I'm excited to announce my first cookbook sale of 2022, Jeremy Salamon's Second Generation to Stephanie Fletcher at Harvest, a terrific food and lifestyle imprint of HarperCollins. Second Generation reimagines Hungarian cuisine for a new generation of home cooks through personal recipes, seasonal ingredients, and a touch of millennial flair.
Jeremy is a Hungarian-American-Jewish chef and the owner of the Brooklyn diner Agi’s Counter, named for his paternal grandmother who fled the Hungarian Revolution in 1956 and settled in South Florida. Second Generation offers Jeremy’s twists on Old-World classics: think chilled stone fruit borscht and a fallen fruit spritzer, short rib goulash with wild mushrooms, charred eggplant paprikash, and Tokaji-drenched strawberries and cream!
Second Generation reflects the progression of a dinner party like the ones Agi would host. A chapter on “Noshing” offers a variety of small dishes, pickles, dips, and spreads. Breads, biscuits, and crackers—the perfect vehicles for noshing—follow. Soups and main dishes come next, finishing off with two sweet sections, tortes and desserts. Two brief chapters on drinks and cupboard staples conclude the recipe chapters. Each of the 100 recipes includes a headnote that connects the dish to Jeremy’s grandmother’s story, or his own.
This sale came together gratifyingly quickly. Just a few weeks ago I was pitching Stephanie over coffee on my first work trip to NYC since the start of the pandemic. It turns out she lives around the corner from Agi's Counter and goes often! Sometimes there is just an element of luck or fate about who you choose to pitch as an agent.
Here is the Publisher's Marketplace deal memo:
Massive congratulations to Jeremy and Stephanie -- this is one I can't wait to cook out of!