My Berlin Kitchen
A Love Story (With Recipes)
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4.2 • 6 Ratings
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
The Wednesday Chef cooks her heart out, finds her way home, and shares her recipes with us
It takes courage to turn your life upside down, especially when everyone is telling you how lucky you are. But sometimes what seems right can feel deeply wrong. My Berlin Kitchen tells the story of how one thoroughly confused, kitchen-mad perfectionist broke off her engagement to a handsome New Yorker, quit her dream job, and found her way to a new life, a new man, and a new home in Berlin—one recipe at a time.
Luisa Weiss grew up with a divided heart, shuttling back and forth between her father in Boston and her Italian mother in Berlin. She was always yearning for home—until she found a new home in the kitchen. Luisa started clipping recipes in college and was a cookbook editor in New York when she decided to bake, roast, and stew her way through her by then unwieldy collection over the course of one tumultuous year. The blog she wrote to document her adventures in (and out) of the kitchen, The Wednesday Chef, soon became a sensation. But she never stopped hankering for Berlin.
Luisa will seduce you with her stories of foraging for plums in abandoned orchards, battling with white asparagus at the tail end of the season, orchestrating a three-family Thanksgiving in Berlin, and mending her broken heart with batches (and batches) of impossible German Christmas cookies. Fans of her award-winning blog will know the happy ending, but anyone who enjoyed Julie and Julia will laugh and cheer and cook alongside Luisa as she takes us into her heart and tells us how she gave up everything only to find love waiting where she least expected it.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Shuttled as a child of divorced parents between her Italian mother's residence in Berlin and her mathematician father's apartment near Boston, Weiss found a refuge for her "divided heart" in cooking. Living in New York City as a young publishing assistant and scout, she lived for a while with the companionable Sam, assuaging her career dissatisfaction by cooking and eventually starting a blog inspired by Julie Powell's, called the Wednesday Chef, in which Weiss winnowed through stacks of recipes over a year and become a masterful cook, with Sam as eager guinea pig. Despite plans for marriage, however, at age 30, Weiss recognized how much she missed Berlin; resolved to stop being the obedient, dutiful daughter and make herself happy first, she moved back to the city in 2009, hooking up with an old boyfriend, Max, and finding the pieces of her life converging beautifully. Although the German temperament (described variously as blunt, languid, and simple) didn't always suit her, and she couldn't find bitter greens that she loved in New York, she threw herself into making some of the traditional German favorites such as seasonal baking of plum cake (Zwetschgen) and Kartoffelsalat. Recipes include some curious crowd-pleasers such as Rote Grutze with vanilla sauce and slow-baked quince, but also Italian tried-and-true dishes like ragu alla Bolognese and pizza Napoletana since this thoughtful, earnestly winning memoir naturally ends in an Italian wedding.
Customer Reviews
Great read
Great read