones needed to fit and how many stories we could kind of fit within our confines of what we have. Morgan, you use a term laddering up and I'm thinking about what Tony was talking about, the layering and the complexity of what you're trying to do here. We can also talk about how you define the South too because it's a pretty broad definition. I think you say Texas too, but then it's south of Texas because Patty Inich is in there. But this laddering up, this layering, this complexity, and on top of that, you're adding the American Test Kitchen, I must say brand in air quotes, but bringing the science to the kitchen, these reliable recipes, that's another level because I was flipping through some of the pages in these beautiful photographs and these stories. And then there's illustrations of the stock. It took me right to America's Test Kitchen. So you're adding a layer, a major layer of complexity, so working within that rubric as well. Well, what's interesting about that is, that is the rationale that I used for taking a job at this point in my career. I didn't really need to go back into a formal nine to five setting in order to achieve what I was already in motion to deliver to the consumer. But ATK practiced the same type of rigor and integrity in its recipe development that is important to me in storytelling as a journalist. I just thought that what was missing was that sharing that home cooks are smart and intelligent cooks and creative. And there is plenty of science and chemistry in what happens at home. And you might remember from statements that I made in J'Mara Coder Jubilee, where I say, these are women who were making stock and bechamel. They just called it gravy and putting on a pot of beans. They never said the scientific words that were applicable to what they were doing. So it became really important to me not only through this book, but also with the team to help them understand that we already had a very rich population of people and recipes that we could talk about. All we had to do was identify them better. And that's what we've been doing here. This book is an extension of what's happening on the magazine page, right? Which is to say that we owe credit, where credit is due. We are all aware there's no original recipe, so adaptation is an important thing. It doesn't always mean appropriation. You can be very respectful and reverential. What we want people to do is remember the names of the people who made a thing, right? So I often remind audiences that when they read my work and they make a recipe from my book, they don't have to say this came from Tony Tipton Martin in Jubilee. What I want them to remember is that this was the way that Melinda Russell made it in 1866, even if they don't remember the whole story. And that's why the storytelling here is really valuable, because Cook's country was already halfway there. In terms of the recipes, as Morgan said, they had already started telling some of those stories Virginia was present and others on the pages we leaned all the way in. Is that why it was so important for you to bring in a culinary historian? Absolutely. And what's unique about Casey is that she had done her dissertation on this topic. Okay. She's super bright and super passionate in the same way about women and their work in the American South. For me, yes, if I were going to fully tell a story, I have to have first person sources. However, I arrive at them. In my personal case, that means through cookbooks, but Casey had another level of understanding as a historian about the hidden figures behind southern food. And she contributed mightily in that way because of her historical knowledge. Because it sounds like she was involved from the very beginning. From the very beginning, that was one of the conditions that I had that if I wasn't going to be able to go and do a first person interview with everybody, you know, I had some connection in terms of how to build the table of contents. And what we were really talking about was the index. How many of these recipes could we root in a woman's story? And Casey was really instrumental. I think more and learn so much about that process too, like the there's not a lot of difference between recipe development and story development. And I also conflate those two terms in the office as well to make sure that everyone understands that same kind of rigor, that same kind of investigative curiosity in terms of whether you can add raisins instead of currents or, you know, the ways that one would adapt to recipe. You're also looking for cues in a story. What was really great for Morgan was that she was also able to transfer her recipe development skills into that same curiosity. And Casey helped jumpstart that for her. So imagining you're rewriting all the head notes as well as writing all the essays or editing the essays that are coming from contributors. Because Morgan, you have quite a few essays with your name at the end with your byline. Tony, not so many. And just sort of the process of who's doing what in the actual production of this book. Well, we also have a really strong internal book team. Yeah. As was true for my other work, it was important to us that we have as close as possible an all woman team with the exception of our incredible staff, photographers, Steve Kleis and several of the pieces that had already appeared in the magazine. I've said this since to Morgan, I wasn't fully sure that her name, whether it was redundant to put her name on every story. But we initially intended, as I said, for more people to have participated as her knowledge and expertise grew in this area. She was able to pick up the mantle for many of those other stories that needed to be told. And probably in hindsight, if we had planned that, we would have just put her name as we did, you know, in the cover. But that's also part of the attribution. Those are her words and she gets credit