“In both cities where I live—San Francisco and Paris—robust Asian communities have seductive markets offering such enticing ingredients it’s impossible for a curious cook to remain stubbornly, foolishly Western.”
—David Tanis, A Platter of Figs and Other Recipes

Prior to their 2009 divorce, Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid collaborated on six cookbooks, glorious combinations of recipes, travelogues, history, and foodways. Both talented photographers, they shot on site, in markets, villages, farms, and side streets, creating exquisitely designed books. Together and apart, they had the ability to befriend total strangers and get invited into homes, where their requests to learn authentic dishes were granted. While the authors and their two sons are a presence in the texts, they opt for a narrative rather than central role. Instead, we see the peoples of Asia, Africa, and the Mediterranean, their homes, their kitchens, their cookware, their food. 

“This is the book we wished we had when we first started out, a how-to manual that speaks directly to farmers trying to grow food and raise animals in the city.”
—From the Introduction

Any urban dweller who has ever wished to garden, turn a lawn into a vegetable patch, or create an urban farm on an empty lot is well advised to reach for Novella Carpenter and Willow Rosenthal’s The Essential Urban Farmer. After successfully learning urban farming techniques via trial and error, the authors were besieged by calls and emails from flummoxed would-be farmers. In response, they created this comprehensive manual, offering a cornucopia of information about urban organic farming, firmly grounded in a do-it-yourself ethos. Throughout, the novice farmer is gently taken by the hand and lead into the complex world of urban farming.

LOS ANGELES — Frank DeCaro, the author of The Dead Celebrity Cookbook, is contemplating a bite of Greer Garson’s capirotada.

Dressed in a red-and-white checked shirt and a red apron with one red and one black oven mitt by his side, the former Daily Show film critic and Sirius Radio talk show host looks somewhat befuddled. He pushes his thick, black-rimmed glasses up on his nose and chews slowly.

The dish by the Oscar-winning star of the 1942 film Mrs. Miniver is a strangely archaic mix of white bread, Colby cheese, raisins and sugar-cinnamon syrup. DeCaro baked it alongside a tray of Katharine Hepburn’s brownies until it puffed into a mass of gooey cheese and gloppy bread that is reminding him of one of his favorite TV-show episodes.