Nothing New: Considered Cooking (Jesper Sjödahl)

The newest title from the Nickel Dinner culinary imprint!

From publisher Andrew Barton:

I met Jesper Sjödahl and Kathe Kaczmarzyk in real life about a year and a half ago when visiting Sweden. They ran a culinary shop and The Long Loaf had been a part of their lives. As a result customers of theirs from Sweden were interested in the book. I had to meet these sweet people who clearly had the same taste and sensibilities in so many things!

They hosted a true “I could have danced all night,” massively memorable evening. The dinner was so thoughtful, so delicious, so considered yet loose and lovely - it really stuck with me. It is something in this day and age to meet folks on the other side of the world and to feel like we were always meant to know one another, that we’d become real long term friends right there and then. But that’s what happened! Eventually I approached Jesper with a gentle inquiry about whether he’d ever thought of making a book on food. He hadn’t, yet, but he’d started putting together some material for a zine that hadn’t come to fruition, Kathe had been taking some extra nice photographs recently, and this invitation was a nice way to close the circle. The book we now have – 142 sensible pages with essays, recipes, kitchen wisdom, thoughts, field notes, illustrations, black and white photographs, showstopping full color photograph spreads – is everything I could have dreamed up for Jesper’s book to be and more so, because it is Jesper’s book – it’s here to be held and read by winter lamplight. It may be “nothing new,” but I believe it will be one of those books that changes the way its readers cook – a before and after will be noticeable. As they approach provisioning, weeknight meal planning, even the boiling of a vegetable, Jesper’s influence will be felt.

This is a very thrilling addition to the library of anyone to whom a pot of beans, a green salad, perhaps some little toasts and a bottle of wine (and many likeminded meals) sounds like a feast.