for them. I'm intentionally not a writer here. I am the editor. I'm shepherding. I'm counseling. I'm coaching. I'm sharing the little tidbits of wisdom about my thinking and what makes my books successful. Some of that is the editing that I receive outside of here. So that comes into play. Sasha, our incredible wordsmith, I've watched on screen like we were all in a file one day and just watching us all editing of one piece. There was a Morgan piece, so not someone else. And it was just great. That's an amazing experience. It was just such an amazing experience as an editor, but also a writer to know that those words really began with you, but to watch them bloom. So I'm sure she'll have more to say about that. But it was really fun to to watch. And Sasha is, we couldn't have done this without her. This is really, really an all important team. Everyone had a role and and Lindsey, our designer, who did try to get it right away, right? She's a custom to building ATK books. But she came on board early and listened in to our concepts. And she, she really came back with great recommendations for layout and design. Yeah. So like to expand on that a little more, Sasha is one of our internal editors. And she works on all sorts of cookbooks. So she's worked on stuff from like the healthy back cookbook to this. So she has a very wide array. I mean, that's like part of being in an america's discussion, but her and I would have at least a weekly meeting. And she did a ton of that editing of words. That said, we were very thoughtful. Or like, one of the things I think we tried to really do is maintain voices of contributors. So like, on my backgrounds and like cooking, it's not in writing. So like, with my pieces of like, please edit every day, whatever you need to edit. But with everyone who is external, there were some people who like, just because we needed to tell a certain story, or because we have like, sort of like, with this layering and laddering, we had to like certain agendas with people's stories that we really wanted to hit. So we had some people do rewrites or like, we did edit, there's a little more, and we try to be like, this is okay. This is still feel like, well, we really wanted to maintain the voices. And like, we wanted to sound like the sort of sounds will achieve you, but like a coffin of different voices coming together. And like, we wanted to sound like a different mix of people. So we were trying to be as thoughtful as we could in like editing, but like, keeping a voice to Sasha did probably the, I'd say the vast bulk of that work. I think there was something that was like, very sensitive, or we wanted if the hive mind was definitely helpful at times, some of the more complex pieces, we'd all sit in either doing together, or I'd be like, can you just take this one? Like, this one's a little complicated, and I'd rather your eyes be on this one. But for the bulk of them, I think Sasha was doing a lot of that. And like, we kind of worked together to make sure we were trying to like keep as much of a person's voice or like intention and what they were telling and what they wrote. So you asked about my byline, and there are two or three occasions where my byline does appear. And in at least, I think two of them, they're rewrites or co-buylined. That was part of our philosophy that everyone deserved representation. And so even if a story, you know, some of the assignments were made early, as we got better at it and got clearer about the focus and what was missing, we may have needed a story to take a little bit different turn or we had a perception of what we thought we wanted to deliver. And it didn't really seem fair to tell someone, well, we need you to like totally reconceive of your story, because we had already said we want people to have as much latitude within a subject as possible. But there was really an intentionality about the woman perspective. We're dealing with women all across the socio, not economic, but across career paths and different experiences who aren't always as vocal, right? This goes back to Morgan's original concept about us all being trained to think and take up less space in the world. Well, these are women who've had that experience too, otherwise I wouldn't have heard from them all these years past. So to now ask them to come out and be really forward about their affronts, that's like easy for me to say. I have won awards and gotten some confidence about the ability to do that. But I wasn't always as self assured about being as vocal or definitive about an experience that I had. And I'm still very astute, like I'm not just going to say whatever pops into my head. So we were trying to be aware of that, right? That we're also asking people to stretch. Some people had an experience that they wanted to talk about right away, like him. So it came a little bit easier for them or Shane Mitchell and her rice story. I was so close to her that she was a little concerned that she might be too powerful, like the message would be too strong for this audience, people who've come here with an America's Test Kitchen expectation for explanations about why a recipe works and more of the science. And they haven't really heard so much of this cultural representation and ethnic backgrounds for a lot of recipes that people have begun to think are just quote American. And so we wanted to be very sensitive about that in the editing process as well. So those are the couple of occasions where I come in and try to take maybe the pressure off and allow that person's voice to still exist in their research and notes and story are there. But I've maybe added the more strong sense of the story. Yeah, I thank you for sharing that. I think also if you're asking someone to contribute who, like you say, is not used to speaking out, and then you edit them heavily. That's a tricky balance, too. You're trying to support that voice, make room