Pastry Love: An Evening with Joanne Chang at More Than Words

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Join Joanne Chang, James Beard award–winning baker and owner of the beloved Flour bakeries in Boston, as she launches her newest cookbook, Pastry Love. Hear her story, snag a signed copy of the cookbook, and sample a pastry from her collection of recipes.

Joanne Chang

An honors graduate of Harvard College with a degree in Applied Mathematics and Economics, Joanne Chang left a career as a management consultant to enter the world of professional cooking. She is the chef and co-owner of Flour Bakery + Café, with eight locations in the Boston area, and Myers + Chang. She is the 2016 winner of the James Beard award for Outstanding Baker and the author of four acclaimed cookbooks. She lives in Boston.

Pastry Love

A must-have baking bible from the James Beard award–winning baker and owner of the beloved Flour bakeries in Boston. James Beard award–winning baker Joanne Chang is best known around the country for her eight acclaimed Flour bakeries in Boston. Chang has published two books based on the offerings at Flour, such as her famous sticky buns, but Pastry Love is her most personal and comprehensive book yet. It includes 125 dessert recipes for many things she could never serve in the setting of a bakery–for example, items that are best served warm or with whipped cream on top. Nothing makes Chang happier than baking and sharing treats with others, and that passion comes through in every recipe, such as Strawberry Slab Pie, Mocha Chip Cookies, and Malted Chocolate Cake. The recipes start off easy such as Lemon Sugar Cookies and build up to showstoppers like Passion Fruit Crepe Cake. The book also includes master lessons and essential techniques for making pastry cream, lemon curd, puff pastry, and more, all of which make this book a must-have for beginners and expert home bakers alike.

Ticket proceeds support More Than Words, a non-profit social enterprise empowering youth to take charge of their lives by taking charge of a business. Tickets are available on a pay-what-you-can basis, and are not tax deductible donations. Tickets over $10 include pastry samples. Tickets over $50 include a copy of the book and pastry samples.


Holi Celebration at Belmont Books

Join us for a celebration of Holi and show you love for some great local authors!

Anjali Mitter Duva is an Indian American writer raised in France. She is the author of the bestselling historical novel Faint Promise of Rain. She is also a co-founder of Chhandika, a non-profit organization that teaches and presents India’s classical storytelling kathak dance. Educated at Brown University and MIT, Anjali is a frequent speaker at conferences, festivals, libraries, schools and other cultural institutions. She was a finalist for a 2018 Artist Fellowship from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. In her spare time, she runs a book club for teens and the Arlington Author Salon, a quarterly literary series. She lives in the Boston area with her husband and two daughters, and is currently at work on her second novel.

Chaya Bhuvaneswar is a physician and writer with work in Narrative Magazine, Tin House, Electric Lit, The Millions, Joyland, Michigan Quarterly Review and elsewhere. Her poetry and prose juxtapose Hindu epics, other myths and histories, and the survival of sexual harassment and racialized sexual violence by diverse women of color. She has received a MacDowell Colony fellowship, Sewanee Writers Conference scholarship and Henfield award for her writing.

Rishi Reddi is the author of Karma and Other Stories and winner of the 2008 PEN New England / L.L. Winship prize for fiction. Her short stories have been aired on National Public Radio, performed at New York City’s Symphony Space, and published in Best American Short Stories, Harvard Review, and Prairie Schooner, among other journals. Her essays and translations have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, the Asian American Literary Review, and the Partisan Review. She has received grants and fellowships from The MacDowell Colony, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, United States Department of State, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and Vermont Studio Center. She lives in Cambridge, MA.

Kirun Kapur‘s first book, Visiting Indira Gandhi’s Palmist, was awarded the 2013 Antivenom Poetry Award and was a finalist for the Mass Book Prize, the Julie Suk Award and several other prizes. It was published in 2015 by Elixir Press. Her work has appeared in AGNI, Poetry International, FIELD, Prarie Schooner and others. She has taught creative writing at Boston University, Brandeis University, and has been granted fellowships from The Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Vermont Studio Center and McDowell Colony. Additional honors include the Arts & Letters Rumi Prize in Poetry, the Nazim Hikmet Prize and a Glenna Luschei award. In 2015, NBCNews named her to their list of Asian-American Poets to Watch. Kirun currently teaches at Amherst College and serves as the Poetry Editor for The Drum Literary Magazine.


BOOK LAUNCH: The Chef’s Secret by Crystal King

Come hear Crystal King discuss and read from her newest novel, The Chef’s Secret.

A captivating novel of Renaissance Italy detailing the mysterious life of Bartolomeo Scappi, the legendary chef to several popes and author of one of the bestselling cookbooks of all time, and the nephew who sets out to discover his late uncle’s secrets—including the identity of the noblewoman Bartolomeo loved until he died.

Wine and treats made from Renaissance-era recipes will be served.


Paperback Launch of Crystal King’s FEAST OF SORROW

Come celebrate the paperback launch of Crystal King’s acclaimed debut, FEAST OF SORROW (Touchstone Books/Simon and Schuster), hailed as “a delight to the senses” by Library Journal (starred review) and long-listed for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize. Crystal, a culinary enthusiast, will speak about the food customs of Ancient Rome and share the story of Apicius, the famous first-century gourmand who inspired the world’s oldest cookbook, and the ambition that led to his destruction.

