Ghostwriting: Bonus - Cookbooks

BETHANNE PATRICK: Welcome back to Missing Pages, I’m your host Bethanne Patrick.This is the podcast where we examine some of the most surprising, industry-shaking controversies in the literary world and try to make sense of them. 

This is a bonus episode of our series about a lesser known aspect of the publishing industry - ghostwriting. Specifically, ghostwriting for cookbooks. In our episode about non-fiction ghostwriting we talked a little bit about this, but frankly, not enough. 

I’m an amateur cook who loves cookbooks. Many are worth reading cover to cover. But…some are less than engaging. If you’ve ever visited a recipe blog and clicked the “jump to recipe button” to skip the essay on how it was made, you know how tedious this writing can be. It’s a challenge to convey the precision of a recipe and tell a story. 

JJ Goode: So there's this passage in, um, George Saunders is a fiction writer, and he wrote this book about storytelling called a Swim in the Pond in the Rain.

BETHANNE PATRICK: That’s the voice of JJ Goode. He’s a James Beard Award winning cookbook ghostwriter based in Brooklyn. 

JJ Goode: And I actually have this quote and I think, um, it applies to, to recipe writing too. In a strange way, that's the whole skill to be able to lapse into a reasonable impersonation of yourself reading as if the pros in front of you, which you've already read a million times, was entirely new to you.

It's a little bit of world building, but for George Saunders, he's working with, you know, satin and velvet, and I'm working with plastic and sticks.

BETHANNE PATRICK: JJ has helped write about two dozen cookbooks like Mastering The Art of Japanese Home Cooking by Chef Masaharu Morimoto, A Girl and Her Pig with April Bloomfield, and of course, the Salt and Straw cookbook from the famed ice cream shop, which contains the recipe for buttered mashed potatoes and gravy ice cream.  

JJ Goode: My dad used to say, whenever I mentioned that I was, I had a cookbook that I'd worked on was coming out. He would say, who buys all these things? Because you go to the store and there’s so many cookbooks. Cookbooks have survived, you know. The digital revolution, you know, now TikTokers are getting cookbooks and Instagram influencers are getting cookbooks, and there just seems to be more and more cookbooks, which means more and more projects for people like me. 

Bethanne Patrick: How about the industry itself? What was it like and how has it changed?

JJ Goode:  Oh. Interesting. My job hasn't changed much, but the people who are getting cookbooks have changed. You know, it used to be some guy got, uh, a Michelin star or, or three and the publishers would sort of beat down their door and tell them they needed to do a cookbook. But the publishing industry, You know, has slowly changed their tune and, and for once now they're less interested in restaurant cookbooks. Cookbooks that are basically a document of a restaurant, like those big giant coffee table books with uncookable recipes and huge, gorgeous pictures of like abalone shells.

Bethanne Patrick: And how did you get into this kind of work? Were you working in food writing already? 

JJ Goode: Yes. I was a sort of a scrappy, aspiring food writer, um, with designs on, you know, writing 10,000 word profiles on people who were foraging for mushrooms or…That was what I wanted to do. But what I ended up doing was a lot of, um, little articles about trends in food and five new cool fried chicken restaurants or chefs are doing stuff with pomegranate molasses kind of stories. And those were also so fun and so interesting. And then I got, uh, a friend contacted me and said, oh, would, would you be interested in helping a chef with a cookbook? And I said, that sounds exciting, but no, I can't do that. I don't really know how to cook, or I'm not a very good cook. And the friend told me, oh, you don't need to be a good cook. And that kind of blew my mind. 

You might assume that the chef is the one who's great cook and can clearly communicate what they do in the kitchen to someone who might not be such a great cook. Um, but it turns out they can't or they can't always do it themselves without help, and part of my job is to sort of be that bridge between. The person who is really good at cooking and the person who may not be. So a big part of my job is asking the chef all sorts of dumb questions about what they're doing and why they do it in the kitchen. Um, and of course helping tell their stories as well. They're not quite used to sitting in front of a computer and actually they never sit in front of a computer. They're always like on their feet and maybe they like, are looking at like some inventory stuff on their computer, but they're not usually sitting at the computer trying to make sense of what, you know, why a dish the is the way it is and where they learned how to cook the dish and what the story is behind it. I'm like an editor, a sort of like first round editor.