for it, but also make it fit into this larger project that you're creating. Yeah. And because Morgan was doing a lot of the, you know, I would have the first initial contact and then they would evolve the stories. And so it did leave my purview to some extent for a period. And then I would return to the topic. And that was also could be complicating, right? Because the conversations that they've had, the ways the story has matured, the way that it is going to exist on the page with the recipe, there were a lot of those kinds of variables that Morgan was and Sasha were contending with. And in that case, it was very much like being the president of an organization when you're not from that region. Like I had the 50,000 foot view. I wasn't in the day to day with Morgan and Sasha. I wasn't in the region with the author who composed the story. I could hear, are we going too far with this theory that there's some things cultural and racist about sandwiches? Like maybe that is a story that you want to tell if you're writing a dissertation or producing a PhD level footnoted piece of scholarship. But here, I had to be aware of what my own thoughts were and how far a subject could go to be cutting edge in this context. Yeah, but not too far. Yeah. It was really kind of fun actually to do that. I bet Morgan checked in with lots of, you know, she, as she said, she has an incredible culinary background and competency. And she is from the south. But this concept of helping people who have been made to feel small, feel bigger. It's a delicate balance. One of my favorite authors and mentors in this project is Natalie Dupree. And she was instrumental in helping me make this transition, right? My content challenges some notions of what it means to cook American food and who cooked it. Meaning the books that you're known for. The books that I've written, yes. And she's always been right there, you know, in the front row, helping me remember there are two sides to every story. And we wanted to make sure that was delivered here so that everyone felt that the process was equitable. But it's vulnerable for a lot of these writers, it sounds like some. I think we had a pretty strong, confident group of writers. It could have just been that the stories as I initially saw them, as I said, I see through a different type of lens that's not necessarily appropriate for here. What I'm hearing you say, Tony, is you're also very aware of the audience, the first audience for this book, which is the America's Test Kitchen book buyers. And it's a question Christian and I as we were looking that I believe this is the first book America Test Kitchen where their names on the cover other than America's Test Kitchen, that it's Morgan and Tony, your names are on the cover. Well, we've had a few, but not many in the past few years. Yeah, Elsomone has been on a couple, and then Kevin Pang and his father, Jeffrey. And Tony at Johnson's got one this fall, and then there's another one coming out in the spring, a Korean book. But not many. Yeah. And thinking about the thing you were saying earlier, Tony, about when it was getting very crowded, like, oh, maybe it's two volumes. But I don't know how you would ever parse it because there was so much cross referencing. And Christian and I were remarking, we were looking at the book, there's very little blank space. You have put so much onto these pages. And so people who just want the recipe, they could still read the recipes, but all those essays and sidebars and Q&As are supporting those recipes. But if you did say, cleave off desserts and drinks or something for a second volume, so much would have been lost because of this fabric that you've built by the cross referencing. You know, Edna Lewis comes in and out, all these voices that come in and out of your various essays. So just more to the point of the laddering up, I think that would have almost made it harder in a way. Yeah, I think we're satisfied. We really love this book and what it accomplishes. And it does make room, as you said at the outset, in the Madeline Cayman model for something different to come next. When I conceived of the Jemima code, my editor pointed that out to me that I didn't have to try to squeeze it all into one volume. But sometimes when you're your first publishing project, you're so excited, but you're also a little, and I'm sure more, can speak to this, you're concerned that you won't get another chance. Like, what if they don't like it? And this was my only shot. And so I need to front load this with as much content as possible. You know, he just said, relax, there's going to be more to come on this content. So then my second editor said, and you want people to love cooking from your book. The stories are important, and they are the introduction, they are what get people enticed. But some people are just going to go straight for the recipe, especially here an American test kitchen audience that isn't as accustomed to finding this type of storytelling. They will be interested in the other part of the head note, which tells why a recipe works. That's very familiar. And the technique is important. Maybe there'll be some subtlety in the fact that there's technique and woman history and a recipe that you can just take away and realize there's all those variables in rice pudding. Yeah, I was thinking that like it's, you know, it's basically you're enticing people with these biscuits or fried chicken, but then delivering a little bit of a great storytelling and maybe learning some uncomfortable truth. There's so much delicious food in here. Yeah, I think for the audience, it's actually done really beautifully, like the balance of everything and the way that the information is presented. In the past, we've talked about like the UX or the user experience of cookbooks. And this is such a like UX nerd kind of book in a way where there's just the way content is delivered. And