This Month’s Featured Article

One of autumn’s most anticipated cookbooks, The King Cookbook, by Annie Shi, Clare de Boer, and Jess Shadbolt will be released on November 4. Annie, Clare, and Jess are the women behind New York City’s beloved restaurants King and Jupiter, the newly opened wine bar Lei in Chinatown, and Stissing House in Pine Plains, NY. 

Annie Shi is co-owner of King and Jupiter, and owner of Lei. Annie leads the beverage programs, translating the kitchens’ seasonal and ingredient-driven philosophies into exceptional wine and cocktail offerings. A Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree, Annie has also been featured in many publications.

Clare de Boer, a five-time James Beard-nominated chef and writer, is the owner of Stissing House and co-owner of King. However, she can most often be found in her home kitchen cooking for her husband and four sons. Clare writes about food for The New York Times and Vogue, and has a bi-monthly recipe newsletter, The Best Bit. 

Jess Shadbolt joined The River Cafe in London as an assistant, and after a stint at Ballymaloe Cookery school in Ireland, she returned to The River Cafe as a chef. In 2016, she moved home to New York City, where she is now the co-owner and chef of King. 

The King Cookbook is more than just a collection of recipes – it is a deeply personal reflection of how Annie, Clare, and Jess cook at home, at King, and together. The chapters of The King Cookbook mirror how the chefs train new cooks at King: starting with pantry staples, building foundational skills, and guiding readers toward intuitive cooking on their own. Inside are over 200 recipes that tell the chef’s stories of their journeys from London to New York and beyond. 

The culinary trio will be celebrating the launch of the cookbook with a signing event at Oblong Books in Millerton, NY, on Saturday, November 8 from 2-3pm. Ahead of the event, I caught up with the authors to discuss the new cookbook, how they curated recipes, and key techniques for cooking. 

Tell me about your educational and career experiences that led you to the culinary field. 

Annie: I grew up with my mother cooking dinner every single night, after she came home from working a full-time job. It was the moment our family came together around a dinner table, and where every important conversation happened. I love being that dinner table for our guests.

Clare: A good dinner is motivating. The ability to cook it yourself is freeing.

Jess: I arrived in the kitchen by way of a brief stint in PR at L’Oreal. That soon led me to London’s The River Cafe where I worked for five years as the assistant to chefs Ruth Rogers and the late Rose Grey. It was an incredible way to witness the restaurant from within and to see these two women lead the business and the kitchen – I was hooked. It wasn’t long before I took a brief hiatus to attend Ballymaloe in Ireland before returning to the RC as a chef. Working now on the other side of the pass, I knew I had finally found my place behind the stove.

 What motivated you to write The King Cookbook? How did you choose what recipes and approaches to include?

Annie: The food of King is uniquely suited for an eager home cook: there’s no crazy equipment or gadgets in our kitchen, no tweezers to be found. We make the same simple, delicious home cooking found in the kitchens of grandmères and nonnas all across France and Italy. We really believe that with some key pantry ingredients and core techniques, you could cook the way we do at King. 

Clare: We started out with a list of about a thousand dishes, pulled from leafing through two years worth of menus … then the culling began. 

Jess: Our menu changes daily so we had plenty of recipes to choose from. Our cooking is simple, seasonally led and very accessible. We were excited to share this with the home cook. 

What is your collaborative writing process like? 

Jess: Before we wrote the cook-book there were no recipes at King, so writing the book was very informative! We had to cook the recipes – for four to six portions, not the usual 30 – and take notes, before actually writing the recipes and finally getting them tested. So it was rather elongated process but meant that we were able to fine-tune them at every stage.

Annie: Since we didn’t start with any recipes, The King Cookbook will be very useful for future generations of cooks at King! We took a lot of measurements, did a lot of conversions on Google, and then double and triple checked to make sure that they would be accurate at home.

How did you encapsulate the warm and welcoming vibe of King in this cookbook?

Annie: We each wanted to write and contribute because we feel like our individual voice is what makes the cookbook feel like King. We also wanted to incorporate a lot of R.F. Alvarez’s drawings and doodles because his artwork is so synonymous with King. 

Jess: We approached the cookbook the same way we approach the teaching of a new cook in our kitchen. First they must understand the produce and the pantry, and next they learn the foundations of the kitchen – key techniques that we use every day. Blanching greens, cooking beans, braising, making sauces, how to grill proteins – the book follows the same rhythm.

What were the main takeaways?

Annie: So much work goes into every cookbook! It makes me appreciate them all the more.

Clare: I second that!

Jess: It’s wonderful to see the growth in the food at King over the past ten years. It’s an amazing chronicle to have of our time at the stove and rewarding to now finally have recipes! If anything, the writing of the book only cements our sentiment that delicious food can be simple – not easy. And that with the right tools and with an understanding of the basics and good ingredients, homecooks can achieve the same results. 

What is most rewarding about working and educating within the culinary industry?

Annie: I love the immediate and tactile gratification of cooking, whether roasting, boiling, mixing. In the world of AI, nothing can replace cooking and serving food, ideally to the people you love!

Clare: Feeding people.

Jess: Bringing people together – whether it’s for a table of two or 22, I love to gather people around a table.

What are you most excited for readers to discover about the culinary world?

Clare: We’d love people to spend time with the pantry chapter, and try a few of the sauces. They appear repeatedly through the cookbook and can make simple grilled fish, beef, or carta di musica, exciting. The pantry and sauces are the core of the cooking at King.

Jess: A good pair of tongs and a bottle of olive oil can take you very far. •

Annie, Clare, and Jess will be celebrating the launch of The King Cookbook at Oblong Books in Millerton, NY, on Saturday, November 8. Advance registration is encouraged. For more information and to register for the event, visit Oblong Books’ website at oblongbooks.com/events/calendar. For more information about The King Cookbook, visit kingrestaurant.nyc/book.