Castle Rock Kitchen is a collection of Stephen King themed and named recipes developed and curated by Theresa Carle-Sanders. Released 4th Oct 2022 by Penguin Random House on their Ten Speed Press imprint, it's 256 pages and is available in hardcover, spiral bound, and ebook format.
The recipes here are for unfettered, basic, down-to-earth food (don'cha know). The book's introduction is capably handled by the King of Horror himself. I am a pretty big King fan and I learned a number of things about him of which I was previously completely unaware. I won't say the intro alone is worth the price of admission, but it was unquestionably cool and recommended.
Prior to the recipe chapters, the author has provided a generous and well written introduction to the particular local ingredients which will be difficult (or impossible) to source outside of New England; but which thankfully can be obtained via online retailers or the generosity of a local friend and the USPS. The dishes are arranged thematically into chapters: breakfast, dinner, supper, fish & shellfish, vegetarian, side dishes, baking & sweets, drinks & cocktails, and basics.
Recipe ingredients are provided in a bullet list. Measurements are given in imperial (American) units only, no metric measures, followed by step-by-step instructions. One of the things I really liked was the snippets of King books in the headings for each recipe (they're annotated, so readers can find the relevant novels). The dishes are photographed well and clearly. Additionally there's a home-y "manual typewriter" retro vibe about the chapter heading photos, typesetting, and layout.
Four and a half stars. Some readers will likely think the whole vibe is a bit over the top (with the manual typeface and retro photography) but it's thematically cool and adds substantively to the overall vibe of the book.
Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.
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