it's done in a way that yeah, the recipes are the hero in a sense, but this information is alongside in a way that I think it's really inviting. Well, the production team and the editors for the brand were our first line. Audience, wouldn't you say Morgan? Like this is a community that is not accustomed to producing a book at this level. So we didn't really have that back up. We knew if we crawled out on a limb, four or five of us were out on that limb sort of together. I mean, we knew that they were going to say this doesn't feel good or this feels a little scary. Like we expected them to do that. And when they didn't, I know I personally questioned, okay, does that just mean they're leaning on maybe my success and knowing that I crawl out on these limbs and it's been okay. Like I had no idea why, other than, you know, Morgan was maybe because it's just that good. She's that person in the office, which is great. But yeah, they were our first audience and their responses helped us develop more and more confidence along the way as they were reading it. There was more white space originally, and then as we had to cut in terms of what's called as much of that white space as we could. So we tried to keep all the photos as much as possible. Like Tony alluded, our photographer, but the majority of the book is this guy's deep place who is so talented. And we thought a lot with him about like sense of place. So we really don't want to cut photos if we didn't need to because we want to be really representative in our photography of capturing the feel plus just like a beautiful photo in a cookbook. You don't want to cut that. Right. But white space, originally we wanted to work. And is this a new direction for the cookbooks for ATK? I think it's probably still TBD, but we're definitely branching out. And I think that company is being very purposeful. We have this really cool book coming out, Uma, that's actually a woman who works on our social media team, Sarah On, and she is like working and writing this book with her mom and they're talking about their Korean heritage. And like so it has some of the same storytelling angle. I mean, Kevin paying in his dad sort of did something similar, but like they both have very, very different feels. Like that's probably even just like their personalities are very different. So we're definitely branching out more into this sort of storytelling and like familial angle. And then like this book in and of itself is more of this like crowdsourced feel. I mean, I know it's an exhausting process, but I would love to do another. But I think it'll probably depend over the next few years on how things evolve. But I think it's least like Tony alluded to this, like the magazine is other, like the other big project we have, like this country has the bi-monthly magazine. And we're definitely using some of this model to like bring it back to the magazine. We've been doing that subtly, but like we're using the book to really help kind of bring that forward too. So like, I don't know that we'll get to do a book exactly like this again, though maybe hopefully. But I think it's at least a model for other platforms for us, which is really nice. Lessons learned from this project that can be used going forward in the magazine publishing. Tony, it must have been, I don't know, the difference between working as a solo author on your other books and then working with this very crowded masthead with the team there. I'm not sure what my question is here, but if you have to say anything about that experience. Well, the beauty of working in a collaborative space is that as Morgan says, this project is rooted in the magazine. I mean, I did come with several agenda items and goals that I had for ways that I wanted to change and improve on the model for Cook's country that had already been, the foundation that had already been laid. And what that involved was sourcing at every level. So what you see on our TV show is a segment with me that is strictly about the history of an ingredient or a method, you know, a point of origin for a recipe. And that was our initial foreway into this area and realizing that we needed to be sensitive, that the TV viewer was not accustomed to having their cooking instruction layered on with all of that information. They're there to learn how to make a recipe efficiently, but they were accustomed to cutaways where they learned something else. They learned about an equipment, a piece of equipment or reviewed some ingredients. And so it was a natural connection between what I was talking about in the library and what was happening on on set in the kitchen. So we did that for the TV show, we started doing it more for the magazine, which is really just a freelance model, bringing in more outside voices. So between those two projects, the magazine and the TV show, creating a book that was a combination of all of that, the sweet spot of both of those things, that's essentially what we have here now is we've built a brand that exists within the America's test kitchen brand, which is rooted in kitchen efficiency and knowledge that makes you a more creative cook. That is still pervasive across what we do. What we're adding is now just the part that's important to me, which is helping you realize that recipes don't make themselves as I'm fond of saying, they start with someone, and then you can change them and adapt them as you like, once you've learned the basics. And that's what we're teaching people now at Cook's country is where it came from, so that you maybe have some frame of reference for how you would like to change it. You know, if you understand that it originated in the West, maybe you'll pick up a Western ingredient, hence the addition of Patty. She speaks about the borderlands. And that's just as important as part of the American story. This was really exciting to look through. I actually didn't know what