Salt & Spine

"And so you're asking a lot of somebody who's reading a cookbook. You're kind of engaging them, you know, head, heart, and hands, really. It's this very different way of relating to a book than you are to an art book. And that's why I love designing cookbooks because there's a creative aspect to it, but there's also a very practical aspect, too. And you have to kind of keep that balance in mind whenever you're designing." —Frances Baca, book designer and creative director

This is the third episode in our four-part series, Behind the Spine. In this series, we've shifted focus away from the authors to hear from some of the talented folks who work behind the scenes to create the beautiful cookbooks that we all love.  

You’ve already heard from the recipe testers and photographers, and today we’ll hear from the folks who bring that content together into one book: the graphic designers. 

We’ll start with a peek into the mind of Frances Baca. She’ll teach us about typographic details that can set a book apart from the rest, how she begins a new design project, and the characteristics that make cookbook design special. Frances designed her first cookbook at 7 years old: “Snacks,” the homemade cookbook, featured a green construction paper cover with a yarn binding. Frances has always known that she wanted to design books—and not just cookbooks, though that’s what we’ll focus on today. She studied design at Rhode Island School of Design, where she learned to pay close attention to the minuscule details that can make books so special. She talks about sticking up for her readers and the unique challenge of designing a cookbook, which she says ought to be a multi-sensory experience. Because cookbooks are also practical books that we use in our day-to-day lives, Frances stresses the importance of accessibility in her work: everything from making the font large enough to read to ensuring the spine lays flat on the countertop.

You’ll also hear from San Francisco-based artist and graphic designer, George McCalman whose work spans different industries, though he focuses mostly on clients in food media and the art world. He opened the doors to his own design studio, McCalman Co. in 2011, where he works on branding for clients and does projects like cookbook design. Prior to starting his own business, he worked for award-winning magazines including ReadyMade, Mother Jones, and Entertainment Weekly. Today, we zoom in on his design process for Black Food, the first publication for author Bryant Terry’s imprint, 4 Color Books. George talks to us about flipping the traditional design model upside down, facilitating collaboration between all the folks on the creative team, and how he sees himself as a graphic designer: as a steward of information.

"I put myself in there so people of color can imagine themselves in the kitchen, making those dishes—because food is for everyone to cook. It's not restricted to a certain class of the population. I want everybody who wants to cook to be able to see themselves making things, enjoying them, and trying new things." –Nik Sharma, cookbook author and photographer

Today's episode, part two in our Behind the Spine series, is all about the mouthwatering photography that draws us to our favorite cookbooks.

Our guests today are cookbook photographer Eva Kolenko and Nik Sharma, a cookbook author and photographer.

Eva Kolenko studied advertising photography and worked in editorial photography until eight years ago when she decided to transition into food photography. After shooting a couple of William Sonoma cookbooks, she moved full-time into doing food-centric photography work. Now, she’s shot more than 30 cookbooks, including East Bay Cooks and Food Between Friends. Her work has also been featured in many advertising campaigns and magazines. Eva joined our interview from her new studio in Petaluma, California, and shared with us how exactly she moved into food photography, what happens when she hits a creative block, and she breaks down the process of photographing a cookbook from brainstorming to wrap day.

‍Nik Sharma is a cookbook author, food blogger, writer, and photographer of his own cookbooks, Season: Big Flavors, Beautiful Food, and The Flavor Equation: The Science of Great Cooking Explained in More Than 100 Essential Recipes. Nik began food blogging while he was still working full-time as a molecular biologist. He had always taken photos for his blog, but he started to realize that he wanted to improve his photography skills and bought an instructional book published by Kodak. When Nik got his first cookbook deal, he knew he wanted to photograph and style the book, but had no idea how to get started. So, he reached out to photographers until one agreed to let him shadow a project—and that photographer happened to be Eva Kolenko. Now, Nik has successfully shot all the photos for his blog and his two cookbooks, as well as many photos for his recipes that have appeared in numerous food publications from the New York Times to Serious Eats.

We've got a great episode for you today! Eva and Nik will talk about the trends they’re seeing in the industry, what types of things they’re thinking about when they’re shooting a recipe, and how the process unfolds, from mood board to publication.

"No matter how perfectly the recipes are written, no matter how accurate you are with all the measurements—it's a different person, in a different place, using different ingredients so that they end up with something slightly different. And I used to think that that was a problem, that that was something I was trying to account for and correct in the testing and in the recipe writing. But I actually now see it as a really beautiful thing ." —Maria Zizka, recipe tester & developer

Today's episode is the first in our four-part series Behind the Spine where we're stepping away from a focus on authors to hear from some of the other talented folks who help create the cookbooks that we all love. Our series will start where most cookbooks begin: with the recipes and the people who perfect them. Our guests today are two incredible recipe testers and developers, Maria Zizka and Lidey Heuck.

