Advance Praise for Company
"We’ve long been fans of Amy Thielen’s cooking. Her recipes bring styled-out flourishes to the kitchen repertoire. And then there’s her writing: with Thielen’s first cookbook, The New Midwestern Table, she became our generation’s Laurie Colwin, dramatizing the all-five-senses thrills of cooking with a nurturing voice that made readers feel: I got this. Company broadens the scope, torquing up the ambition to menu-based parties like a Friday-night Fish Fry for eight or an Argentinian-Style Asado for twenty or more. Packed with real-life tips, hacks, and kitchen inspiration, every sentence of this book will make you a better, happier cook!"
― Matt Lee and Ted Lee, authors of The Lee Bros. Charleston Kitchen
"An exuberant, irreverent love letter to abundance in all its forms: friendship, care, pleasure, and beautiful food that brings them all together."
― Chelsey Johnson, author of Stray City
"Amy Thielen’s recipes and writing capture the true rhythms of the kitchen, from the glamour and glee of an overloaded table to the welcome quiet of a dish-stacked sink. This book is a practical and economical guide to cooking for a crowd. It’s also fancy and funny and fun. Reading and cooking with Company feels like being invited to the sort of party I crave―and it makes me want to throw my own blowout feast as soon as humanly possible."
― Kate Lebo, author of The Book of Difficult Fruit
"A treasure―after spending time with Amy Thielen’s intimate, spirited, and often funny writing in Company, you’ll want to have her at your party, too."
― Mayukh Sen, author of Taste Makers
"The most gorgeous and useful cookbook I’ve seen in a long time. Amy Thielen’s recipes are always foolproof, and company-pleasers for sure. This book inspires what we need more than ever right now, community. I will be cooking from it for a long time."
― Jeni Britton-Bauer, entrepreneur and author of Jeni’s Splendid Ice Cream Desserts
The New Midwestern Table
"One of the best culinary memoirs you'll ever pick up"—Rolling Stone
A beautifully written food memoir chronicling one woman’s journey from her rural Midwestern hometown to the intoxicating world of New York City fine dining—and back again—in search of her culinary roots
Before Amy Thielen frantically plated rings of truffled potatoes in some of New York City’s finest kitchens—for chefs David Bouley, Daniel Boulud, and Jean-Georges Vongerichten—she grew up in a northern Minnesota town home to the nation’s largest French fry factory, the headwaters of the fast food nation, with a mother whose generous cooking dripped with tenderness, drama, and an overabundance of butter.
Inspired by her grandmother’s tales of cooking in the family farmhouse, Thielen moves north with her artist husband to a rustic, off-the-grid cabin deep in the woods. There, standing at the stove three times a day, she finds the seed of a growing food obsession that leads her to the sensory madhouse of New York’s top haute cuisine brigades. But, like a magnet, the foods of her youth draw her back home, where she comes face to face with her past and a curious truth: that beneath every foie gras sauce lies a rural foundation of potatoes and onions.
Amy Thielen’s coming-of-age story pulses with energy, a cook’s eye for intimate detail, and a dose of dry Midwestern humor. Give a Girl a Knife offers a fresh, vivid view into New York’s high-end restaurants before returning Thielen to her roots, where she realizes that the marrow running through her bones is not demi-glace but gravy—thick with nostalgia and hard to resist.
Launch party Saveur Supper with chef-friends in New York City
Selected Press for Give a Girl a Knife
"Thielen has a warm, wry tone, whether recalling her mother crushing bags of crispy kettle chips or the great Bouley conjuring up AstroTurf-color spinach puree."—National Book Review
"Awesome for foodies, this book should also be read by fans of literary memoir.” —PBS News Hour
"The most important aspect of what Thielen learns as a chef is how to apply masterful techniques with something less tangible: seduction." —Leah Mirakhor, REVIEW, Los Angeles Times
"Amy Thielen . . . is the first food writer I've ever read who makes me yearn for the hard physical labor of cooking." —REVIEW, Aimee Levitt, The Chicago Reader
"Fans of Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential and Gabrielle Hamilton's Blood, Bones and Butter will enjoy this chef's memoir of learning to cook in Minnesota and dicing and deep-frying her way through the kitchens of some of New York's most esteemed chefs."—AM New York
"An evocative and enlightening new memoir." —Minneapolis Star Tribune
"What is it they say? Writers write. Chefs cook. Amy is the rare example of someone who does both like a boss!"—Vivian Howard, author of Deep Run Roots
"Simultaneously sincere and funny" —Publishers Weekly
Winner of the 2014 James Beard Foundation Award for Best American Cooking
Minnesota native Amy Thielen, host of Heartland Table on Food Network, presents 200 recipes that herald a revival in heartland cuisine in this James Beard Award-winning cookbook.
Amy Thielen grew up in rural northern Minnesota, waiting in lines for potluck buffets amid loops of smoked sausages from her uncle’s meat market and in the company of women who could put up jelly without a recipe. She spent years cooking in some of New York City’s best restaurants, but it took moving home in 2008 for her to rediscover the wealth and diversity of the Midwestern table, and to witness its reinvention.
The New Midwestern Table reveals all that she’s come to love—and learn—about the foods of her native Midwest, through updated classic recipes and numerous encounters with spirited home cooks and some of the region’s most passionate food producers. With 150 color photographs capturing these fresh-from-the-land dishes and the striking beauty of the terrain, this cookbook will cause any home cook to fall in love with the captivating flavors of the American heartland.
Recipes Online
Amy Thielen Makes a Katsu Burger, Saveur (VIDEO)
Gjetost Creme Brulee, Saveur (VIDEO)
Talking to Ari Shapiro of NPR’s All Things Considered about my grandma’s Strawberry Sun Jam recipe
Fermented Dill Pickles recipe, Food Network Magazine
Crispy Cabbage with Poppy Seeds, The Splendid Table
Rhubarb Lime Icebox Pie, Saveur
The Joys of Midwestern Fried Chicken and Gravy, Parade Magazine
Assorted Reviews and Interviews
Midwestern Table Gets an Upgrade, T. Susan Chang, Boston Globe
REVIEW, The Kitchn
Eater’s 21 Essential Cookbooks of 2013
How Amy Thielen of The New Midwestern Table Got Her Start, Minnesota Monthly
Cook The Book, Serious Eats
Made in the Midwest, Food Network Magazine
Available for purchase:
Heartland Table, an in-the-kitchen cooking show filmed in Amy’s cabin kitchen in northern Minnesota, ran on Food Network in 2013-2015 and was nominated for a James Beard Foundation Award in 2014.
After ten years in New York City, where she cooked on the line in some of Manhattan’s best restaurants, Amy has returned to her home in the woods in northern Minnesota with her husband, visual artist Aaron Spangler, and their 6-year-old son, Hank. A civilian home cook once more, she cooks for her family and friends with what’s available in her garden, her neighbor’s gardens, or her hometown grocery store. (Needless to say, such delicacies as Belgian endive never find their way into her kitchen; wild rice, though, which Aaron harvests from the creek in front of the house and takes to get wood-parched at the farm down the road, sometimes does.)
Occasional pro tips make their way into her recipes, but she’s resolutely a home cook now—the one who does the dishes. There’s no dirtying the food processor for just one little thing, no unnecessary ice-baths, no use of fresh herbs just for kicks or garnish . . . Amy’s food fits both the season and the household mood, making everything from a quick stovetop mac-and-cheeese for her hungry first grader getting off the bus to a totable lake day picnic of peppered pork and parmesan flatbread sandwiches.