The Recipe Club: A Tale of Food and Friendship - Tapa dura

“A look at the difficulties of sustaining childhood bonds, it’s also a satisfying meditation on how nourishment for the body can replenish the soul.”
—People

A novel that combines the moving story of a friendship told in letters with more than 80 delicious recipes, The Recipe Club by Andrea Israel (Taking Tea) and Nancy Garfinkel (The Wine Lover’s Guide to Wine Country) is a wonderful literary banquet. A celebration of female bonding and excellent cooking—with scrumptious dishes developed by New York Times food columnist Melissa Clark—The Recipe Club will satisfy readers who previously devoured The Friday Night Knitting Club, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society, and The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.

Loyalty, loss, and the ties that bind. These are the ingredients of The Recipe Club, a "novel cookbook" that combines an authentic story of friendship with more than 80 delicious recipes.

Lilly and Val are lifelong friends, united as much by their differences as by their similarities. Lilly, dramatic and confident, lives in the shadow of her beautiful, wayward mother and craves the attention of her distant, disapproving father. Val, shy and idealistic—and surprisingly ambitious— struggles with her desire to break free from her demanding housebound mother and a father whose dreams never seem to come true.

In childhood, "LillyPad" and "ValPal" form an exclusive two-person club, writing intimate letters in which they share hopes, fears, deepest secrets—and recipes, from Lilly's "Lovelorn Lasagna" to Valerie's "Forgiveness Tapenade." Readers can cook along as the friends travel through time facing the challenges of independence, the joys and heartbreaks of first love, and the emotional complexities of family relationships, identity, mortality, and goals deferred.

The Recipe Club sustains Lilly and Val's bond through the decades, regardless of what different paths they take or what misunderstandings threaten to break them apart . . . until the fateful day when an act of kindness becomes an unforgivable betrayal.

Now, years later, while trying to recapture the trust they've lost, Lilly and Val reunite once more—only to uncover a shocking secret. Will it destroy their friendship, or bring them ever closer?