Favorite Food Books: Nycci Nellis of Dishing It Out
Posted by melissamccart on December 19, 2008
Nycci Nellis of The List Are You On It and Sunday’s foodie radio show, Dishing it Out, is an avid cookbook collector with over 600 titles on her shelves. “It’s the only thing I collect and I’m passionate about it,” she says.
She is as enthusiastic about food magazines, with subscriptions to Saveur, Food and Wine, Bon Appetit, Gourmet, Food Arts, among others. So it makes sense she loves cookbook compilations. ”Every year I get Food and Wine’s “Best of the Best“: recipes from the year’s best cookbooks, according to the editors at the magazine.” Another one of her favorites this year is Bon Appetit’s Fast Easy Fresh. “It’s 770 pages: a huge book that’s perfect for someone like me, with two kids coming back from college and two small kids at home,” she says. “I always have a stocked pantry and can find hundreds of ideas every time I flip through. The pages are already becoming dog-eared.”
Nycci and husband David Nellis interviewed Fast Easy Fresh editor, Barbara Fairchild, the same day as Thomas Keller, who talked up his newest release, Under Pressure. “His a gorgeous coffee table book; the pictures are glorious,” she says. “You’ll also learn so much from every single page. Rather than apply sous vide to my home kitchen, however, I’ll leave it the chefs at CityZen!”
Andrew Dornenberg and Karen Page were also featured on the show for their newest, The Flavor Bible. “It’s a recipe as to how flavors work together. They worked on it for eight years,” she says. Check out the show featuring these authors here.
Most recently, Nellis just finished Marcella Hazan’s memoir, Amarcord. David and Nycci interviewed Hazan on the show this past Sunday. ”It’s a tremendous book. She really is the Julia Child of Italian food,” she says.
Nycci and David Nellis’ Dishing It Out airs at 11pm every Sunday on WTOP (1500 AM). Tune in this week for an interview with Michael Mina of the newly opened Bourbon Steak and beer specialist Bill Catron of Brasserie Beck, who will be pouring Christmas brews.
