Love, Lobster and Strawberry Cupcakes

 

If you had told me 15 years ago that Quentin Bacon would be in my kitchen shooting photos for my book, I would have laughed at you. If you had told me the name of the book, I would have just been puzzled.

Quentin Bacon has been the photographer for some of the magazine pieces I’d written– but he shot my food, not me. And when he was on one of my stories, I not only knew the piece would be gorgeous– I knew the magazine valued it enough to assign it to one of their most valued talents. So when we heard from our beloved editor at Oxmoor House, Rachel West, that Quentin Bacon was coming to our kitchen to shoot for our book… yeah, I was a little giddy about it. (I refrained from stopping folks in the street and saying, “Hey, did you know Quentin Bacon is shooting our book?”, but I might have come close).

It was right around the time we found out about Quentin that we also finalized the name of the book. Some of you will understand the name right away. For others, it will help to read this or this— or, better still, to read the book when it comes out in October of 2015. (Yeah, 2015. That is not a typo.) The book is filled with the food Ebo and I love to cook, eat and share, and it is full of stories about the many ways in which food connects all of us emotionally and culturally. The name of the book is Love, Lobster and Strawberry Cupcakes.

I hope if you remember the name when it comes out more than a year from now, you will pick it up off a shelf of a book store (if any still exist) or read bits of it on Amazon or in a magazine and think, “Oh, wow– I can make that!”. Because most of all, Ebo and I hope to show you that some of the dishes you might not have thought to make– like gin-cured grav lax, onion rosemary foccaccia, bacon popcorn, and a standing rib roast with cabernet onion marmalade– are not so difficult after all. We give you step-by-step photos, all kinds of tips, some video accompaniment (!) and more, because we really want to share with you how rewarding and fulfilling cooking is and can be. And we truly hope that some of these dishes might become part of the fabric of your lives, just as they are woven in ours.

In the meantime, I have another day to shoot with Quentin Bacon. And another day which will start out with Ebo all calm and laid back, and me all nervous and fussy and fidgety, and then Quentin and food stylist Dana Bonagura and the rest of the crew will make it so easy and I will forget myself and have a blast…Just hanging out in the kitchen with Ebo and the gang and playing around.