Midroll 1:

BETHANNE PATRICK: Coming up after a quick break, JJ explains how he draws out the details when he’s in the kitchen with chefs.

Bethanne Patrick: Talk to me about some of the things that a really experienced chef might have trouble communicating and that you help get across. You were talking about, you know, some of the instructions, for example, in recipes. 

JJ Goode: Oh, yeah. My favorite example is, You know, you ask them, there's some roast chicken dish that they're famous for, and you ask them, all right, like, you know, tell me, take me through your roast chicken recipe.

And it's usually like, okay, first step you roast off the chicken and the next step is, and I'm, and you know, before they move on to the next step, of course I have [00:03:00] to ask them. What the hell? Excuse me. Are they talking about roast off the chicken, which is so second nature to them. You know, uh, they know what temperature the chicken will roast at.

They know when it's done because it feels like this when you touch it. Or they do it every time in the same oven and it takes exactly one hour and 15 seconds. Um, but of course at home there's so many variables. You know, first you have to buy the chicken and either you buy a little bird from. Farmer's market, or you buy a giant honking bird from the supermarket, and what do you do with it? How do you prepare it? How do you, you know, do you spatchcock it? Do you trust it? Do you stuff it? Do you not stuff it? Do you pad it dry? Do you let it air dry in the fridge? Do you salt it? Do you brine it? All this stuff that is just sort of second nature to them they might forget to share with me, particularly the, the, how to tell when it's done.

And I think that's where home cooks, you know, chicken is in the oven and the chef is, is is going about their business, doing other things. a home cook when a, when the chicken is the, in the oven, um, they're, they're not relaxing reclining, they're not, in my experience at least, they're not making, starting on the sauce or starting on some other component of a dish like chefs are.They're sitting there with their nose pressed against the glass of the oven waiting and wondering if the chicken will be cooked through, if it will, you know, still have salmonella, when by the time it's done whether it'll be overcooked. You know, it's a really stressful, it's a really stressful time in a home, cook's life that, uh, doesn't seem to affect the chefs all that much cuz they've done it, of course, a thousand times.

Bethanne Patrick: So, talking about the nitty gritty of working on these books, do you wind up writing recipes? 

JJ Goode: I do. Every, every chef has a different way of getting the recipes or the dishes and the instructions for the dishes out of their heads. So I've worked with people who are incapable of writing the recipes down. Um, or, or at least when they write the recipes down, they're so sort of like, They're just a list of ingredients, um, and a and a maybe a list of steps. And,you know, you can, you can read those list of ingredients and it just feels so dull.

I've worked with April Bloomfield on two books, and when she wrote recipes down, they, they, they have this, there's this plainness to them, it's just, you know, two tomatoes and. But when she cooks the thing, it's, it's, it's all about these little details, uh, that she would never think to, to mention when she's just writing the steps down herself, and every dish was, was, was incredible. Incredibly simple, but made, uh, incredible by these little details that she, she would do. Um, other chefs are, are great at writing recipes and they, you know, we work in Google Docs and. I'm changing things and commenting and they're answering me back, and some people are, are somewhere in the middle, um, where they, they send, um, sort of rudimentary recipes and I ask all the millions and millions of, of silly questions, um, that, that I think help turn those recipes into something a, a normal person can follow. For someone like April, I mean, she's just, it's just. Her, her, the knowledge is all there and it's all, it's all tactile. It's just like almost instinct at this point.

So you know, talk about a dish, a Caesar salad or something like that. Um, which is, which is so simple, which is just a dressing and, and a lettuce, uh, more or less. Um, but once you, you know, on, you know, if you're, if you ask her, okay, what, what, what do you like about a Caesar salad?

You don't get the answer. Um, if you ask her how to make it, you know, on the phone or something, you don't get the answer. You get the, the very rudimentary details, but you know, Part of my job is knowing or not knowing or trying to figure out how to elicit the good stuff. And often with chefs, it's when they cook, so sometimes you just have to say, all right, well, I'm not getting the, I'm not getting the story.

I'm not getting the details. I'm not, I don't understand why this is special. When made in your, by your hands, So you have to say, can you make this for me? And then you watch them make it. And then as they're doing it, you say, Ooh, why are you doing that? She's like rubbing the leaves with the dressing. Like in this, in the, you know, being very particular, oh.