Maria Zizka is the author of three solo cookbooks and the co-author of numerous award-winning cookbooks like Yotam Ottolenghi's Flavor and Tartine: A Classic Revisited. You'll hear from Maria and what it's like to adapt a restaurant's complex recipes for the home kitchen and where she got her start testing recipes –with a letter to chef Suzanne Goin.

Lidey Heuck started working as a recipe tester by writing a letter. Just out of college, she started as Ina Garten's assistant, where she tested and helped develop many of the Barefoot Contessa's recipes. Lidey talked to us about her work with Ina Garten as well as her own process as a cook and a recipe writer for the New York Times and for her blog lideylikes.com. She's currently writing her debut cookbook.

Lidey and Maria will get into the nitty-gritty details of recipe writing, how to know when a recipe is finished, and give us some tips on finding the best recipes out there.

Today's episode is the first in our four-part series Behind the Spine where we're stepping away from a focus on authors to hear from some of the other talented folks who help create the cookbooks that we all love. Our series will start where most cookbooks begin with the recipes and the people who perfect them. Our guests today are two incredible recipe testers and developers: Maria Zizka and Lidey Hueck.

Maria Ziska is the author of three solo cookbooks and the co-author of numerous award-winning cookbooks like Ottolenghi's Flavor and Tartine: A Classic Revisited. You'll hear from Maria and what it's like to adapt a restaurant's complex recipes to the home kitchen and where she got her start testing recipes –with a letter to chef Suzanne Goin.

Lidey Hueck also started working as a recipe tester by writing a letter. Just out of college she started as Ina Garten's assistant and confidant. At first, she just managed her social media, but the role quickly grew, and together with Ina Lidey tested and helped develop all of the Barefoot Contessa's recipes. Lidey talked to us about her work with Ina Garten, of course, but she also shares with us about her own process as a cook and a recipe writer for the New York Times and for her blog lideylikes.com. She's currently writing her debut cookbook. Lidey and Maria will get into the nitty-gritty details of recipe writing how to know when a recipe is finished and finally they'll give us some tips on finding the best recipes out there.

Maria and Lidey joined us remotely for this week’s show to #TalkCookbooks.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This week, we're excited to welcome Zoe Adjonyoh to Salt + Spine, the podcast on stories behind cookbooks.

Zoe Adjonyoh is the chef and founder of Zoe’s Ghana Kitchen, a pop-up restaurant/supper club that’s taken place in various places around the world—from London, where Zoe lives, to Berlin and New York. Zoe’s Ghana Kitchen has grown into a distributor of African ingredients and spices.

In 2014, Zoe gathered her work as a writer and chef together, bringing recipes from her experiences in Ghana and running her supper club together in her debut cookbook, Zoe’s Ghana Kitchen. The book was recently re-issued and adapted for an American audience.

Zoe’s well-received pop-up first started out as a way to fund her masters in writing from Goldsmiths, University of London, but the supper club took of and ultimately helped inspire her to find more exciting recipes and to learn more about Ghanaian cuisine that she was cooking. In 2014, Zoe visited Ghana where she set out to learn more about the local cuisine and the ingredients that inspire it. While there, she found the recipes and stories that later came to make up her cookbook and deepened her knowledge of Ghanaian food and culinary traditions.

Zoe includes soundtracks with her recipes to invoke a sense of place and flesh out the experience of Ghanaian cuisine. The book includes an extensive guide to ingredients, educating readers about the spices and flavors that are central to Ghanaian food. From cover to cover, the cookbook is filled with colorful pictures of mouthwatering dishes and insightful tips scrawled on each recipe. The book, as Zoe says, is an invitation to learn more about Ghanaian food and to bring the ingredients of West Africa into our day-to-day cooking.

Zoe joined us remotely for this week’s show to #TalkCookbooks, including our signature culinary game.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This week, we're excited to welcome Zoe Adjonyoh to Salt + Spine, the podcast on stories behind cookbooks.

Zoe Adjonyoh is the chef and founder of Zoe’s Ghana Kitchen, a pop-up restaurant/supper club that’s taken place in various places around the world—from London, where Zoe lives, to Berlin and New York. Zoe’s Ghana Kitchen has grown into a distributor of African ingredients and spices.

