For Women's History Month, we're celebrating outstanding women cookbook authors

By Leslie Brenner

Happy International Women’s Day!

I’ve long believed that when it comes to writing cookbooks, women have a serious edge: Most of my favorite all-time cookbooks were written by women. That’s why throughout March — Women’s History Month — we’ll be featuring cookbooks by some of my favorite female authors, and celebrating their achievements.

We’ll spotlight the authors in various ways: sometimes by honoring an entire long, distinguished career; other times presenting a newer author with a wonderful recent title, or maybe telling you about someone who didn’t write many books, but gave us one or two truly great ones. We’ll also feature standalone reviews of cookbooks by women.

In the past, we have honored a number of our favorite women authors in this way. They include:

• Diana Kennedy (read the story)

• Najmieh Batmanglij (read the story)

• Andrea Nguyen (read the story)

• Toni Tipton-Martin (read the story)

• Dorie Greenspan (read the story)

Build your collection

The first spotlight is coming shortly. Meanwhile, we have collected many of our favorite cookbooks by women in a mini-shop at Bookshop: “Women Have a History of Writing the Best Cookbooks.” We’re thrilled to invite you to browse the shop. Treat yourself (or a cookbook-loving friend) to one or more of the marvelous volumes. In doing so, you’ll be supporting women authors, independent booksellers and Cooks Without Borders (where it will be much appreciated).

Happy browsing, and happy Women’s History Month!

Cookbook author Andrea Nguyen and photographer An-My Lê share perspectives on Vietnamese cooking and the exile experience

Bánh xèo inspired by An-My Lê

By Leslie Brenner

Award-winning cookbook author Andrea Nguyen was the featured guest at a Cooks Without Borders Culture-Dive panel discussion yesterday — joined by special guest An-My Lê. Both natives of Saigon, they shared food memories of Vietnam with CWB design director Juliet Jacobson and myself, and talked about what cooking the dishes of their heritage has meant to each of them as immigrants.

The live event was attended virtually by Cooks Without Borders Premium Members.

A little orange notebook filled with handwritten recipes was one of the few things her mother brought with her when her family was evacuated from Saigon in 1975, recalls Nguyen. Three decades later, Nguyen published her first cookbook — Into the Vietnamese Kitchen.

Nguyen’s mother gave the book — a beautiful, 344-page volume subtitled “Treasured Foodways, Modern Flavors,” to all her friends. “You give this to your children,” Nguyen recalled her mother telling them. “Because they’re not writing the recipes down. And you’ll need something to give them for their wedding.”

Nguyen, now one of the most respected authorities on Vietnamese cooking in America, went on to publish five other books. She talked, at our panel, about the new book she’s working on now. We profiled her last month.

Lê, a renowned photographer and MacArthur Fellow whose works are in the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Art Institute of Chicago and other top museums, is an accomplished home cook, and a fan of Nguyen's cookbooks.

Food was the one aspect of being an exile that was not problematic when she first came to the United States as a 15 year-old, Lê told the panel. “Growing up during the eighties. you associated Vietnam with the war and the vets, and it was so controversial. My default was always to grab onto food because it brought so much pleasure, so much comfort.”

The video replay of the event is available on Cooks Without Borders YouTube channel. You’ll find previous events — with The Woks of Life’s Sarah Leung; cookbook author Tara Wigley; and Masienda founder Jorge Gaviria and chef Olivia Lopez there as well.

To attend future Cooks Without Borders Culture-Dive events live, join CWB Premium Membership.