Cortney Burns - Nourish Me Home

I dedicate this book to JP, for holding space as we push the boundaries of what is possible within this container of life and beyond. And to the young people in my lifeLucia, JJ, Javier, Hunter, and Jadennever let anyone steal your magic.

Text copyright 2020 by Cortney Burns.
Photographs copyright 2020 by Heami Lee.
Illustrations copyright 2020 by Mary Mitchell.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Burns, Cortney, author. | Lee, Heami, photographer. | Mitchell, Mary (Illustrator), illustrator.
Title: Nourish me home : 125 soul-sustaining, elemental recipes / Cortney Burns ; photographs by Heami Lee ; illustrations by Mary Mitchell.
Description: San Francisco, CA : Chronicle Books, 2020. | Includes index. |
Identifiers: LCCN 2019054969 | ISBN 9781452175850 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781452177465 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Cooking, American--New England style. | Cooking, AmericanCalifornia style. | Cooking. | BISAC: COOKING / Comfort Food | LCGFT: Cookbooks.
Classification: LCC TX715.2.N48 .B89 2020 | DDC 641.5973dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019054969

Prop styling by Rebecca Bartoshesky.
Food styling by Cortney Burns.
Design by Vanessa Dina.
Typesetting by Frank Brayton.

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This is a book about uprooting in order to reroot. Its about self-discovery, the search for home, and nourishing ones heart and soul. From the garden to the kitchen, and everywhere in between, shadows and all, these are the methods and recipes that make me feel healthy, strong, and nourished.

Cooking is often an autobiographical performance, and this book sketches my last few years. These recipes weave together childhood flavors from growing up in a Jewish family in the suburbs of Chicago with knowledge I gathered through travel, as a professional chef, and as a student of naturopathy and herbology. Here, too, are my musings on New England and the type of cross-cultural pollination I imagine could have happened here as worlds and cultures collided into a new harmony over centuries.

My hope is that this book is an inspiring guide, letting you adopt my cooking techniques into your own repertoire, mixed and matched according to the season and your cravings. I invite you to dive back into your imagination and honor your creativity. Both can provide a road map to cooking honest, healthful, soulful food that helps you connect to your surroundings or yourself in a new way. If you let it, the kitchen can be a sacred place and a wise teacher.

I encourage you to think of this book as a choose-your-own-adventure guide. Fill your table with a sauce from one recipe and a vegetable technique from another. Satisfy your cravings and desires by customizing the plate. The recipes in this book tell my personal journey, but, more importantly, they capture my arsenal of cooking techniques, my culinary armor, if you will. No matter which direction the winds of change blow, these are the methods I turn to again and again.

For most of my adult life, cooking has been a spiritual and artistic practice and the kitchen has been one of my sacred gathering places. So I begin this book by inviting you to join me here, as I cast a circle around you and meus.

Every time I enter the kitchen, I cast a circle, infusing the space with energy and creating a ring of protection around it as I set my creative intentions for the day. This ritual grounds me in the here and now. Creativity breeds vulnerability, so I take solace in the physical act of cooking along with the more spiritual mode of connection that I gain from it.

While casting this circle, I take a moment to honor the four cardinal directions and their corresponding elements. The calling of elemental powers represents our connection with the forces of the outside world. After all, the kitchen is a place where alchemy abounds, and alchemy is, by definition, the interplay between mind and matter, self and the world. Cooking is my way of uniting the powers of nature with my own, creating something delicious and nourishing while forging a deeper bond with whats around me. So, as you hold this book, my hope is that it helps you do the same. While you cook through these recipes, let them become your own portal to a place of imagination and creation.

I have been an itinerant for much of my adult life. Before the kitchen beckoned, I was a nomad of sorts, traveling from here to there, moving from one place to the next, a bit uncertain of my path. Ive always found theres an expansiveness when you look beyond your physical and emotional borders. Its the act of looking out in order to look in that facilitates growth.

My wanderlust led me to the kitchen. At the University of Wisconsin-Madison, I studied cultural anthropology and South Asian studies with a focus on the Tibetan language. Eager to take my learnings from classroom to country, I spent a year living in Nepal and India, traveling throughout Thailand and Mongolia. It was there that my love of travel and food officially converged. I visited Ayurvedic and Tibetan medicine clinics, first out of necessity, then because I was entranced by their teachings. As I began to look deeper, I found that herbalism, plants, and food were the bedrock of these healing practices. Within these medicines, there was a reverence for the land, ingredients, and the body that Id never encountered before.