Devon Walsh
editorial portfolio
Food Book Fair Profiles and Book Release Announcements
Brandon Baltzley
Who is Brandon Baltzley? A better question might be who isn’t he? The travelling chef, heavy metal musician, or writer—depending on the day, or maybe even the hour—hales from Louisiana and started cooking in restaurants when he was nine. It’s no secret that Baltzley lives fast, discussing his turbulent personal history with alcoholism and addiction in his memoir NINE LIVES, out May 2. The chef will add small restaurant mogul to his CV come 2014 with the opening of TMIP, a self-sustaining, solar-powered, farm-straight to-table-because the farm is run by the people who own the table, eatery in Michigan City, Indiana. But if you can’t wait a year, Baltzley will join forces with Ed Quish of Egg on Saturday, May 4 for an FBF, Southern-influenced, seasonal tasting event that you won’t want to miss!
Old School Comfort Food Book Release
OLD SCHOOL COMFORT FOOD: THE WAY I LEARNED TO COOK, like its author Alex Guarnaschelli, marries elegance with comfort, fusing the highbrow with the low. It may seem a little odd that the executive chef at exclusive Manhattan hotspots Butter and The Darby, who learned her craft in France and worked under three-star Michelin chef Guy Savoy, and then Daniel Boulud, would feel the need to write about comfort food. Yet, the chef’s narrative is one in which relatively modest beginnings—she’s the daughter of a cookbook editor after all—served as the foundation for all her later success.
With the cookbook, New York City native Guarnaschelli intends to capture her “old school” origins, saying in the introduction that, “these recipes, and my story, are old school because they are recipes that started something in me…that became a common thread in my own cooking.” Guarnaschelli’s exploration of her past gracefully illuminates the idea that each chef’s expertise wouldn’t exist were it not for years of discovery and external influence, reminding us that no chef is an island. Share in her memories today!
Fredrik Berselius
Swedish wunderkind Fredrik Berselius has everyone talking. Even after a year, the founder and chef at Williamsburg’s intimate Aska, continues to elicit a bevy of reviews triumphing his urban forager ways. The expert scavenger recognizes likenesses between the flora native to his Scandinavian homeland and that of New York State. With these parallels in mind, he creates seasonal tasting menus from ingredients found in his immediate vicinity, transforming dishes influenced by his Swedish past into something fresh and repurposed for the Brooklyn table. And apparently it’s working. Berselius will consider his unique epicurean approach for us when he serves on our Food + Foraging Panel, this May 3!
Family Table Book Release
Ever wondered what goes on behind the scenes at your favorite restaurant before the doors open for business? Shockingly enough, the staff, just like the customers they serve, needs to eat. The best “family meals,” as staff meals are often deemed, eliminate the margins between the workplace, and the home. In enjoying a meal together as a “family” at the workplace, these gatherings cultivate a unified team that, hopefully, facilitates impeccable service later on in the evening when things start to get stressful.
Michael Romano and Karen Stabiner’s FAMILY TABLE captures the essence of the staff meal by collecting recipes from almost 50 contributors of all ranks: from sous chefs, to prep cooks, to classically trained master chefs. Affordable renditions of recipes from Korea to Mexico, and everywhere in between, make this behind-the-scenes creation a delicious taste of restaurant life that you’ll want to pervade your home kitchen. Pick up a copy tomorrow, April 2nd!
Caitlin Freeman Profile and Book Release
On the heels of her first book, co-authored with her husband, Caitlin Freeman in-house pastry chef at Blue Bottle employs her classically trained photographer’s eye in the craft of her edible masterpieces. When Blue Bottle coffee, opened a location atop San Francisco’s SFMoMA Freeman’s fantasies were realized! She drew from the Warhol, Lichtenstein, Kahlo and her favorite Thiebaud—to name just a few—teeming from the surrounding galleries to conceive of her now famed modern art-inspired desserts.
The delightful result included Mondrian cakes, Kahlo cookies, Katharina Fritsch ice cream sandwiches, and white hot chocolate influenced by Koons. But, unlike the untouchable works that are suspended imposingly along MoMA’s walls, Mrs. Freeman’s skills will be brought to life this April 16, with the release of her first solo cookbook MODERN ART DESSERTS. Freeman emphasizes the ease with which anyone, even beginner bakers, can replicate her strikingly modern, modern art desserts.
In case you need a little guidance from the master herself, the pastry artist will demonstrate her talents in person at the FBF + Modern Art Desserts event on May 4!
Lars Huse Profile
With a growing army of cafés boasting quality brewed options, and the online community providing guides that outline “How to be a Coffee Snob” a troop of self-proclaimed “coffee nerds” has happily emerged. Yet, few can call the undeniable lifeblood their muse. Norwegian illustrator Lars Kolstad Huse finds java—and craft beer too—to be so inspiring that the two beverages serve as his primary creative subject. The genuine coffee and beer geek founded Illustration and Coffee, a website and conceptual portfolio that offers “tailored solutions for all your coffee needs, be it illustration or coffee,” and authored the sleek, minimalist A-Z COFFEE, a coffee art book and conversational guide. Obviously the guy knows his stuff, and you can too when you join Huse and Oliver Strand of the NY Times, who spent two weeks in Oslo discovering the “new standard” of coffee Norwegians are establishing on the Williamsburg Coffee Crawl this May 3!