NOTHING NEW: considered cooking - Jesper Söldahl
NOTHING NEW: considered cooking - Jesper Söldahl
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.
Text by Jesper Sjödahl
Photographs by Kathe Kaczmarzyk and Jesper Sjödahl Illustrations by Molly Zimmerman-Feeley
Edited and designed by Andrew Barton
142 pages, printed in Portland, OR on recycled, cream, eggshell finish paper, a perfect bound paperback, color spreads (a Nickel Dinner first!) throughout.
Jesper Sjödahl is a cook splitting his time between Malmö, Sweden and Copenhagen, Denmark.
He previously ran his own grocer and café, Amiralsgatans Speceributik in Malmö. Most recently he has been cooking at Lille Bakery and Auren’s Deli in Copenhagen.
Nothing New is Jesper's first book.
NOTE for customers in Europe:
Shipping single books to Europe from the US is wildly expensive! This book can be pre-ordered directly from Jesper and Kathe on Kathe’s website: https://kathekacz.com/products/nothing-new-considered-cooking They will start shipping books as soon as they arrive, by mid-December.
An excerpt from the introductory essay:
“This is a book about seeking out, buying, storing, cooking, reheating and enjoying food. Nothing is original, nothing is new and everything is mine as much as it is yours, but all of it is good and in the spirit of how I like to do things right now.
I like to let things take time, but I’d rather not have them be very complicated. I like to start off by chopping and sweating onions in olive oil until they’re really soft. I like feeling that I can get a lot out of what seems like nothing. I like to taste often as I go.”
Further excerpts:
“I am on a life-long pursuit of finding the perfect anchovy. “
“I recommend seeking out unrefined, un-iodized salt from a natural source. Being a mineral and an inorganic matter, an untouched and sealed container of salt will outlast humanity. “
“People love to tell other people never to refrigerate tomatoes. If this is you: calm down - I hear you, but I also want to say that what happens to tomatoes when refrigerated is not something that’s exclusive to them. Cooling any food will inevitably prolong its life, but will also often change its taste and texture through loss of certain com- pounds, as well as through chemical changes. I try to buy, eat and cook in a manner where refrigerating fruit is a last resort, as I’d rather enjoy it with all its vibrancy intact.”
“A soup tends to improve from a good rest - just like most of us.”
“I use a lot of fresh herbs in my cooking, yet find myself every summer saying that ‘this year I will use even more.”
“The only thing better than reading about how to take apart a chicken is seeing someone do it, so if what I’m saying doesn’t make any sense you could always ask someone to show you, or have Jacques Pépin show you on the Internet.”
“When dressing a small salad, you will need a big bowl, and when dressing a big salad you will need an even bigger bowl.“