In 2014, Zoe gathered her work as a writer and chef together, bringing recipes from her experiences in Ghana and running her supper club together in her debut cookbook, Zoe’s Ghana Kitchen. The book was recently re-issued and adapted for an American audience.

START COOKING TODAY: Bookshop | Hardcover Cook | IndieBound

Zoe’s well-received pop-up first started out as a way to fund her masters in writing from Goldsmiths, University of London, but the supper club took of and ultimately helped inspire her to find more exciting recipes and to learn more about Ghanaian cuisine that she was cooking. In 2014, Zoe visited Ghana where she set out to learn more about the local cuisine and the ingredients that inspire it. While there, she found the recipes and stories that later came to make up her cookbook and deepened her knowledge of Ghanaian food and culinary traditions.

Zoe includes soundtracks with her recipes to invoke a sense of place and flesh out the experience of Ghanaian cuisine. The book includes an extensive guide to ingredients, educating readers about the spices and flavors that are central to Ghanaian food. From cover to cover, the cookbook is filled with colorful pictures of mouthwatering dishes and insightful tips scrawled on each recipe. The book, as Zoe says, is an invitation to learn more about Ghanaian food and to bring the ingredients of West Africa into our day-to-day cooking.

Zoe joined us remotely for this week’s show to #TalkCookbooks, including our signature culinary game.

"Food plays into the rural experience in a really interesting way. I think my personal experience is unique because I grew up in a very rural place. I felt shame around being from there, then I moved to a city. I've very much considered myself urban, and then I moved back and have made most of my adult life in this rural place. So I really kind of understand the sensibilities of both groups. … When we have pride in ourselves and our place, then we feel as if we want to invest in that more, whether it's emotionally or financially. Being rural really is a win-win for everyone, and food is so important here."

This week, we're excited to welcome Vivian Howard to Salt + Spine, the podcast on stories behind cookbooks.

Vivian wears many hats: mom, chef, storyteller, television personality—all of which you’ll hear more about it in our conversation. Most recently, Vivian is the author of her second cookbook, This Will Make It Taste Good: A New Path to Simple Cooking.‍

Vivian was born in a rural town in North Carolina called Deep Run, which was the inspiration for her first cookbook: Deep Run Roots. She describes the first book as a love letter to a place—different from her latest book, which is focused on simple home cooking and easy tricks and ingredients to brighten up tried and true recipes. 

As a kid, Vivian says she couldn’t wait to leave Deep Run and dreamt of living in the city. She moved to New York after college to work in restaurants as a server and later a cook. Though Vivian moved to New York to become a writer, she ended up opening a soup delivery business with her now-husband. And even though she was offered investment to open a brick-and-mortar soup shop, Vivian returned to North Carolina to help her sister open a deli. It wasn’t long before Vivian switched gears: the town needed a restaurant with seasonal ingredients, an innovative menu, and one that paid homage to the beauty of Southern cooking. So, Vivian opened her restaurant, Chef and the Farmer. 

START COOKING TODAY: Omnivore Books | Bookshop | Hardcover Cook | IndieBound | Amazon

Vivian hosted five seasons of "A Chef’s Life" on PBS and launched a new show, "Somewhere South," in 2020, which dives deep into the culinary culture and tradition of the American South.

Today, Vivian runs multiple restaurants: Chef and the Farmer is still running in Kinston, serving food inspired by the culinary traditions of the South; Benny’s Big Time, a pizzeria, in Wilmington that serves up pies, pasta, and risottos; her latest venture in Charleston, called Lenoir, focuses on bringing Southern food into the future, evolving the food of the agricultural, rural south. 

Vivian joined us remotely for this week’s show to #TalkCookbooks, including our signature culinary game. Plus, Kitchen Correspondent Sarah Varney cooks from Vivian's latest book with a friend across the globe.

This week, we're excited to welcome Vivian Howard to Salt + Spine, the podcast on stories behind cookbooks.

Vivian wears many hats: mom, chef, storyteller, television personality—all of which you’ll hear more about it in our conversation. Most recently, Vivian is the author of her second cookbook, This Will Make It Taste Good: A New Path to Simple Cooking.‍

Vivian was born in a rural town in North Carolina called Deep Run, which was the inspiration for her first cookbook: Deep Run Roots. She describes the first book as a love letter to a place—different from her latest book, which is focused on simple home cooking and easy tricks and ingredients to brighten up tried and true recipes. 

