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.”
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