Crafting the gift of good food
What makes a cookbook special? We talked to Kitchen Press founder Emily Dewhurst for a behind-the-scenes look at their approach to publishing unique, accessible recipe books that tell the stories of people and places making great food.
Emily Dewhurst (left) must be very popular with her neighbours. The Kitchen Press founder regularly tries the recipes in the books she publishes and has been known to share the fruits of her labour.
“We had our neighbours round for their birthday. I made for the second time a cake called Portokalopita, which is made from dry filo pastry cut into, kind of, tagliatelle. You use that instead of flour in the batter. It sounds revolting but it is insanely delicious. It’s an orange cake, cooked in orange syrup. Oh my god it is unbelievably good and really, really light. They were eating it, asking ‘What is this? This is amazing!” says Emily.
The recipe for this traditional Greek cake can be found in Kitchen Press’s forthcoming title Brunch with Brother Marcus, due out in May. The book shares Eastern Mediterranean recipes from relaxed South London brunch destination Brother Marcus and typifies the Kitchen Press approach to food publishing.
“What interests me is just really delicious food.”
“What interests both myself and my business partner Nasim is just really delicious food. When I go to a place, I love to see that the owners are creating these worlds that are very much loved. While we don’t always do restaurant-focused cookbooks, when we do, our job is to create that atmosphere so that whoever picks up the book has this sense of this wonderful neighbourhood place, whether or not they’ve been there,” Emily says.
Kitchen Press started in 2011 when Emily fell in love with Dundee’s Parlour Café. The tiny nine-table café, run by Gillian Veal (pictured left), became an institution at a time when good eateries were thin on the ground in the city.
“The menu changed every day and she was just cooking what she wanted to cook,” says Emily. “She’s vegetarian but it wasn’t a vegetarian café, just really delicious salads and people really loved it.”
“I was conscious that if Gillian’s café had been somewhere else it would have been picked up by a food editor. It’s no different to something like Honey & Co which famously got their book because it was close to a publisher’s office and their editor-to-be used to have their working lunches there. So, it led me to think that there are all these places all over the country that are just terrific and often get ignored by the London-centric food press.”
The Parlour Café Cookbook was born, and its success saw more food books follow. The list continued to highlight the work of cooks and food producers who created a sense of community around their food, often lifting a lid on pockets of the UK that were sometimes neglected by established food writing and publishing circles.
“They sell well in places other than bookshops.”
It was around this time that Seasonal Soups was first published. Now in its second edition, this title along with new book Seasonal Salads, were top sellers for Bookspeed at the Top Drawer trade fair and continue to sell well to a cross section of retail customers.
“I think people really like the format,” says Emily. “It’s just a wee book but it’s chunky so they stay flat beautifully, which can usually be a problem for smaller books. They work well in a gift shop or a farm shop. That’s a real strength for them, that they sell well in places other than bookshops. Both books have a very sort of intimate voice, so I think they work well alongside small producer goods because they have a kind of hand-built feel to them.”
Emily knew Seasonal Soups’ author Fraser Reid for several years before approaching him about the book. The greengrocer lives locally and delivers her veg box. He had been offering his customers soup bags and after trying them out, Emily saw the potential for a book.
“Fraser has such an honest trustable voice. These are all very straightforward recipes that work because he trialed them as soup bag recipes in his shop. He has to keep them simple. I think people really like that. We all go on about seasonability but sometimes it can seem like hard work. I think both these books make it seem like a pleasure not a chore,” Emily says.
“She was just perfect for this book. She makes really, really interesting salads.”
Fi Buchanan (left), author of Seasonal Salads, previously ran award-winning deli and cafe Heart Buchanan in the West End of Glasgow, which drew a loyal following of customers seeking good quality, locally sourced food. It closed around 12 years ago, shortly after Fi became a parent, leaving a salad-shaped gap on the Byres Road.
“Fi Buchanan is just wonderful, she really is,” says Emily. “I met her years ago at a meeting about another book that didn’t happen, and I just always kept her in mind. Even though her deli has been closed for years, people still say ‘Oh my god, I loved that place.’ I think it had a similar kind of feel to the Parlour in that people connected with it and were really proud of it.
“It was doing something early on that no-one else with food was doing - just making really fresh salads, changing the menu every day. You knew it was all about what Fi wanted to cook. She was just perfect for this book. She makes really, really interesting salads.”
“People really love a story of a small business doing well.”
Fans of both Seasonal Soups and Salads will be heartened to learn that more will come from this series. Emily and the Kitchen Press team are thinking about what dish can be given the seasonal treatment next, so let’s watch this space!
But whatever titles are in the pipeline for this small Scottish publisher, customers can expect future books to continue to share intimate stories of individuals and communities who make, share, and enjoy great food. For Emily this is one of the reasons people are still inspired to buy and gift cookbooks in an era when any recipe can be summoned with a Google or TikTok search in seconds.
“I think that’s why our books work so well as gifts because quite often they’re stories of real people. People really love a story of a small business doing well, so something like Bad Girl Bakery, with its recipes from a small but very successful bakery, celebrates that and people love it. It’s not like giving someone the latest Nigella book, it’s a way to show off your discovery,” says Emily.
Books from Kitchen Press
