In the lead-up to the holidays, we’re happy to bring you this interview with Annelies Zijderveld about her book Steeped: Recipes Infused with Tea(Andrews McMeal, 2015),a cookbook that focuses on the full potential cooking with tea, the elixir of the poets. In fact, the book contains occasional snippets of poetry.
The contents move from a “Tea Primer” that references literary, cultural, definitional, and related matters to a “Tea Cooking Cabinet” that enumerates the virtues of a range of teas and tisanes to a section on methodologies to a rainbow of recipes metaphorically spanning the day, from chapters with such titles as “Morning Tea” (breakfast items) on through “Midday Tea” and “Afternoon Tea” to “High Tea” and “Sweet Tea” (dessert items). Each section is subdivided to cover (for instance) “Bites, “Side Dishes,” “Baked” items, “Cold” items, and “Comfort” items. The rose-and-gold-covered volume is also full of lovely, well-styled photographs.
What gave you the idea for a book focusing on recipes that call for tea?
It all started out as a comment a friend of mine in the culinary profession made that I should write this book. I didn’t think I had a tea cookbook in me, but once the idea for the work was planted, it germinated and flourished into a full book. Up until then, I had tinkered with tea as an ingredient, making recipes like my Green Tea Granola, created for a bake sale and the Spring Rolls with Black Tea Dipping Sauce, created for a birthday potluck (of my friend who would end up shooting Steeped several years later, if you can believe it.).
You have included poetry having to do with tea in Steeped. Could you tell us more about how you selected these poems, and what their role is?
I love poetry and knew from the start, I wanted to tease poetry into the cookbook as a different perspective of telling the story of what tea evokes in the tea lover and snapshots of how tea is appreciated around the world, through international poetry. Anna Akhmatova describes briefly the Russian way of taking tea while Gary Snyder gives a glimpse into more of an American experience (hint: tea is for everyone). I found this wonderful quote from Tagore but couldn’t find its original source so it was struck from the book. A few other instances were right on the edge– I wasn’t sure we would be able to include the snippet from a Rilke letter, but the permission arrived just in time! Jane Kenyon is the poetry mentor who never was. She is possibly my favorite poet as her work moves me with its quiet glimpses of everyday life, often with the undercurrent of deeper truths so rich in poetry. My editor and I were both elated when Donald Hall gave approval to include parts of her work in the book. I liked how she is a constant at the beginning of each chapter which created a cadence for the full day of steeping tea into food. The range of multicultural expressions about tea was an important consideration. Sometimes, though the approvals didn’t come through, and I erred on the side of copyright caution.
You mention in your book that Lapsang souchong is the gold standard of teas with which to cook. Do you still like it more than, say, Matcha (which is very versatile and all the rage today)? Please explain.
Oh, Lapsang Souchong, I cannot quit thee! But seriously, this black tea is smoked over fir tree root for an aroma I love to describe as a campfire in a cup. While it is used to smoke duck or salmon, I do think it is not stretched far enough and that’s why I consider it to be my favorite tea with which to cook. You don’t need a lot to imbue an untraceable edge of the exotic in your food or you can up the ante and go for the bold smoky flavor. Many people find its flavor in the cup off-putting, but when I encountered them on book tour, I tried to encourage them to give Lapsang Souchong another chance. It really shines in cooking (plus it’s a wonderful real food substitute for ingredient mystery that is “liquid smoke”). I do love matcha and I’m glad it’s time really has come to the U.S. but I find it an obvious choice for cooking with tea. It’s easy. If you look at matcha, it resembles the consistency of a spice like ground cinnamon and has the kitsch factor of turning whatever it’s added to, green. Lapsang Souchong is a question mark then, or a brave exclamation point to the cooking with tea question.
Who are your favorite classic and contemporary poets, or the ones that have influenced you the most?
This is such a hard question to answer because poetry collections are like music albums. I might really love one album, but now be as keen on more recent work. A song on one album might stand out and need to be memorized. So, if I may, I’m going to side-step a bit here. Part of a poem by Mark Strand compelled me to write poetry professionally– it showed me the absolute fun and complexity od adjusting words just so. Up until then, I had written for many years but privately. That poem spun me around! The book Rose by Li-Young Lee never stops captivating me with its beauty. Alberto Rios and Yehuda Amichai bind me with the spells of their wordplay and magical realism. The lyrical wordplay of Ross Gay (that poem about figs inCatalogue of Unabashed Gratitude or the dog in Bringing the Shovel Down– that dog haunts me still!) and Carol Frost (all of her honeycombs, bees and mother poems) are transfixing. Lucille Clifton is a master of brevity and narrative. “Perejil” by Rita Dove still takes my breath away, as does “The Colonel” by Carolyn Forche. The gorgeous work of Rilke and Keats, along with Donne were starting points for me… And then we come back to Kenyon. I picked up Constance at Green Apple Books and several pages in, ordered the rest of her work from the bookstore. She is the first poet I read front to back, wanting to better understand how her poetry changed as she kept writing and what stayed the same– I wanted to see that development and learn from it, so you could say I studied her books. I can’t forget Martin Espada or Sharon Olds or Gabriel by Edward Hirsch. I have a soft spot for international poets and especially Jaroslav Seifert as well as Milosz and of course, Neruda. This is an incomplete list, but it’s a stab of an attempt at an answer.
