Turshen’s new cookbook, ‘Simply Julia, gets wonderfully personal
Best-selling cookbook author Julia Turshen concentrates on the raw material of each recipe – ingredients, utensils and ounces. But behind the food is something else.
“I’ve always been drawn to cookbooks because I think they’re this remarkable way to share stories,” she says. “I think food is just a vehicle for these stories.”
By that measure, her latest offering, “Simply Julia,” is as close to an autobiography as a cookbook can be, from her handwritten recipe titles to the inclusion of old family snapshots, photographs of her at home, essays and a peek into her life with every dish.
“The thing that weaves them all together is that they all really have a very personal story attached to them,” she says by phone from her home in New York’s Hudson Valley.
The book is a compilation of 110 healthy comfort dishes, from turkey shepherd’s pie to Hasselback carrots. There are 87 vegetarian recipes, 42 vegan ones, a chapter on chicken dishes, and egg-free and gluten-free options. They require no hard-to-find ingredients.
“What concerns me is that I think a lot of people see more difficult, more time-consuming, more expensive ingredient cooking and think that is somehow the goal,” she says. “Food doesn’t have to be difficult or complicated to be good.”
Each dish has a strong tie to the people and places close to Turshen’s heart. There’s a mushroom and barley soup that is her dad’s favorite, a stew from her mother-in-law, cookies from a close friend, and dishes inspired by an aunt and grandparents.
Turshen reveals the muffins she likes after a run, a drink adopted from her childhood babysitter, and sweet and salty peanuts that mimic a taste from her days living in New York City. Readers learn what five spices she considers musts, and the five things always in her fridge.
Many of the dishes celebrate a tie to her wife, Grace; Turshen hears from many gay women about how affirming it is to see such relationships mentioned in print.
“That is part of why I