Paula Wolfert ‘Unforgettable’ for cookbook critics

Book on Sonoma food writer lands on multiple year-end lists|

“Unforgettable,” Emily Thelin’s book about Sonoma resident Paula Wolfert, was just named one of the San Francisco Chronicle’s “favorite cookbooks of 2017” as well as Bon Appétit magazine’s best cookbook list, almost identical to the Chronicle’s, and by the San Jose Mercury News.

Thelin spent many hours interviewing Wolfert both at her hillside home and on the phone, as well as cooking and testing many of Wolfert’s recipes previously published in her eight cookbooks. Wolfert stepped out of the cookbook box by being the first cookbook author to actually immerse herself in other countries’ culinary cultures, including living in homes of well-known Moroccan cooks and learning from them over their steaming pots while absorbing their life stories.

She now invests her substantial energy toward finding nutritional cures or reversals for Alzheimer’s, a disease she was diagnosed with in 2013.

Wolfert grew up in Brooklyn and lived in France and Morocco. Wolfert shared most of her secrets with Thelin, once Wolfert’s editor at Food & Wine magazine, who passes them on to readers in the eloquent “Unforgettable,” with an introduction by Alice Waters. Waters has hosted many dinners in her Chez Panisse restaurant in Berkeley to honor Wolfert and each of her cookbooks, including the launch of this one.

Wolfert and Thelin entertained a standing room only crowd at Readers’ Books’ Last Wednesday Food Group a few months ago.

Copies are available at Readers’ Books.

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