Writer and food editor Ruth Reichl fills spaces between tweets with recipes

Homemade chicken stock, a basic poundcake recipe and an adventurous spirit. Those are key ingredients in Ruth Reichl’s kitchen.

“One of my true beliefs is that everyone should make chicken stock and have it in the freezer,” the New York writer and food editor told 350 foodies at a recent book signing in Healdsburg. “It’s the best insurance you’ll ever have.”

Reichl, who spent the past 40 years eating out on an expense account, has mellowed from a fiercely independent New York Times restaurant critic to an avid home cook bent on luring Americans back into the kitchen.

That transformation was accelerated in 2009 when parent publishing company Condé Nast closed Gourmet magazine while Reichl was at the helm as editor-in-chief. The result was a new cookbook, her first since 1972.

“Ruth Reichl: My Kitchen Year” chronicles the months that Reichl found herself adrift and without a job for the first time since she was 16. Retreating to her kitchen to lick her wounds and cook for her family while tweeting to her 280,000 followers, Reichl rose from the ashes of her 10-year Gourmet career by creating a hybrid book that’s part social media, part memoir and all about the recipes that helped her heal.

“It literally is what we were eating during that year,” said Reichl, in a phone interview from her home in Spencertown, N.Y., which she shares with her husband, former CBS news producer Michael Singer.

“I had the Tweets and the recipes, and I filled it in with a kind of diary.”

The 67-year-old Reichl swung through Healdsburg recently for an event sponsored by Copperfield’s Books.

Hundreds of her local fans gathered at the Raven Theater to hear her talk about her book with Sondra Bernstein, longtime Sonoma restaurateur and owner of The Girl and the Fig in Sonoma and The Fig Cafe in Glen Ellen.

“Last night I read every single page,” Bernstein told the crowd. “I can hear what she hears, smell what she smells, and taste what she tastes. She calls the poundcake the little black dress of the dessert world ... That’s all you needed to hear.”

Dressed like a true New Yorker in a short black dress with black tights, Reichl told funny stories about her past as a Berkeley co-op restaurant owner, her first restaurant reviews for New West magazine and other anecdotes from her illustrious writing-and-cooking career.

“I see the world of food first, and I always have,” Reichl said.

A select group of 80 also attended a reception beforehand at the Hotel Healdsburg, where Reichl signed copies of her books. Many were long-time fans who had read her three previous memoirs as well as her first novel, published last year.

“I read ‘Delicious!’ for my book club, and it was super fun,” said Sonia Byck-Barwick, co-owner of Paradise Ridge Winery in Santa Rosa. “For me, this is the best ... having a food writer signing books, drinking wine and having her food served. This is why we live here.”

Circe Sher, sales and marketing director for Hotel Healdsburg, arranged for the reception at the hotel where well-known New York chef Charlie Palmer opened his first Wine Country restaurant, the Dry Creek Kitchen.

Reichl served as a restaurant and food editor for the Los Angeles Times from 1984 to 1993. During her first year as the New York Times restaurant critic, she reviewed Palmer’s flagship restaurant, Aureole in New York.

“Then he moved (Aureole) to the Condé Nast building when I was still there at Gourmet,” she added. “That changed our life.”

Many of the foodies at the event bemoaned the loss of Gourmet, which suffered advertising losses during the downturn in the economy and abruptly closed.

“We miss Gourmet, and we love Ruth and the sense of fun that she imparts,” said Jennifer Christensen of Petaluma. “With her, food is an adventure, and it’s comfort and love.”

Subtitled “136 Recipes That Saved My Life,” the new cookbook allows Reichl to share the humbling lessons of her wrenching job loss in an industry already in the throes of devastating changes.

“I wasn’t the only one who lost my job, and it was a great job,” she said. “Those days are over, when you could be as creative as you want, push the envelope and hire the best you can. It was an amazing privilege.”

Reichl was 61 when Gourmet, the country’s oldest food and wine magazine, was yanked from beneath her. She didn’t know if she would ever find another job, and she poured all of those fears onto the pages of her book.

“I have never felt so vulnerable on the page before,” said Reichl, whose memoirs include the 1998 “Tender at the Bone,” the 2001 “Comfort Me with Apples” and the 2005 “Garlic and Sapphires.”

