Tucson Festival of Books

Cookbooks, magazines, food history, children’s books, food politics, culinary fiction, academic books and DIY-zines—the breadth of subgenres of food and culinary publications is vast—and I devour as much of it as possible. So when I realized the Tucson Festival of Books (TFoB) would host a handful of cookbook authors, my interest was piqued.

The annual TFoB debuted in 2009 as a community gathering around literature and is one of the largest book festivals in the country. As I browsed its website, I was immediately excited about this year’s lineup of cookbook authors—the focus of the culinary tent—and decided to attend the two-day event in March.

While on the surface a cookbook’s main purpose is to guide, with lists of ingredients and step-by-step instructions for creating (hopefully!) tasty dishes, readers who take time with what comes before and after the recipes often encounter a rich tapestry that offers insight into the author’s background, the inspiration for recipes, the origins of ingredients and beyond. The culinary stage at TFoB offered deeper understanding of those details through demonstrations and dialogue. With mirrors positioned overhead, each author took the stage to prepare a dish, share stories, tips and their greatest inspirations.

Maydān – Rose Previte

Rose Previte owns three Washington, DC–area restaurants: Compass Rose, Kirby Club and the Michelin-starred Maydān—with Maydān Market set to open in Los Angeles later this year. Her cookbook Maydān is influenced by the title itself, a word which loosely translates to “a place of gathering” in Turkish and some other languages. Her shareable dishes feature bold flavors inspired by both her Sicilian-Lebanese background and her travels across the Middle East.

The utmost regard Rose holds for the grandmothers and other women who command kitchens around the world is palpable. As she prepared the koosa [DA1] [DA2] dish—squash stuffed with rice—from her cookbook, Rose spoke of the “otherness” she experienced during her Ohio upbringing: Her family’s recipes both offered familiar comfort and simultaneously marked her as different from her neighbors. In later years, she connected with those memories and her heritage through travel, when she was invited into many kitchens, but primarily those of matriarchs, who carried generational knowledge and techniques into their cooking. She credits these experiences as some of the greatest influences for her cookbook and her award-winning restaurants.

Bread & Roses – Rose Wilde

Rose Wilde—with her fun, colorful outfits and bright red lips—commands an audience with the same sense of smart approachability contained within the recipes in her cookbook Bread & Roses. Her ability to connect the dots between the reasons to embrace ancient grains and larger-scale social issues—ranging from the health benefits of diversifying our diets to strengthening agricultural viability—must be, at least partially, due to her background as a human rights attorney.

Alongside playful, grain-forward recipes, Bread & Roses offers a primer on grains, cooking techniques and tools, and geography of foods. A self-proclaimed “grain geek,” Rose offered the festival audience an actionable recommendation to replace 15–30% of the all-purpose flour in a recipe with another grain, as a way to explore ancient, heirloom and alternative grains without changing the structure of the end product while incorporating more nutrition and complex flavor. Her demonstration included fragrant quinoa upside-down muffins and an amaranth and corn crumble featuring papaya, raspberry and lime.

The Perfect Loaf – Maurizio Leo

New Mexico–based Maurizio Leo’s pragmatic, easy-to-follow approach infused his demonstration with practical advice to make a delicious sourdough loaf, which he generously shared with the audience afterwards. His cookbook The Perfect Loaf and his website of the same name have been influential for many sourdough home bakers—myself included. Maurizio’s TFoB audience seemed most interested in technical questions demystifying the sourdough baking process, perhaps seeking reassurance that mishaps they experience with their loaves were a normal part of the process to becoming a better home baker. And while he stuck to the fundamentals of sourdough, everyone walked away with at least a few hot tips, from the use of an oblong Dutch oven to produce more manageable everyday sandwich slices to the telltale signs that you’ve over-proofed your dough. Hearing advice in person—directly from the author of the “complete bible for every bread baker”—went a step beyond what the pages of a book can offer.

More Food Books, Please

Cookbook authors often provide readers with more than their recipes, and if we’re lucky enough to connect with their stories, time spent with their cookbook or at their events will inspire us to do new things in our own home kitchens and communities.

While the Tucson Festival of Books was an obvious place to see food-related authors, it’s my dream to see more cookbook authors and culinary-theme authors come to Arizona as part of their regular tours. We have such a vibrant culinary and agricultural community here in; it would be beautiful to see the connection strengthened between the national food publication stage to our burgeoning local food scene and vice versa.

Coming Soon: Nana Lupita

I’m always excited to find ways to share the love of food with my two little ones—on and off the plate. I’m especially looking forward to the summer release of Felicia Cocotzin Ruiz’s first children’s book: Nana Lupita and the Magic Sopita. As a third-generation Mexican American myself, sopa de conchas holds a special place in my heart and is the number one request from my 6- and 4-year-olds, especially from their Nana’s kitchen. The book features the mystery of a grandmother’s secret recipe, a seek-and-find of healing plants, and bilingual words for young readers.

Felicia is a Phoenix-based curandera, author, indigenous foods activist and natural foods chef. Her award-winning book Earth Medicines: Ancestral Wisdom, Healing Recipes, and Wellness Rituals from a Curandera features healing recipes and rituals drawn from the power of water, air, earth and fire—a reminder that the natural elements are the origins of everything and can heal not only our bodies, but the mind and spirit as well. Cocotzin Ruiz has had her work featured in Spirituality & Health, Forbes, Bon Appétit, “The List” television news magazine and several other media outlets including The Original Americans episode on Padma Lakshmi’s “Taste the Nation.