to expect until I started looking at it, and I was delighted. I'm curious about that. If you don't mind, I can't help myself. When you saw it, and you had the reference to Madeleine Cayman, what did you expect when you opened it? Well, I guess my first understanding of the book was it. It was a new book from ATK, and then Southern book. I think that speaks to Molly's question to me about, you know, the editing process, and that each one of those entities comes with its own strengths and identity and brand. Totally. Morgan's a separate brand from me and ATK, and I have blended in a Venn diagram kind of way. But everyone that you mentioned there that's on that cover, there's a level of expectation for you to enter into this content. There's a way for you to come in. You can come in as an ATK consumer, right? And you know you're going to get something that ATK delivers. There may be some other frosting on that cake, but you know you're going to get something that's familiar to you. And my consumers will have an expectation as well, that there will be honesty and representation. And stories. And stories. And Morgan's group is going to know that women were an important part. And there is a Venn diagram at which point we all converge in this material. But individually, we each have an area of expertise. And that's I think was so amazing too, that you can sense in a book like this. The culinary rigor combined with that storytelling and historical rigor really neat. My big question was how, how it would work and how these recipes would, how it would all weave together. And it does. I feel that it's, and I mean, I've spent a couple of days with it, and I feel like I've just started to dip into it. I mean, there's so much more there and that you could dip into it and make a delicious angel biscuit, or you could fall deep into the stories and do both at the same time. It's also not chronological like my work. You know, you really need to start my work at the first chapter, the intro, understand what I'm about to tell you. It's very journalistic. Tell them what you're going to tell them, tell them, and then tell them you told them. Yeah. This book doesn't do that. This book allows you to enter at whatever place is comfortable for you. So I think that's critically important for the ATK consumer that's not expecting this level of context. So that if they really love biscuits and they're just going to jump in and make the pat in the pan biscuit, they're already with us. Yeah. And so if they drift over and get the story, that just layers in their appreciation for America's Test Kitchen's ability to serve their needs and passions. Right. While the biscuits are baking, you need to slide bar. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. That's why I was thinking about the UX. People could just dip in at any page, you know. The other thing I was saying, we were talking about the contributors and your list of women that you wanted to contribute, whether it was through an essay or through an interview, there are also people who are no longer with us who are very involved in this book as well, the stories that you tell that are woven through historical figures who've contributed to the women who've contributed to the foods in the South. So that's another piece that's another layer. It's good analogy all the somewhere about the southern layer cakes. That's right. And you know, the history of the some of the women that were chosen, certainly the ones that I engaged with a lot in my years in the South, their story might have been informed by a conversation we had. It's not the actual story that they deliver, but I knew from engaging with them, from crying with them, from our personal experiences, they were the one to tell the story, even if they didn't fully know that. Patty and I appeared on a program once where we talked about the challenges of existing in this industry, and she spoke about our accent. And that was the story I shared with Morgan. Now how that converts into a recipe story, where she's not talking about that, is part of the beauty of the work. But that's the kernel that began for me in the conversations with Morgan that allows Morgan to start to see that through recipe development and how the two things work so beautifully together, then that triggers the author to sort through in their own way, what's emotional to them, what do they feel is important to share to the public. But they know we've had this conversation, you know, and what my, you know, how I chose them. It was interesting. It's some of it we would never be able to explain. It's just part of that woman's intuition thing that seems mysterious, but can be very intentional and smart. 100%. Great. Well, thank you so much for your time and congratulations. Thank you. It was wonderful to hear from you both. Thank you. Thank you. We're very excited about it. 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 leave us a review. It really helps. Any books mentioned in the show can be found on our affiliate page at bookshop.org. Thanks as always to our editor, Abby Circatella. Until next time, keep on writing, reading, and cooking.
Kristin and Molly speak about the newest release from America's Test Kitchen "When Southern Women Cook" with its editor, Morgan Bolling, and its forward writer, Toni Tipton-Martin. This is a newer format for ATK so Morgan and Toni share its journey from idea to publication, where the concept and title came from and how late night conversations inspired its creation. They talk about working with a historical consultant, the process of balancing over 300 recipes with all of the contributing essays and how it was almost split into two volumes. They share the lessons learned for the future, how investigative curiosity is involved in both recipe development and story writing and the pride they felt in bringing the expertise of so many individuals to this project.
