We’re Writing a Cookbook
We’re Having a BOOOOOOK!
After much deliberation, I’ve decided to set my sites on self publishing a lovely cookbook for ASTERA. My last cookbook, Fermenter, was an interesting project for sure, and I learned a lot, but to this day I’ve not made a penny in royalties and it was a heck of a lot of work, requiring me to bend a lot on what I wanted the book to be. It came out great and I love it, and it was wonderful to work with great folks like Liz Crain, Tony Ong, and Jill Saginario.
That being said, I need this book to be purely US, and I’d rather have complete control of the final product then to worry about what the sales and marketing team at a publisher thinks.
What’s this book going to be like?
This isn’t going to be a “Make Astera at home” type of book. The things we do at the restaurant won’t be very practical to the home cook. This book will be aimed directly at three groups: professional chefs, extremely competent home chefs, and cookbook collecting nerds.
We plan to write recipes in the book like professionals do. Expect gram weights, percentages, and curt instruction that assumes kitchen knowledge.
That being said, we’ll be laying out some blueprints for other chefs to integrate some plant based technique on their menu. To us, it’s our way of removing obstacles from chef who may want to offer more plant based options on their menu, but don’t know where to start.
But mostly it will just be a record of the things that we do and why we do them. They’ll be a lot of information about zero waste, along with charts and graphs to demonstrate the value of running a zero waste program.
When is The Book Coming Out?
I have no idea. I plan on starting in on it very, very soon and doing at least four seasons of testing and writing before taking photos, finishing layout, and getting it tested and edited. But I’d guess you should see it available here in late 2026 or early 2027.
We’re excited about this project and can’t wait to share with you. When we are closer to completion at some point, we’ll start a pre-sale which will help us with production costs on the front end. Stay tuned! Thanks!