To, you know, to get, to make sure the dressing really coats the leaves and gets in the mix. And crannies why is the, you know, why are you I icing the greens and, or, or refrigerating the greens. Oh, cuz it's, Caesar salad is so great when it's cold, you really have to make sure it's cold. Andre, you know, you get these details. Um, you have to, you have to draw these details out, uh, cuz they're so instinctual that they might not Think to mention them

Bethanne Patrick: So tell us a little bit more about. How you, you know, whether you have two hours with a chef on site or you have, you know, a whole bunch of days. Um, put aside, do you always get to eat things? Do you, do you participate in the cooking, for example? 

JJ Goode: I don't participate in the cooking cuz I would only ruin the cooking. Okay. If they ask me to pass something, I can. Um, but, you know, some of the, the most fun, I'd say some of the most fun projects have been, I've worked on three books with Andy Ricker, who is the guy behind Pok Pok restaurants, and he, you know, he is, he's a, a white guy from Vermont who, you know, 30 years ago at this point, he was a house painter and a contractor and started traveling to Thailand and spending more and more time there and fell in love with the food there. And, you know, sort of created a real community of cooks there who became his mentors. And he opened a restaurant, um, in Portland. Basically dedicated to and specifically the north of Thailand, around Chiang Mai and he spends a lot of time there. In fact, he lives there full-time now, and he and I spent, you know, three months total, I'd say, in Thailand together, eating and cooking. So the process there was that he would cook, he would cook a dish, and you know, it happens, a lot of Thai food happens quickly, stir fry for instance.

So I would, my process was standing there with my iPhone, um, and watching him cook and asking him questions while he cooked and recording the things that are, that would be impossible to take note. You can't really take notes on something when it happened so fast. Um, and I would, I would record them and I would, he would call out the amounts that he was using as he measured them. And I would go back to my computer later and, and wa re-watch the video a thousand times to, to try to make sure I was, I was capturing in the instructions, everything he was doing. And of course, he would then read my instructions and, and correct me. And, you know, it's sort of a, a again, a collaboration in that sense.

Midroll 2:

BETHANNE PATRICK: Coming up after one more quick break: What kinds of collaboration occur during recipe creation…and what kind of credit should a ghostwriter receive in a finished cookbook?

Bethanne Patrick: Is there a difference between original recipes and ideation and  just writing a cookbook? I mean, is there a really real cookbook? Is that something that exists or do people need to understand that all cookbooks perhaps are a result of collaboration?

JJ Goode: I think all Cookbooks are a result of collaboration for sure. I mean, if, if there's no writer, if there's no co-writer, collaborator, ghost writer involved, then there's an editor who is asking some of the same questions that I am. And I think it's helpful for, for the chef to have me. In part what I'm doing is anticipating what inevitably the publisher will do. Um, but I think some, I think some, there are, there's probably some pure cookbooks out there. You know, the, the Gabrielle Hamilton cookbook is sort of, you know, it, it, it's, you know, there's no head notes, there's notes in the margin.

It's just a, a pure. You know, from the cook, from the chef's brain onto the paper. And I think there's a, there's, um, a place for that. I don't think every cookbook has to be to appeal to, to, to the masses of the world. 

Bethanne Patrick: Gabriela Hamilton's Prune Cookbook is even bound to look liken her favorite Moleskin notebooks. The elastic band. It is it's made to look like a moleskin, complete with the elastic band. She, you know, it was really important to her to have that total authenticity. So I think there are some, Yeah, it's very interesting.

JJ Goode: Yeah, and she's an outlier, of course, because she is a writer herself.

Bethanne Patrick: Um, yes. You know, she wrote her memoir without, without help, 

JJ Goode: Although of course she had an editor so well, and she also has an MFA. She's amazing. I don't like these people who are talented in many things. I like to stick to your, pick a lane [laughs].

Bethanne Patrick: The next question is about the term ghost writer. Is it something that you embrace or reject or do you prefer collaborator? 

