The Making of My Paris Kitchen

My Paris Kitchen is finally here! It’s taken me a few years to get to this day, and I thought I’d give you a little look behind-the-scenes of how the book was created. There’s a certain amount of conversation about blogs versus cookbooks, and since I have a foot in both, I am keenly aware of the connection between the two, but also what makes them different.

There’s a lot of talk about whether food blogs are overtaking traditional cookbooks. What’s changing – in my view – is that people are looking for something else in a cookbook – not just collections of recipes, which can be found online, but a storyline that carries the book. I read blogs when I’m sitting in front of my computer, but I love settling into a chair (or cozy bed) with a good cookbook, and reading all the stories that accompany the recipes.

So when people ask me, “What’s your book about?” I answer that it’s a story about how I cook in Paris – where I shop, how I find ingredients, the friends I like to cook with, as well as recipes from Parisian friends, chefs, and pastry chefs, with plenty of photos (and stories) of the outdoor markets, pastry shops, bread bakeries, bistros, and cafés. The book starts with recipes and stories for l’heure de l’apéro (cocktail hour), and goes through soups, salads, and main courses, before heading to dessert, ending with a spectacular bûche de Noël, that concludes the year across France on a sweet note.

In addition to showing the spectacular city of Paris, I also wanted to highlight its diversity through visits to some of the ethnic neighborhoods, presenting some of the multicultural recipes I picked up there, which Parisians have embraced. Unlike the other regions of France, Paris is a mix of cultures and cuisines – there are very few things that are “Parisian cuisine” since so many residents of the city have come from other parts of France, and the rest of the world. Like me.

So there are recipes and stories from Provence, the Jura, as well as North Africa and yes, even the United States. You’ll see me eating my first sandwich merguez stuffed with frites (finally!), as well as rifling through boxes at the flea market, scoring kale at the marché bio (organic market), and sitting down to everything from a warm chocolate cake with salted butter caramel sauce from a favorite bistro (with the chef’s recipe and secret technique for dialing up the chocolate flavor), to an exhaustive search for the best way to make madeleines with that picture-perfect hump – with two recipes, and notes – that explain the madness in my method.

Writing a book is an all-consuming process, at least for me. My Paris Kitchenstarted out as a non-cookbook proposal that took me nearly eight months to write. People who want to write a book are always astonished when I tell them that it takes that long (at least it takes me that long), to write a proposal. But it’s the most important part of the cookbook process. It’s where you clarify and distill your ideas, and create your vision of the book. And in turn, it allows the publisher to grasp your idea of your book, who you are, and the intended audience.

(Publishers aren’t always right. My ice cream book was turned down by a major publisher because, they told me, I didn’t have my own show on Food Network. I had taught a class and was surprised when so many people raised their hands when I asked who makes their own ice cream. I did some research as well for the proposal, noticing that an ice cream maker was the #1 best-selling kitchen appliance on Amazon, so another publisher – the one who is my current publisher – snapped it up. And it’s probably my best-selling book. So it pays to persevere if you love your subject, and are sure you have a good idea on your hands.)

After I sent the publisher at Ten Speed Press the proposal I had slaved over, he sent me a message: “You should do a book of recipes about how you cook. What is your Paris cooking?”

Grrr, eight months down the drain. But as a writer, sometimes you write and write and write for hours, thinking you came up with something brilliant. Then you go back and reread it the next day, and delete the whole thing. And start all over again.

So I rewrote the proposal, using a title that Aaron Wehner, the publisher, came up with – My Paris Kitchen – as my guide, and that was that. I’d written several other books in my tiny Paris kitchen, in my charming but – um, very tiny rooftop apartment. Around the same time I signed the book contract, I was signing a contract to buy my first apartment in Paris, and getting ready to embark on what I thought would be a relatively straightforward renovation. The contractor told me it would take two months and because I used to believe what people told me, I didn’t think anything of it, and went to work on the book.

As they say, expect everything to take twice as long, and cost twice as much. But, of course, I’m the exception to the rule and the renovation went on for about 1 1/2 years. During that time, anything that could go wrong, did. And then some.

Over a year-and-a-half later, after I had to put my entire life on hiatus – including the book (all my things were stored under a giant plastic tarp that was covered with a thick layer of dust, which I was afraid to move, and I had no idea where anything was) – I finally forced my way into my half-finished apartment, got someone to fix what could be fixed (I won’t go into detail, but if it wasn’t for the competent contractor mentioned on page 94, I most likely wouldn’t be alive today), and got back to the book I had started.

via:http://www.davidlebovitz.com/2014/04/the-making-of-my-paris-kitchen-cookbook/