pasta

Renowned cookbook author and New York Times writer Martha Rose Shulman will be in the Twin Cities signing her newest book and doing a cooking demo on Saturday, May 24th, so we thought we'd lob a few questions her way in advance. 

The author writes the Recipes for Health column for NYT, and is the author of over 20 cookbooks, many of them vegetarian and all of them geared toward inspiring home cooks. Her newest, The Simple Art of Vegetarian Cooking, gives a fresh take on the topic, and she tells us why.

What got you started as a recipe writer, particularly your focus on vegetarian cuisine? 

If you are a woman anywhere near my age and I started singing Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens . . . chances are good you would pipe in immediately with bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens! All together now! Brown paper packages, tied up with striiiiing. These are a few of my favorite thiiiings! OK, I’ll stop. But I know you’re feeling it. Try as I might, I can’t get my kids interested in The Sound of Music. I guess children in lederhosen made out of curtains singing with a nun can’t compete with the likes of Harry Potter and The Black Eyed Peas. 

“You deeeep them!” explained my Argentine mother standing behind a cutting board overflowing with seemingly every vegetable known to man. She made a dipping motion with the cauliflower floret in her hand, while trying to keep her piles from avalanching into each other. “Like fondue?” I asked hopefully, visions of chocolate-covered strawberries dancing in my 10-year-old head. “Si, pero tiene mucho mucho ajo!” Lots and lots of garlic.