Ruth Reichl has new cookbook, event at Fearrington

Ruth Reichl had been the editor-in-chief of Gourmet for a decade when the beloved food magazine was abruptly shut down five years ago.

In the aftermath, Reichl sought solace in the kitchen. She chronicles this tumultuous time in her life in a new cookbook, “My Kitchen Year: 136 Recipes That Saved My Life.” Reichl will be the guest of honor at a three-course lunch and book event on Oct. 15 at the Fearrington Barn in Pittsboro.

“I didn’t intend to write this book,” Reichl said in a recent phone interview. “I just sort of did what was natural to me when I was scared and frightened. I started cooking a lot and wandering in and out of shops. I hadn’t had the leisure to do this in a really long time.”

So whether you like this cookbook may depend upon where you land on the love-her-or-love-to-hate-her spectrum.

Reichl is a popular memoirist who was the restaurant critic at the Los Angeles Times and The New York Times before joining Gourmet magazine. She is also a polarizing figure in the food world. Some people love her work, especially her memoirs, “Tender at the Bone,” “Comfort Me With Apples” and “Garlic and Sapphires.” Some people love to hate her, especially her haiku-like tweets (Fall. Orange leaves go swirling past the window. Butternut soup. Smooth. Hot. Savory. Winter’s coming. Too soon.) Some love to make fun of her; hence the now-mostly-silent parody Twitter account, @RuthBourdain, a mashup of her and irreverent chef Anthony Bourdain.

The 327-page cookbook offers seasonal recipes, like apricot pie, broccoli rabe bruschetta and cider-braised pork shoulder. The recipes come from her kitchen, from the Gourmet test kitchen or from chefs’ kitchens, although adapted for a home cook. She shares recipes from drawn-out meals over Thanksgiving weekend, from a dinner party featuring hand-chopped burgers and from a solo meal of congee, a soothing Chinese soup.

Being the memoirist that she is, she sprinkles the cookbook with passages that reveal a lot of the anguish she was feeling after Gourmet was shut down. In the phone interview, Reichl described that turmoil: “I went from being at the top to being at the bottom. I’m out of a job. I’m 62 years old. I’m really thinking nobody is going to hire me again. How are we going to survive? We’re used to having two incomes.”

For Reichl fans, those passages reflect the soul-baring Ruth they feel they know, bravely revealing her vulnerabilities at such a low point. Those on the other end of the spectrum may find it hard to feel empathy for a woman who got a Lexus as part of her severance package while dozens of Gourmet employees also lost their jobs.

In the book and maybe more so in our interview, Reichl was clear that she doesn’t miss the life she left behind: the expense account, the cars, the drivers, the hair and makeup people.

“It’s a Cinderella kind of life,” Reichl said. “All that stuff couldn’t matter less.”

She said: “I survived it, but I revel in the life I have now. I got to reinvent myself once again.”

In this new life, and with this latest book, what does Reichl hope to achieve? To inspire people to get in the kitchen. “I feel like we’ve frightened people out of the kitchen,” she said. “If you make a bad meal – and everybody makes a bad meal – it’s just a meal. The important thing is to gather people around your table, to have the joy of feeding them, to take the time.”

This story was originally published October 6, 2015 at 4:39 AM with the headline "Ruth Reichl has new cookbook, event at Fearrington."