The Kinfolk Table: Recipes for Small Gatherings

Somewhere between whipping up a meal for unexpected guests and a formal dinner party lies The Kinfolk Table. This new cookbook from Kinfolk magazine’s founding editor Nathan Williams explores that sweet spot: the gathering as more than a meal. The Kinfolk Table spends as much time and photography on its 45 contributors—from restaurateurs, food writers and cheesemakers to financial analysts, haberdashers and calligraphers—as it does their recipes. Through this personal angle, we see the book is not about easy recipes, but about simple ones. It’s easy to drive to Safeway and buy plastic-wrapped bread and mussels, but it’s also simple to bake breakfast bread or wade into the Oregon surf and pry bivalves off a rock. This simplistic but engaging way of cooking and living carries over into the beautiful photography—a mixture of American Gothic, Mason jars, and antique wood tables with a splash of artisan hipster—that makes this as much an art book as it is a cookbook. The recipes are diverse—from sweet potato-mushroom tacos with spiced almond sauce to apple crisp—but with a unique and ubiquitous style flowing between the pages, the message becomes less about the dish or the farm-to-table approach, and more about the how, why and who of sharing a meal.