County cookbook

County cooks share their favourite recipes

To describe the new County Heirlooms book as a cookbook would be a vast understatement. The new book from Invisible Publishing by Leigh Nash and Natalie Wollenberg does contain 42 recipes from chefs and cooks across the County, and the dishes are exquisitely styled and presented by Ruth Gangbar, but there are also 42 compelling stories of the creators of those dishes, accompanied by portraits that bring forth their personalities to the printed page. The book is a significant departure from Invisible’s usual offering of prose and poetry. “We’ve never done a book like this before, with full colour photographs. We’ve never done a cookbook and it’s really exciting to be able to make something new, something unique for us, and to watch people’s reaction to it has been really heartening and lovely,” says Leigh, who is also the publisher of Invisible Books, based in Picton. The genesis of the book came about 14 months ago when Natalie mused about creating a cookbook as a fundraiser for Food to Share. After a few conversations with Leigh, she started making phone calls. “I’d say, ‘Hey, are you available for an interview?’, and it was just a matter of everyone getting their recipes in, and with Ruth we were able to program all the recipes, and then invited all the contributors to come and shoot with us, because we wanted to make sure we were putting on the plate what they envisaged,” says Natalie, who took all the photographs in the book, including the portraits of the contributors in their home or workplace kitchens. It is those portraits and the accompanying stories that lift this book into excellence.

Printing a full colour cookbook was an expensive proposition for Invisible. Such books are three to four times more costly to print, and more so in the larger format than their typical offering. Fortunately, additional revenue generated by the sale of the 2017 Giller-nominated I Am a Truck by Michelle Winters allowed Invisible to take on this project. “It was hard to take a gamble, but I think it’s going to pay off. The book really speaks for itself,” says Leigh. “Delivery day was the most nerve-racking. We had no idea how it was going to turn out, and then you unbox it and go ‘Oh, it’s beautiful, thank God!’ Laying out a cookbook is no mean feat. You have to think about things like the font you use should be able to accommodate fractions. We try to use Canadian fonts. Our contributors have all presented their recipes in different formats and we really wanted to leave it so that the voice of every cook comes through, so that it wasn’t just homogenized. A book like this would normally take two years at least— go through the process, test all the recipes, edit all the pieces—so this was really like ‘hit the ground running and go!’ Fortunately, Nat is a workhorse and got everything done early. She nailed it all the first time, because there was no option to do reshoots, to revisit any of the food or any of the portraits.” Leigh has witnessed the sometimes jaw-dropping reaction when people open the book and look at it for the first time, occasionally hearing an approving expletive too.

(L-R): Natalie Wollenberg and Leigh Nash hold copies of the County Heirlooms cookbook at Books & Company.

For Natalie, the whole process has been extraordinarily satisfying. “Working with Leigh and Ruth were the highlights. From a very casual conversation with Leigh about putting a book together, and then all of a sudden 14 months later, it’s here.

Being able to collaborate the whole thing was easy, and she has a very hard job that I have been witness to,” says Natalie. “Ruth is amazing. The way she looks at a dish has got so many dimensions to it and she’s so purposeful with moving either the props or the food. I learnt a lot from her. As a photographer, this book was a dream come true, to have my photos in print. I couldn’t have imagined that. It was also a new skill of learning food photography, and Ruth being such a great teacher, her wisdom was unbelievable.” For Leigh, the portraits are one of the things that make the book stand out. “The portraits are really beautiful,” she says, “They’re not candid, but also not ‘art’ portraits. They are very real and their personality comes through.” One of the key points for Natalie was being able to take the portraits in people’s kitchens. “It’s where they congregate, where people have that first coffee, where you have breakfast with your children, where you have your friends over. The kitchen is the epicentre of the house.”

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic did not significantly affect the publication of the book. Invisible Publishing makes a point of having all of its books printed in Canada, so there were border closure issues to contend with. The first print run of 2,200 copies is smaller than it might have been, but is in keeping with their ethos of printing only as necessary. “I wish there were a few more tourists around to buy the book, but a book like this does not have a short shelf-life,” says Leigh. “It’s going to be around for years to come. We’ll reprint it as necessary, so it’s more of an investment than a flash in the pan. That’s how we put it together, too. It wasn’t meant to be a guide-book style of book, it’s meant to be a beautiful document they can go back to. We encourage people to go and google the name of the contributors to see where they are at now and if they’ve moved on from what they are doing.” The feedback from buyers has been all positive. There are recipes at every skill level, from “mix all ingredients in a blender” to multi-step overnight preparation of a long list of ingredients. The recipes also span the globe, from the Mediterranean to Latin America, classic Canadian as well as Indigenous.

When asked to offer any final thoughts about the book, Natalie responds quickly with “Buy the goddamn book!” To which Leigh adds, “And buy it for your friends.” The book is available at Books & Company, as well as at various locations around the County such as Vicki’s Veggies, Curious Goat General Store, and Zest. Royalties from the sale of the book are being donated to Food to Share.