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A cook book with the magic ingredient of reading recommendations • A Little Library Year by Kate Young
Now you may be someone who prefers to spend your time reading rather than cooking, but what if there was a cookbook that enabled you to do both? It was with joy that we discovered Kate Young’s Little Library Series (The Little Library Cookbook, The Little Library Year and The Little Library Christmas), for they offer recipes that take their inspiration from Kate’s rich reading life. These are books with two indexes, one of things to eat, the other of things to read.
It might be a recipe for French toast inspired by Maria Semple’s comic novel Where d’You Go Bernadette? (which we once did for Kate’s book club, pre-podcast days, and in the spirit of Seattle where the novel is set we made Clam Chowder), or lemon verbena lemonade to accompany the perfect picnic inspired by Charles Ryder and Sebastian Flyte lounging on the lawn together in Brideshead Revisited.
There’s even a section on apocalypse cuisine, which has some helpful tin-based recipes to liven up your lockdown.
Listen in as Kate tells us more about how she came to intertwine her two passions, reading and food. Plus it wouldn’t be The Book Club Review without lots of book discussion and a wealth of reading recommendations.
Have a listen and feel inspired. And tell us, what’s a memorable food scene in a book that you love? Kate promises that once you start noticing food in books, it will always jump out at you.
Book recommendations
Midnight Chicken by Ella Risbriger
A Half-Baked Idea by Olivia Potts
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
The Stranding by Kate Sawyer
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
The Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
The Song of Achilles by Madeleine Miller
Real Life by Brandon Taylor
Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Red, White and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
Babette’s Feast by Isak Dinesen
Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid.
Notes
Find out all about Kate’s books and upcoming projects at her website The Little Library Cafe.
If you want to see Kate’s very first blog post, featuring her treacle tart, you can find it here.
Watch Kate recreating recipes from Winnie The Pooh, Northern Lights and Anna Karenina.
