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Martha Stewart

Martha: The Cookbook

Reviewed by Jeffrey Sanzel

Martha Stewart is one of the most recognizable personalities in the world. Noted for her media empire (Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia), the home and hospitality guru attained the highest level of celebrity. She published her first book, Entertaining, in 1982.

Martha: The Cookbook marks her one-hundredth cookbook. Subtitled “100 Favorite Recipes, with Lessons and Stories from My Kitchen,” the book reflects her culinary work and her family life. The introduction and the facing photographs indicate this will be an intimate tome. In addition to the hundreds of photos accompanying the recipes, she shares dozens of personal photos, ranging from family members to Julia Child.

Stewart divides the book into seven chapters: Breakfast & Brunch; Soups & Salads; Cocktails; Hors d’Oeuvres; Dinner; Garden Sides; and Desserts. An appendix follows them: My Basic Pantry explains beef, chicken, vegetable, and turkey stocks, the ideal pastry crust, etc. She outlines her favorite kitchen tools, from the rolling pin to a sesame seed roaster.

In the first chapter, Breakfast & Brunch, Stewart launches with a basic offering: steamed eggs. This is simply a more effective approach to boiled eggs, with instructions anyone can handle. Knowing that her audience will have various skills, she offers a classic hollandaise sauce and an easy hollandaise sauce for artichokes with poached eggs and salmon. She includes her green juice formula, “an invaluable part of my [her] quest for aging gracefully.”

Stewart reflects her Polish heritage with her beet soup and potato and buttermilk soup. On the other end of the spectrum, she sometimes suggests elevating basic fare with truffles or caviar. Drinks include Martha-tinis, Martha-ritas, and a citrus alternative to the Bloody Mary, Mary’s Knees. Hors d’oeuvres range from deviled eggs and potato pancakes to oysters two ways (Rockefeller and Casino). A memory of crabbing with her father on New Jersey’s Shrewsbury River segues into her crabcake recipe. A tantalizing smashed baked potatoes section explains how and, intriguingly, why they should be smashed. 

The two largest sections of the book are Dinners (twenty-one recipes) and Desserts (twenty-two recipes). These sections contain some of the most challenging pieces. The time-intensive potato pierogi and paella recipes are ambitious but clearly worth the effort. Stewart follows the one ingredient dessert—orange granita—with the complex Cipriani classic meringue cake. 

When possible, vegetables come from her gardens and fruit from her trees; she raises chickens for their variety of eggs. She cites two specific residences: a farm in Bedford—where her greenhouses allow growth year-round—and a home on Maine’s Mount Desert Island. Using the best materials from the best sources is a major theme in Stewart’s cookery.  

The contents of the book represent a lifetime of travel. Whether in Ibiza, in the Spanish Balearics, or a café/bakery in Boston, she spent her career gathering the best gastronomic experiences to share with her followers, whether on television or through her magazine and books. 

The personal sections, woven throughout, are titled “Remembering.” Stewart’s memory for detail is extraordinary. Photos of her runway work accompany her days of modeling in Paris during her early college years. She describes her apartment on 101st St. and Riverside Drive in Manhattan, when she worked as a Wall Street stockbroker. In a handful of sentences, she paints a picture of the joys of marriage, pregnancy, and cooking every recipe in Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume One, by Julia Child, Simone Beck, and Louisette Bertholle. 

A major highlight is Dana Gallagher’s exquisite photos. Most take an entire page or even a two-page spread. They are bright, vivid, and truly elegant, but this is no surprise. Reflecting on a 1993 soufflés photo shoot, Stewart states, “My editors and I learned a lot on this photo shoot. We learned that we have to treat all food with great respect. No detail is too small.” 

Martha: The Cookbook arrives in time for the holidays. A self-described traditionalist, she presents turkey and ham preparations, ideal for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Pumpkin pie with phyllo crust shows a willingness for a twist on a popular dish. 

While she mentions many famous people and trendsetters, this outing comes down to celebrating family. She often mentions her mother, Big Martha, and her daughter, Alexa (both represented by recipes). She now teaches her granddaughter, Jude, as she taught Alexa. 

In her final words in the Introduction, Stewart sums up her goal: “Please enjoy the recipes we have featured and treat yourself, your family, and your friends to a little taste of my favorites—and do not forget to start compiling your own list of favorites to hand down to your loved ones.”

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By Leah S. Dunaief

Leah Dunaief

“When are you going to retire?” is a question that makes me smile. Of course, it is closely related to another word: age. Put the two words together, and I start to become defiant, which is probably why Martha Stewart decided to pose in a swimsuit for the cover of Sports Illustrated’s annual issue.

Now I know about Martha Stewart, who was not called by that name when she was a year behind me at Barnard College. That means she is only one year younger than I, and she, too, was feeling defiant. She wanted to show the world that she was not invisible just because she is older. And indeed, she is showing the whole world because she is an international personality, a businesswoman, writer and television personality, who has written books, publishes a magazine, hosted two syndicated television programs and personifies contemporary graceful living with her Martha Stewart Living ventures.

My guess is that many women in the latter years of their lives are cheering Martha Stewart’s swimsuit photos and her defiance.

Ageism is definitely an unwelcome bigoted “ism” in this century, when people are often living into their 80s, 90s and beyond. One of my personal heroes is Warren Buffett, American business investor and philanthropist. Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, known as the “Oracle of Omaha” and worth over 100 billion dollars, making him the fifth richest person in the world, he will be celebrating his 93rd birthday in August. Even more impressive is his business partner, Charlie Munger, who is 99. Together they still run the fabulously successful company.

Another such story is about Milton Esterow, 94, profiled in The New York Times last Sunday. A publisher at the age of 10 in Brooklyn where he grew up, he made 18 copies of his first publication, each consisting of one handwritten page, and sold them to friends for 2 cents apiece. You can see why he has already stolen my heart. Today he still writes articles for The New York Times about culture and art. In between, he has traveled around the world, met famous artists, owned the country’s oldest art magazine, ARTimes, and won many distinguished prizes. His culture stories had an edge. In 1964 he wrote a front page story for The NYT on treasures stolen by the Nazis during WWII, one of rare culture stories to run on page one. 

His investigative approach made his stories and magazine successes. In the early 1980s, as a result of a rumor he had heard, he and his wife flew to Vienna and visited a monastery that might house thousands of works looted by Nazi soldiers. He met with head of the Federal Monuments Office in Austria and sensed that the man was defensive. He assigned a reporter to dig around and by 1984, the article appeared attesting to the hidden collection. At that point, “All hell broke loose,“ according to Esterow.

“In 1985, the Austrian government announced a plan to return stolen works to their owners or heirs,” according to The NYT. “In 2016, the general consul of Austria presented Mr. Esterow with a Cross of Honor for Science and Art, saying that his work helped to make Austria ‘a better country.’”

Esterow continues to follow the trail of Nazi looting. He does not plan to retire. I particularly like what he had to say about that.

“Work is more fun than fun.”

For all these people and so many more octogenarians and older — Martha Stewart, Warren Buffett, Milton Esterow — retirement is a strange idea. Old age is another.

My sentiments, too.