 


The Baker Chocolate Company: A Sweet History

The Old South Meeting House is pleased to welcome you to a program dedicated to a chapter of Boston’s “sweet” history.

In 1765, Dr. James Baker of Dorchester was said to have stumbled upon Irishman John Hannon “crying on the banks of the mighty Neponset River.” Hannon, though penniless, possessed the rare skills required to make chocolate, a delicacy exclusive to Europe, and Baker, with pockets bursting, wished to make a name for himself. Using a mill powered by the river upon which they met, the duo built America’s oldest and most beloved manufacturer of this rich treat. Local historian Anthony Sammarco details the delicious saga of the Dorchester-based Baker Chocolate Company, from Hannon’s mysterious disappearance and the famed La Belle Chocolatiere advertising campaign, to cacao bean smuggling sparked by Revolutionary War blockades. Both bitter and sweet, this tale is sure to tickle your taste buds.

$10, General Admission (includes light refreshments);

$5, OSMH Members (includes admission to private reception with the author, 5:30-6:00 pm). http://osmhfeb22-18.bpt.me

Book sales and signing will follow the lecture.

Free General Admission to EBT card holders, no preregistration necessary.

Old South Meeting House is accessible for visitors using wheelchairs.
Assistive listening system is available.
Old South Meeting House is committed to accessibility for all visitors and has been designated as an UP Organization by the Massachusetts Cultural Council.
Access questions? Call us at 617-482-6439


“Hundred-Year Retroactive Book Award” at the Boston Public Library

The Associates of the Boston Public Library cordially invite you to their Hundred-Year Retroactive Book Award, a competition that weighs the enduring literary merits of three bestsellers, all published in 1917. Contenders for the prize are T.S. Eliot’s Prufrock and Other Observations, Mohandas Gandhi’s Third Class in Indian Railways, and Arthur Conan Doyle’s His Last Bow: An Epilogue of Sherlock Holmes. The books will be defended by poet and author Charles Coe, Michael Patrick MacDonald, memoirist, and suspense author Jacquelyn Mitchard respectively. Author Stona Fitch will moderate the irreverent debate, after which the audience will vote to determine the winner. A reception with the panelists will follow.


Bean-to-Bar Chocolate: A fascinating journey through the craft chocolate revolution

If you like chocolate, consider yourself a “foodie”, have a sweet tooth, or want to impress your friends with how you pair your chocolates with drinks, you’ll enjoy this event.  Porter Square Books invites all of the chocoholics, foodies, sweet-toothed readers to join Brooklyn author MEGAN GILLER for a discussion of her nonfiction book Bean-To-Bar Chocolate: America’s Craft Chocolate Revolution: The Origins, the Makers, and the Mind-Blowing Flavors.

This comprehensive celebration of chocolate busts some popular myths (like “white chocolate isn’t chocolate”) and introduces you to more than a dozen of the hottest artisanal chocolate makers in the US today. You’ll get a taste for the chocolate-making process and how chocolate’s flavor depends on where the cocoa beans were grown — then turn your artisanal bars into unexpected treats with 22 recipes from master chefs.

This event is free and open to the public.


NYC Cooking Demo with Food/Travel Journalist TRACEY CEURVELS

Trident Booksellers is pleased to host food/travel journalist TRACEY CEURVELS with a demonstration of her book The NYC Kitchen Cookbook.  

Inspired by the local shops in her New York neighborhood, CEURVELS began cooking with exotic ingredients and writing about her experiments on her trendsetting blog, “The NYC Kitchen,” in 2010. Since then Tracey has tested hundreds of beautiful recipes, and shared the warmth of her friendly home kitchen with each reader.

In The NYC Kitchen Cookbook, Tracey shares her tasty adventures with foodie fans nationwide and explains how to use the flavorful ingredients found in NYC to make simple yet sensational meals for any occasion.  Families can especially enjoy her dedication to cooking with her young daughter (featured prominently on her website and in photos in the cookbook), and the warm bond they share over their culinary creations.

This event is free and open to the public.

The NYC Kitchen Cookbook is being sold at Trident Booksellers.  You can purchase a copy in-store or online here.


Food Feuds: From Ancient Rome to Southie at Kickstand Cafe

Come to Kickstand Cafe to see novelist CRYSTAL KING with her novel Feast of Sorrow, Top Chef judge BARBARA LYNCH with her memoir Out of Line, and Boston Globe’s food critic Ted Weesner.

Set amongst the scandal, wealth, and upstairs-downstairs politics of a Roman family, KING’s seminal debut features the man who inspired the world’s oldest cookbook and the ambition that led to his destruction.

Out of Line describes LYNCH’s remarkable process of self-invention, including her encounters with colorful characters of the food world, and vividly evokes the magic of creation in the kitchen. It is also a love letter to South Boston and its vanishing culture, governed by Irish Catholic mothers and its own code of honor. Through her story, Lynch explores how the past—both what we strive to escape from and what we remain true to—can strengthen and expand who we are.

This event is free and open to the public.