What We’re Reading: The Kinfolk Table

The Kinfolk Table: Recipes for Small Gatherings by Nathan Williams (Artisan Books 2013)

I’m going to be honest with you folks: with recently becoming a new homeowner, moving, planning a wedding, and summer chaos in general, I’ve hardly had time to take out the garbage, let alone finish an entire book. My brain has been too scattered (well, more than it’s usual scattered state) to follow the layered plot lines and intricate poetry I normally gravitate towards. I’ve forgiven myself for this, and instead, focus on what I can do. I can keep up with blogs, I can read a literary magazine here and there, and I can devour cookbooks. Yes, cookbooks; one of the other ways I escape and decompress is through cooking. And while a big novel might be too much for my brain right now, a recipe at a time from a cookbook is the perfect amount. Consequently, this is post is dedicated to the culinary literature I’ve been reading. Enjoy.

The Kinfolk Table was given to me by a dear friend, and it shows how well she knows me. Author Nathan Williams writes about community, about finding simplicity in art form (in this case, the art form is food), about telling a story through cooking. I am someone interested in building community around any topic, and am especially interested when communities overlap; cooking, cultural heritage, familial history, writing. All of these communities (and more) combine in this cookbook.

The Kinfolk magazine started the Kinfolk movement, which is a “slow lifestyle” magazine, dedicated to community, simplicity, and quality time with loved ones. With The Kinfolk Table, founder Nathan Williams traveled the world visiting cooks with different backgrounds for their simple recipes. He went to New York, Portland, Denmark, and England to find these recipes and their people. He wrote about each cook he visited with intimacy and respect, and let each cook preface their recipes with a little blurb about where that particular recipe comes from.

There are recipes ranging from the most simplistic (Morning Melon), the “unrefined” but delicious (Peanut Butter and Bacon Sandwiches), the alternative (Sweet Potato-Quinoa Burgers), to the unexpected (Kimchi Couscous). The cooks also vary from families to well-known chefs, from clothing designers to florists (not to mention the array of nationalities). Lesson learned? Community can come from the most unexpected combinations.

It’s a beautiful art piece of a book, with simple style, yummy photographs, and crisp, elegant design. It’s a hefty book, although unlike most cookbooks, it’s not packed cover to cover with every imaginable recipe thought of. Instead, it lets the reader in on the narrative, the context behind each cook and their recipes. It’s not just about the recipes; it’s about the experience, the conversation and thoughts around the act of cooking. This balance between culinary imagination and storytelling makes The Kinfolk Table unique and utterly loveable.

Have you ever hit a wall of reading? What did you do to snap out of it? Any cookbooks that get both your culinary and artistic appetites going?