How about your favorite chefs and cookbook authors?
If I had to pick a chef whose food is everything I want to eat it would be Suzanne Goin. I like the way she thinks about flavors and her recipes sometimes involve several parts, but you always know they will deliver. Jeremy Fox is another chef whose food inspires me. Ottolenghi and Michael Solomonov can do no wrong (which I realize is hyperbolic, but we did travel to Philadelphia for a big birthday just so I could welcome a new decade at Zahav. So worth it). I’m a curious cook and pulled notably toward spice blends and ingredients that I’ve never encountered before. I appreciate how Nigel Slater approaches cooking. I like how Alice Medrich is so precise with her wording in her recipes and it’s as if she is right there in the kitchen with you telling you not to beat the batter one more time. Melissa Clark nails what to eat with such grace. I’m a sucker for learning new things and find Julia Turshen and Samin Nosrat great teachers in written form. Did I mention I’m obsessed with Mexican food and am a student of it?
How did you develop an interest in culinary poetry, and how much of your own work falls into that category?
Culinary poetry came about as a response to trying to make space for two of my passions which until that point competed for my attention. By marrying both, poetry, which for me gets so easily drowned out by food, could have a voice in the matter. I would say that a small portion of my poetry falls within the category of food poetry– it’s what you will see most online, but I have a few projects I’m working on outside of the digital space that only, if ever, dip a toe into the food poetry pool.
What were the principle challenges that your book project entailed? Did it take you a long time to find a publisher? How about developing the recipes to being with? Was coming up with an organizational strategy a challenge? How about the writing in general, and the photography and the design process?
I wanted Steeped to be cohesive, approachable, artful, and instructive. My agent shopped the proposal around and Andrews McMeel came on board pretty quickly. I started out having about 25 recipes mostly finished and ready to be tested. The sample table of contents submitted to my publisher in the beginning was almost fully baked from a concept standpoint with a few changes along the way. Organizing the book was the easy part as the book resembled a skeleton and it became clear what colors should be used where to flesh out the book’s progress for the reader. I organized the recipes around the tea to be the core ingredient as a way to ensure it would not be lopsided with too many Lapsang Souchong recipes, as an example. What’s wonderful about a cookbook is that some days, I could sit down and write, write, write. Other days were spent researching for the right poetry snippets. Still, other days would be mostly kitchen days. I loved that flow of ever-changing patterns with all of the activities being creative. The design was done internally at my publisher’s and they would consult me on things like the cover. We shot the book in the span of about two weeks, so that involved a completely other kind of creativity–one grappling with light and shadow, colored textiles and tableware.
Are there particular recipes in Steeped that you’d like to highlight at this time, for this occasion (or that you think the poetry fans on this site should start with)?
First of all there are no plum recipes. Dear, sweet William Carlos Williams. I feel like “This is Just to Say” is the entry poem into the food poetry world, but alas, no plum recipes. Instead, I’d suggest starting with the White Bean Walnut Toasts, the Chamomile Corn Chowder and the Masala Chai Applesauce for winter. Some recipes I’ve been craving lately include the Salted Almond Ice Cream with Masala Chai Magic Shell and the Earl Grey Whey Soda or the Green Tea Broccoli Soup.
Could you say a few words about your “food poet” project?
I started the food poet blog back in 2007 when I was studying toward an MFA in poetry at New England College and traveling for work (at a tea company) to food festivals and tradeshows. I desired to combine my two keenest interests in a place where they could symbiotically live. At any given moment, there might be a food poem, recipe, interview with a poet, or essay on art or travel ideas on the blog. I try to operate under the idea that if it’s my happy place, perhaps it will be someone else’s happy place too. The food poet was selected by Alimentum Journal as one of their favorite food blogs, which is always great to find your work appreciated, isn’t it?
We know you’ve been attending the AWP conference for years even though not many cookbook authors attend that conference. Can you say a few words about how you’ve been promoting Steeped and which promotional pushes have been interesting and/or worked out well?
I’m so glad you asked this question. I have loved being the sole cookbook author at AWP. Poets and writers need to eat and often times, enjoy the act of cooking. It’s been such a joy to connect with tea drinking readers and cooks at AWP and I loved pushing the boundaries of what a cookbook might encompass by including poetry. I’m a firm believer that poetry is for the people and that if they haven’t yet found poetry is for them, perhaps it’s because they haven’t yet met a poem that sets their mind on fire. Seeding poetry through a cookbook and then seeding a cookbook into a mainly literary conference resembles my desire to blur the lines with the goal of connecting.
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