Cooking with the Muse

“Poetry and recipes that are worth their salt both reflect natural cycles and long human traditions, ‘filling us,’ as the poet Peter Pereira puts it, ‘with what endures.’ Both, in a sense, preserve the ephemeral—the vivid observation, the fleeting emotion, the chance discovery in the kitchen, the many tastes to which we hanker to return.”

Renowned chef and cookbook author Myra Kornfeld was ready to publish a master work long in preparation. Collaborating with her husband, poet and professor Stephen Massimilla, they had conceived a book which combined a wide range of recipes with a poetry textbook focused on food. Myra had distilled a lifetime of food experimentation into 146 recipes and combined them with her husband’s teaching text on the world of food in poetry. A professional photographer had shot magazine-ready food shots, an illustrator had prepared technique diagrams; the cookbook was ready to go. Combining it with a poetry textbook containing 168 poems, numerous prose extracts, and twelve extensive essays of commentary was the challenge. The book easily divided itself into four seasonal chapters. To distinguish between recipes and poems, I used font changes and blocks of color. Essays appeared on colored pages. The result was encyclopedic! [Note the cover shown here would not be used by the authors in the final printing.]