Last weekend, my cookbook club assembled for our twelfth dinner in my friend Victoria’s backyard. We’ve been meeting on a near-quarterly basis for three years now, and as the club founder and self-appointed president, it’s one of my most treasured extracurricular activities. This one was one of our best yet: perfect weather, a solid book pick, and a spread that looked like it came from the kitchen in Call Me By Your Name. I made a tomato tarte tatin that, against all odds, was delicious. (It was my first time making pastry!)
The dream of a cookbook club all started three summers ago when I decided I wanted to learn to be a better, more at-east host. I had just added a (now dead) olive tree to my patio and was having fantasies of friends dropping in for a glass of rosé just as the sun was going down on a random Wednesday. But I also wanted to become a better cook (beyond my typical repertoire of vegetarian pastas); I think cooking for people is such an act of love, and I wanted to get more comfortable in the kitchen.
So I posted an Instagram story to Close Friends asking if anyone would want to start a cookbook club, and the rest is history. Every time I share photos from one of our dinners I get a slew of DMs from people asking how it works and wondering how they can start one too, and it’s happened enough times now to warrant a newsletter outlining exactly how it all works. And this is that newsletter!
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