As a kid, Vivian says she couldn’t wait to leave Deep Run and dreamt of living in the city. She moved to New York after college to work in restaurants as a server and later a cook. Though Vivian moved to New York to become a writer, she ended up opening a soup delivery business with her now-husband. And even though she was offered investment to open a brick-and-mortar soup shop, Vivian returned to North Carolina to help her sister open a deli. It wasn’t long before Vivian switched gears: the town needed a restaurant with seasonal ingredients, an innovative menu, and one that paid homage to the beauty of Southern cooking. So, Vivian opened her restaurant, Chef and the Farmer. 

Vivian is the host of "A Chef’s Life" on PBS (now in its 6th season) and launched a new show, "Somewhere South," in 2020, which dives deep into the culinary culture and tradition of the American South.

Today, Vivian runs multiple restaurants: Chef and the Farmer is still running in Kinston, serving food inspired by the culinary traditions of the South; Benny’s Big Time, a pizzeria, in Wilmington serves up pies, pastas and risottos; her latest venture in Charleston, called Lenoir, focuses on bringing Southern food into the future, evolving the food of the agricultural, rural south. 

Vivian joined us remotely for this week’s show to #TalkCookbooks, including our signature culinary game.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This week, we're excited to welcome Vallery Lomas to Salt + Spine, the podcast on stories behind cookbooks.

Vallery grew up in Southern Louisiana, learning to cook from her mother and grandmothers—her signature dish as a child was her Grandmother Leona’s Strawberry Delight—but she didn’t always plan to be a baker. Vallery went to USC to study pre-med, and it was only because of a requirement to study foreign languages that she stumbled into learning French and eventually abandoned the pre-med track for French and Psychology. Vallery graduated into the recession of 2008 and finding a job was difficult. The job she landed wasn’t the best fit, so she turned to blogging about baking after seeing "Julie & Julia."

The blogging led to more opportunities and stars aligned when she was cast for "The Great American Baking Show," which she won. The season, however, was never aired in response to sexual harassment allegations against one of the hosts—and Valley's victory was essentially swept under the rug. Vallery writes in her book: “My victory, like so many accomplishments of Black women who came before me, had been effectively erased. … I couldn’t help but think I was seen as a cheap victim. If I weren’t a woman—a Black woman—would I have been treated differently?”

But Vallery didn’t let this stop her. Instead, she pivoted full time into food media and recently published her first cookbook, “Life is What You Bake It.” In today’s conversation, we discuss making the switch from practicing law to full-time food writer and baker, what it was like to find out that her biggest accomplishment to date would never air on television, and some practical and encouraging advice from one home baker to others.

Vallery joined us remotely for this week’s show to #TalkCookbooks, including our signature culinary game.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

"I just thought about so many Black women who came before me who have been cooking amazing food in this country for centuries and how we don't know their names. But the stories of the women I do know in my family—my great-great aunt, my two grandmothers, my mother—I could tell the stories that I do know about them. So that was just crucial for me and, you know, it was very emotional as I was writing it."

This week, we're excited to welcome Vallery Lomas to Salt + Spine, the podcast on stories behind cookbooks.

Vallery grew up in Southern Louisiana, learning to cook from her mother and grandmothers—her signature dish as a child was her Grandmother Leona’s Strawberry Delight—but she didn’t always plan to be a baker. Vallery went to USC to study pre-med, and it was only because of a requirement to study foreign languages that she stumbled into learning French and eventually abandoned the pre-med track for French and Psychology. Vallery graduated into the recession of 2008 and finding a job was difficult. The job she landed wasn’t the best fit, so she turned to blogging about baking after seeing "Julie & Julia."

The blogging led to more opportunities and stars aligned when she was cast for "The Great American Baking Show," which she won. The season, however, was never aired in response to sexual harassment allegations against one of the hosts—and Valley's victory was essentially swept under the rug. Vallery writes in her book: “My victory, like so many accomplishments of Black women who came before me, had been effectively erased. … I couldn’t help but think I was seen as a cheap victim. If I weren’t a woman—a Black woman—would I have been treated differently?”

START COOKING TODAY: Omnivore Books | Bookshop | IndieBound | Amazon

But Vallery didn’t let this stop her. Instead, she pivoted full time into food media and recently published her first cookbook, Life is What You Bake It. In today’s conversation, we discuss making the switch from practicing law to full-time food writer and baker, what it was like to find out that her biggest accomplishment to date would never air on television, and some practical and encouraging advice from one home baker to others.

Vallery joined us remotely for this week’s show to #TalkCookbooks, including our signature culinary game.