“But if you’re going to do first-person pieces, you need to go deep and tell the truth.”

In her new hardback cookbook, Reichl provides plenty of delicious fall cooking ideas. The book opens and closes with autumn and its comforting array of savory soups and sweet apple crisps.

“I really want people to go back into the kitchen and to start entertaining at home again,” said Reichl,

“We in the press scared people about cooking ... All the chef’s books and the complicated recipes have made people think you have to cook at chef level.”

Instead of focusing on the end goal, Reichl urges home cooks to slow down and enjoy the journey, including the meditative aspect of being in the kitchen.

“Cooking is really pleasurable, and if you take a little bit more time, you allow yourself the pleasure of being in the moment,” she said. “It’s just a meal. There will be another one in a few hours.”

“I’ve tried to write these recipes in a relaxed tone, as if we were standing in the kitchen, cooking together,” Reichl writes of her recipe style. “Rather than a standard list of ingredients, you’ll find a shopping list of items you’ll likely have to buy - and staples that you probably have on hand.”

The following recipes are excerpted from Ruth Reichl’s “My Kitchen Year: 136 Recipes That Saved My Life,” with permission from Random House, a division of Random House, Inc.

Butternut ?Squash Soup

Serves 4 to 6

Shopping list:

1 stalk celery

2 carrots

1 pound butternut squash

½ pound waxy potatoes

Staples:

1 onion

- olive oil

- salt

Begin by coarsely chopping an onion, a stalk of celery and 2 carrots; you don’t have to be fussy about this since you’re going to end up pureeing everything.

Slick the bottom of a casserole or Dutch oven with olive oil, add the vegetables and let them tumble into tenderness, which should take about 10 minutes.

Peel a pound of butternut squash and cut it into ¾-inch or so cubes. Peel a half pound of waxy potatoes (Yukon golds are good), and cut into chunks of the same size.

Stir them into the vegetables in the casserole, add a couple teaspoons of sea salt and 2½ cups of boiling water, cover and simmer until everything is very soft. This will take about half an hour.

Very carefully puree the soup in a blender, in small batches, making sure the top of the blender is secure. (Hot soup can be painful!)

Taste for seasoning and serve drizzled with a few drops of olive oil and/or good balsamic vinegar.

A crisp dice of apples on top makes this look lovely and adds a very pleasing note of sweetness.

The Diva of ?Grilled Cheese

Makes 1 sandwich

Shopping list:

- Leeks

- Scallions

¼ pound cheddar cheese

2 slices sturdy sourdough bread

Staples:

- Shallots

1 onion (any color)

1 clove garlic (minced)

- Butter

- Mayonnaise

Gather a group of shallots, leeks, scallions, and an onion red, yellow, or white - as many members of the allium family as you have on hand - and chop them into a small heap.

Add a minced clove of garlic. Grate a few generous handfuls of the best cheddar you can afford (Montgomery is particularly appealing), set a little aside, and gently combine the rest with the onion mixture.

Butter one side of thickly sliced bread and heap as much of the mixture as possible between the slices. Spread a thin layer of mayonnaise on the outside of the bread (this will keep it from scorching on the griddle).

Press the reserved grated cheese to the outside of the bread, where it will create a wonderfully crisp and shaggy crust, giving your sandwich an entirely new dimension.

Fry on a heated griddle or in a skillet about 4 minutes a side, until the cheese is softly melted.

Apple Crisp

Shopping List:

5 heirloom apples

1 lemon

¾ stick butter

Staples:

- flour

- brown sugar

- salt

Peel a few different kinds of apples, enjoying the way they shrug reluctantly out of their skins.

Core, slice and layer the apples into a buttered pie plate or baking dish and toss them with the juice of one lemon.

Mix ? cup of flour with ? cup of brown sugar, and add a dash of salt and a grating of fresh cinnamon. Using two knives, or just your fingers, cut in most of a stick of sweet butter and pat it over the top.

The cooking time is forgiving; you can put your crisp into a 375-degree oven and pretty much forget it for 45 minutes to an hour.

The juices should be bubbling a bit at the edges, the top should be crisp, golden and fragrant.

Served warm, with a pitcher of cream, it makes you grateful for fall.

Staff writer Diane Peterson can be reached at 521-5287 or diane.peterson@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @dianepete56.