New Food Scholarship Prize; A Cookbook Author Tribute Song

Howdy cookbook fans!

Hi y’all, frankly there is too much cookbook news today for me to say much up here so let’s get to it! (Thank you to everyone who checked in with me after last week’s issue, I am doing much better now xo.) COOKBOOK NEWS LET’S GET IT!

Kitchen Arts & Letters Announces the Nach Waxman Prize

In honor of Nach Waxman, the late founder of Kitchen Arts & Letters, the New York culinary bookstore has announced the Nach Waxman Prize for Food and Drink Scholarship, a $5,500 cash award given to the author of a book that “highlights a book of scholarship which invites the general public to seriously consider issues in culinary and beverage history, anthropology, sociology, linguistics, geography, and related fields.” The award will be given each year to a book published in English the calendar year prior, with a shortlist announced in April and the winner announced in May. Info on how to submit here.

So much of the stuff I do is online where nothing really lasts. There might be really good recipes that I make that just after a couple of months just vanish into the wild of the internet. I wanted to focus on making something that might be more timeless.

—Sohla El-Waylly on writing a cookbook, Start Here, after a career spent in digital recipes. [F&W]

The Creative Brief with Frances Abrantes Baca

The vivid, oceanic blue of Love Japan’s cover stops me in my tracks every time I see it. It’s unusual to see blue as a dominant color on American cookbook covers, as it is considered somewhat of an appetite suppressant. But this cover could not look more delicious. Photographed by Yuki Sugiura and designed by Lizzie Allen, Love Japan jumps off the shelf not just for its jewel-like tones, but also for the exceptionally lovely styling of authors Sawako Okochi and Aaron Israel’s “Lox Bowl,” one of their signature dishes.

Okochi and Israel are the proprietors of Brooklyn’s Shalom Japan, a restaurant that melds Japanese and Jewish cuisines (reflecting each chef’s cultural heritage). The authors are also a married couple and parents of two young children, and Love Japan features the food they prepare in