Midnight Chicken (& Other Recipes Worth Living For)

"It really is different from any other cookbook that I’ve seen, even down to the look of it. It looks almost like a novel by its shape and the paper used. It’s a combination of cookbook and memoir. You could read the whole book cover-to-cover and be satisfied, even if you didn’t make a dish from it. Obviously the writing is beautiful. She has just edited a poetry anthology , which makes total sense. Just flip through it and on every page there’s great writing. There’s this passage about making bread, where she talks about the sound of your knuckles rapping on the base of the baked bread, the morning sun in the window and the dust motes. I mean, you just want to read on. But she’s very conversational and the recipes are not written in a complicated way. It’s very straightforward recipe writing. It’s done with these short sentences: do this, do that—it reminds me a bit of William Carlos Williams . It’s really refreshing in that way. There’s not a lot of flouncy language. It feels like she’s talking to you, but it’s not so casual that it’s cutesy. No, no. The name comes from this particularly bad night she had. She describes how she was in despair just lying on the floor in her apartment and just looking at this chicken hanging in a bag on the chair. She’s with her boyfriend and she got off the floor and they cook the chicken and eat it at night with bread and garlic. Even that’s just a beautiful passage. So it’s worth the read, even if you’re not going to cook. All the recipes are good. We ran one, a broccoli toast , which was simple and delicious—not at all intimidating. The Washington Post’s 2019 cookbook roundup—featuring 11 books—can be found here ."