JJ Goode: I kind of I mean, I don't know if it's quite accurate because I, I do, um, sometimes get credit on the covers of the book or inside of the book. I think when you have a good relationship with the chef and they appreciate the work you, you do, that they, they want, they, in my experience, at least, have been eager to, to give me credit or to thank me and the acknowledgements or, you know, there's, it's not exactly a ghost job. Um, I'm not invisible, but I don't mind it, um, because I do, you know, I. I think I provide, um, I think I do help, but it is really the chef's food and I'm just sort of trying to, um, help them communicate their stories, help them communicate their food on the page. Books are objects and they, they, they sit on your shelf and they say something about you, you could see this as a negative thing, I guess, but it's sort of sweet. Like you just wanna own a piece of something you love and you know, you, you've, you've seen Ina Garten on TV and you, you, you have perfection for her and you just want her book on yourself. Whether you go to it every night or not. Um, and you certainly want when you read it to feel like you're sitting with ina chatting about her, I don't know, souffle or chicken with creamy stuff on it, and I think that illusion that that, that, that illusion is okay. There's so much, you know, illusion in movies. You know, you don't wanna see the, you don't wanna see the, the, the man holding the microphone or the cameraman when you watch a movie in the same way you don't wanna, you know, constantly be reminded that there's a hundred people who worked on this cookbook, you know, designed it, the who designed it, the photos and food styling.

You wanna imagine that Ina did the whole thing. You know, she, she, she plated the dish and she, she, she wrote the recipe in her own hand. And, um, and I think that illusion is okay as long as the people who who worked on it get credit when, when they, when they need it

Bethanne Patrick: Now we have encountered the theory, or maybe it's an idea, not a theory, that ghost writing is becoming more transparent than it used to be. What do you think about that? 

JJ Goode: I have noticed, uh, anecdotally I've noticed that even the bigger, you know, chefs, the more celebrity type chefs like the Bobby Flays and of the world will occasionally have a co-writer or enlisted on the cover. I think there's more of an understanding that, that chefs are. Also writers. I think the, the people have been, you know, people have become more familiar with cookbooks as a form and, and understand that there's someone else in the, in the kitchen with the chef. Um, I think there's some cookbooks where you'll see, like in the back of the book, there'll be a, a photo of the, the, the celebrity talent chef person and the writer it'll be, you know, more of a team effort.

So many people, you know, from the photographer to the food stylist, to the editor, to the recipe tester, to the co-writer, ghost writer. Um, that, you know, you know, listing all those names on the cover, um, would be, would be wonderful cause we, we all deserve credit for our hard work. But it, it sort of breaks the illusion and the reason you buy a book, the reason you buy a memoir by Hillary Clinton is because you want to read Hillary Clinton's story, and of course she has many people probably helping her with those books, but I'm okay with that. I'm okay with that illusion. Um, as long as, you know, as long as people are, are getting credit in some way. You know, my, my, when I'm not on the cover, um, if a chef says, you know, that's not part of the deal, I'm okay with it because the people who need to know in my life, um, know, you know, the, the publishers will flip to the acknowledgement page to see who worked on a book. Um, my dad will know because I'll tell him, um, my, my friends and you know, my friends and close people will know because I'll say, oh, look, I worked on this book. And they'll say, oh, your name's not on the cover. And I say, I know, but I did. You know, they don't need the proof. 

BETHANNE PATRICK: No, JJ’s dad won’t need proof that he wrote it…and by this point, it should be clear to him that cookbooks are in-demand. All kinds of people are buying them. In 2020, cookbook sales spiked 16 percent…which isn’t surprising considering how at home we all were.

But, what is surprising is that, cookbook sales have remained steady, with 20 million or more being sold each year. This makes sense to me, I like having a well-written guide in the kitchen, instead of looking through my phone. And…maybe this is just me…but I think cookbooks make the recipes taste better. And really isn’t that the most important thing?

We’ll be back with another episode of Missing Pages next week.

Missing Pages is a Podglomerate Original, Produced, mixed, and mastered by Chris Boniello with additional production and editing by Jordan Aaron.

This episode was produced by Claire Tighe.

This episode was written by Claire Tighe 

Marketing by Joni Deutsch, Madison Richards, Morgan Swift, Vannessa Ullman, and Annabella Pena. 

Art by Tom Grillo. 

Produced and Hosted by me, Bethanne Patrick. 

Original music composed and performed by Hashem Assadullahi, additional music provided by Epidemic Sound. 

Executive Produced by Jeff Umbro and the Podglomerate.

Special thanks to Dan Christo and JJ Goode.

You can learn more about Missing Pages at the podglomerate dot com, on twitter at miss pages pod and on Instagram at missing pages pod, or you can email us at missing pages at the podglomerate dot com. If you liked what you heard today, please let your friends and family know and suggest an episode for them to listen to.