Arty Parties: An Entertaining Cookbook
October 12th, 2021
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In her follow-up cookbook to Salad for President, cook, writer, and artist Julia Sherman shows us how to apply an artist’s touch to our own home gatherings.
Artists throw superior parties, and we can learn from their willingness to draw outside the lines, choose character over perfection, and find boundless joy in feeding family and friends. Cook, live, and host like an artist with inspired, easy recipes and playful hands-on experiments in the kitchen.
Sherman shows you how to be the architect of your own uniquely memorable bash, whether that means a special breakfast for two, or a “choose your own adventure” meal that’s flexible enough to feed a crowd. Forget the codified markers of good taste, Arty Parties instead reveals that modern gatherings are less about “getting it right” and more about getting your hands dirty, building community, and taking risks in the kitchen and beyond. Featuring colorful food that is confident in its simplicity, Sherman shares easy-to-follow, healthy recipes that value imaginative flavor combinations over complexity: dishes like Greek yogurt, avocado, and lemongrass panna cotta, saffron tomato soup, coconut rice cakes with smashed avocado and soy marinated eggs, and roasted broccolini with blood orange and creamy pepita sauce.
This book also invites readers into the idiosyncratic gatherings of internationally acclaimed artists, from a chic office party in a Parisian art book publisher’s atelier, to an underground earth oven pizza party on a secluded hillside in Los Angeles. Woven throughout are Sherman’s own home-grown events that are relatable yet wonderfully experimental in tone.
Utterly unique and beautifully designed, Arty Parties is a guide to creating meaningful experiences that nourish both the host and their guests in body, mind, and soul.
“Arty Parties is so utterly original, playful, and practical that if it doesn’t inspire you to throw a party, I don’t know what will. Amid thoughtful recipes highlighting exquisitely sourced ingredients, Julia Sherman profiles a mix of artists’ parties that run the gamut from a chic Parisian office parties to a Queer Performance night in upstate New York. Everything in the book has the same message: food is visual art, a performance, and sustenance. The next time you entertain, think outside the box.”— Stephanie Danler, author of Sweetbitter and Stray
“Open Julia Sherman’s Arty Parties and you’re immediately transported to her charming and colorful world of entertaining. Her collection of recipes are exactly what we want to be eating now: fresh, vegetable-forward and strikingly beautiful and make you wish you’re lucky enough to score an invite to one of her always memorable events.”— Andy Baraghani, Senior Food Editor, Bon Appetit
“Julia Sherman is a grand champion of creative get-togethers, and she wants you to be one too. This gem of a book is the spark you need if you tend to talk yourself out of entertaining (we’ve all been there). Arty Parties gets under the hood and shows you how to make the world your dining room, rethink what it means to host, cook great food, and have fun in the process.”—Heidi Swanson, author, Super Natural Cooking
“Arty Parties is so utterly original, playful, and practical that if it doesn’t inspire you to throw a party, I don’t know what will. Amid thoughtful recipes highlighting exquisitely sourced ingredients, Julia Sherman profiles a mix of artists’ parties that run the gamut from a chic Parisian office parties to a Queer Performance night in upstate New York. Everything in the book has the same message: food is visual art, a performance, and sustenance. The next time you entertain, think outside the box.”— Stephanie Danler, author of Sweetbitter and Stray
“Julia Sherman is bursting with delicious ideas: eat a halved Furikake-sprinkled avocado, perhaps on the go, over the sink! Soak some sour cherries in vodka for a memorable hostess gift! Toss a head of romaine on the grill and mix it with celery-kumquat salsa to make a mouth-watering salad! Sherman takes us in hand and teaches us not to be too precious in the kitchen: to experiment, make a mess, try something new. This book is a reminder that food is a party, and a really good one at that.”— Naomi Fry, staff writer, The New Yorker
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Salad for President: A Cookbook Inspired by Artists
Spring 2017
A visually rich collection of inventive recipes and conversations with artists, architects and musicians, Salad for President: A Cookbook Inspired by Artists offers a rare glimpse into the everyday lives of the most creative characters. Sherman visits unusual live/work spaces from Kyoto to Mexico City, interviewing and photographing her subjects as they cook and share a meal. The resulting volume offers insight into the inner lives of artists with a uniquely vegetable-obsessed perspective.
The book includes 75 of Sherman’s own recipes organized by occasion from F*%k Brunch to Salad In Sweatpants: Casual Meals For People Who Already Love You. In addition, there are contributions from: artist, musician, and director Laurie Anderson, photographer William Wegman, chef/activist Alice Waters, artist Tauba Auerbach, musicians Shinji Masuko and Maki Toba of Boredoms, architect Luis Barragán and the Luque Family, artist/activist Ron Finley, gardener and couture collector Madeleine Fitzpatrick, architect and inventor Harry Gesner, video artist and educator Yoshua Okón, and ceramicist Yui Tsujimura.
Since 2011, Salad For President has published interviews and recipes with such celebrated guests as artists Larry Bell, Robert Irwin, Alison Knowles (Fluxus), and writer/musician Claire Evans (YACHT). Engaged with everything from politics to ecology to art, Salad for President is more than a collection of delicious recipes—it is a celebration of the more intimate everyday practices that define the artists we know and love. Expanding on the blog, Salad for President: A Cookbook Inspired by Artists, is a book for people who want to live, cook, and host like an artist.
“A salad is a composition. I am perfectly happy to see cars or clouds or salads as artworks. It’s what you do with them and how you contextualize them that matters.”—Laurie Anderson
“Part relational art, part self-discovery, Salad for President turns our notion of ‘salad’ on its head in a funny, beautiful, and most personal way.” —Alex Grossman, Bon Appétit
“Salad for President makes even the most unrepentant meat eater consider their leafy greens; it is a decidedly bitter, yet delicious, pill to swallow.” —John Martin, Munchies
“Julia Sherman is a ‘natural’ artist. She cannot help but bring the same beauty and enthusiasm to everything she touches. This cookbook is no exception.” —Mia Locks, co-curator of the 2017 Whitney Biennial