The Year of Miracles - by Ella Risbridger (Hardcover)

About the Book

A DELICIOUS MAGAZINE BEST COOKBOOK OF THE YEAR * A GLOBE AND MAIL TOP 10 COOKBOOK OF THE YEAR
Shortlisted for the Andre Simon Best Cookbook Award 2022

From the author of Midnight Chicken, a month-by-month chronicle of writing and recipes that explores joy and healing through food.

Book Synopsis

A DELICIOUS MAGAZINE BEST COOKBOOK OF THE YEAR * A GLOBE AND MAIL TOP 10 COOKBOOK OF THE YEAR
Shortlisted for the Andre Simon Best Cookbook Award 2022

From the author of Midnight Chicken, a month-by-month chronicle of writing and recipes that explores joy and healing through food.

"A gift to readers and cooks alike ... wise and tender, a reminder that however gloomy your situation, the world abounds in beauty, should you choose to see it." -The Washington Post

"Exuberant, unstoppable, and triumphantly on the side of love and life in the face of death and loss and grief." -Vox

This cookbook is about a year in the kitchen (and in the garden under the fire-escape steps). A year of grief and hope and change; of cardamom-cinnamon chicken rice, chimichurri courgettes, quadruple carb soup, blackberry miso birthday cake, and sticky toffee Guinness brownie pudding. A year of loss, and every kind of romance, and fried jam sandwiches. A year of seedlings and pancakes. A year of falling in love. A year of recipes. A year, in other words, of minor miracles.

In Ella Risbridger's first book Midnight Chicken, she showed readers how food can serve as a light in our darkest days. Now, in The Year of Miracles, Ella shares her story of recovering from loss with the help of good food and good friends. The book celebrates making a fancy dinner even if you're just eating it with a spoon in front of the tv; having people over to dinner without overthinking it; finding late night snacks to ease you to sleep; and having seconds--of everything. Above all, it a powerful testament to how cooking can help us get up and start again in the face of unimaginable hurt.

With tender vulnerability, mesmerizing prose, and delectable recipes, The Year of Miracles is a touching, unforgettable book on finding hope through food.

Review Quotes

"A gift to readers and cooks alike ... Risbridger's recipes are discursive and poetic with suggestions for how we can savor even the cooking process itself more deeply ... Again and again she asks us to slow down and relish what is at hand, to look closely and lovingly at the beauty and wholeness of the quotidian ... [The Year of Miracles is] wise and tender, a reminder that however gloomy your situation, the world abounds in beauty, should you choose to see it." --The Washington Post

"This wonderful book is for people who, like me, keep stacks of cookbooks beside their bed for nighttime reading; a journey through a year of love, loss, cooking and healing through poetic short stories interspersed with watercolor illustrations and recipes for things like fried jam sandwiches and rhubarb custard cake." --The Globe and Mail, "Top 10 Cookbooks of 2022"

"Sprightly, evocative prose, which is never more compelling than when [Risbridger's] describing the sheer joy of her food ... exuberant, unstoppable, and triumphantly on the side of love and life in the face of death and loss and grief." --Vox

"[A] deeply personal cookbook of healing recipes ... [Risbridger] weaves beautiful, journal-like prose among the recipes, taking the reader through the year with observations and personal reflections. Recipes are charmingly simplistic, encouraging the reader to rummage in the fridge for substitutions, and are accompanied by funny and equally endearing origin stories ... This is a must for cookbook readers." --Booklist

"[A] sumptuous culinary equivalent to Ilene Beckerman's Love, Loss, and What I Wore ... Even in recalling her grief, Risbridger's narration is buoyed by humor ... and the book's charming watercolor illustrations make it all the more worth savoring. Readers will find this a treat." --Publishers Weekly

"Ella Risbridger has a comforting talent for delivering deliciousness in a way that seems like an act of compassion." --Nigella Lawson

"Watercolor illustrations bring the recipes to life ... Risbridger gives plenty of hints and helpful tips, making the narrative sound even more like standing in a kitchen with a chatty friend ... [Risbridger] navigates her loss honestly, relying on community in every form: long walks, phone calls while she prepares dinner, feasts in the garden, leftovers with Jo around their table. The book is a tribute, as Risbridger says, to 'cooking, and the people who love you: the two greatest and most practical miracles of all.'" --Shelf Awareness

"Love, sorrow, grief and how cooking can get you through. Ella Risbridger has such a sincere and distinctive voice. A book full of wisdom." --Diana Henry

"An extraordinary, tender and heartwarming book with gorgeous recipes. Ella Risbridger is a unique and enchanting writer. I loved it." --Nigel Slater

"Each recipe documents a particular moment, part of the author's gradual process of falling back in love with cooking and finding joy in what can feel like a dark world." --T: The New York Times Style Magazine on MIDNIGHT CHICKEN

"The new Nigella." --Good Housekeeping

"A charming, witty coming-of-age-slash-recovery story that is refreshingly free of saccharine (the ingredient and the sentiment), a cookbook that rewards creativity over rules." --The Washington Post on MIDNIGHT CHICKEN

About the Author

Ella Risbridger is a writer, anthologiser and editor. In a former life she was the beauty columnist for a broadsheet, a poetry columnist for a now- defunct women's website, a poet, a carer and a journalist. She has written for the Guardian, the Independent, the Observer, Grazia, Stylist, Prospect, and Waitrose Magazine; and has been profiled in the Times, the Financial Times and the Daily Mail. Her debut, Midnight Chicken (& Other Recipes Worth Living For) was Sunday Times Book Of The Year 2019, Guild Of Food Writers General Cookbook Of The Year 2020, and an Amazon and Waterstones bestseller. She lives in South-East London with four thousand books, and has finally got a cat. She is no longer on Twitter, can't figure out how to update her website, but is often on Instagram. @ellarisbridger