How does the author of "Midnight Chicken & # 39; unexpectedly constructed a life worth living: The Salt: NPR

Five years ago, Ella Risbridger was found lying on the floor of her London apartment, staring at a chicken bag hanging on the back of a kitchen chair. The poet and journalist, then 21, was deeply depressed by suicide. But instead of ending her days, she ended up roasting this bird – and writing Midnight Chicken, an edifying cookbook that promises "to make you fall back in love with the world".

What is perhaps even more remarkable is that she has finished writing the book, a project that she ultimately attributes to the end of the depression, after the death of her partner in love and champion of writing.

Such messianic promises can be advertised on antidepressants. But this heartfelt collection of recipes and reflections on life-worthwhile moments brings real hope, joy and rave reviews from cookbooks, home cooks and even non-cooks.

The best-selling author, Nigella Lawson, calls Midnight Chicken a "manual of life and a declaration of hope". Diana Henry, another cookbook author, calls this cookbook "genre bending" a "moving testimony of the redeeming power of the kitchen".

Only time will tell if Midnight Chicken becomes an Amazon No. 1 bestseller in the United States this summer, just like last winter in the UK, where Bloomsbury Publishing released Risbridger's first cookbook. (He arrives in American bookstores on June 11.)

After cooking midnight chicken and other iconic recipes – Life-affirming mussels, Flatly Suicidal Spaghetti – I've thought about doing what critics have already done: explain why a little-known cookbook written by an unnamed author is selling as kombucha to ecstasy tip. OK, I also considered specifying the universal appeal of this diet-free cookbook. In addition to dramatic history, the author's culinary composition echoes Bridget Jones's blurred spirit, Julia Child's forgiveness and Sylvia Plath's poetic prose. The recipes are really tasty, but the healing food is in the details, from the cozy illustrations to the pink ribbon bookmark to the annotated list of things worth living.

To alleviate the merry expectations of this 288-page British "cookbook", I have seriously considered citing recent research results on the psychological benefits of cooking. According to a synthesis study, cooking as a treatment looks promising as a natural antidepressant. Therapeutic therapeutic interventions can alleviate depression, anxiety and social isolation and eventually improve mood, self-esteem and quality of life.

Or maybe it's better to let Risbridger tell you in his own words the little inspirations of his book, as this excerpt shows:

"Lunch and Saturday afternoons in the kitchen, lazy breakfasts and picnics in heather, evenings alone with a bowl of soup or a pot of clams for one." The clear, crisp voice of life and salt, and smoke a buzz of caramelized onions, tender goat cheese and a crispy dough, a six-hour ragù simmering on the fire, a glass of wine in hand, moments, hours , mornings, afternoons, days and days worthy to be lived weeks, and weeks that are worth living, not to exceed the months, and so on, up to That you have unexpectedly built yourself a life worth living: a life worth living.

In the end, I decided to convey the magic of Risbridger's mood-enhancing, mood-enhancing food through our recent e-mail, which has been modified for more length and clarity. .

Your transformation from a suicidal poet into a humble author of a life-affirming cookbook is made of the raw material of Roma-com. What prompted you to write a cookbook?

I wrote a cookbook somehow by accident. I had always planned to be a writer, but I was thinking of writing novels. My partner [writer John Underwood] I've learned to cook in the early days of our relationship. While at work, I sent him long emails about what I cooked. He even bought a blog area (maybe so that he could actually work?), Which very quickly became a book proposal, which very slowly (five years!) Became a book.

You've written a great cookbook that reads like a good novel and inspires better than the best self help book. It defies categorization, yet Midnight Chicken is an Amazonian bestseller in three categories: culinary writers, depression and party planning. It's right up there with Nigella Lawson Nigella Bites, Sylvia Plath The bell and Mary Berry Fast cooking. How do you categorize your cookbook?

Oh, man. I do not know how to categorize Midnight Chicken. It's first and foremost a cookbook – a useful and practical guide to preparing things. Memories and self-help items slipped. I could not write about food without also writing about myself. I do not think anyone can write about food without it being a bit autobiographical. Write about food – my life, my people – helped me a lot. It is there that self help is installed.

The moral of your story echoes the findings of research on the psychological benefits of cooking, with an important distinction. When you write about cooking, you do not talk about cooking by heart, but about cooking with love. What does love have to do with the healing power of the kitchen?

There are very few ways to write about love that does not seem cliché, and few ways to write about the concrete changes that love has brought to your life without want to put you back with embarrassment. It may be an English trick, but I will try to overcome it long enough to say that I cook for the people I like because it's like offering a gift from someone else. 39, birthday to someone every day. That makes them happy, and that makes me happy. It is revolutionary that I have learned to love each other enough in the last five years to believe that I too deserve to be happy. So much love seems revolutionary to me.

Your views on comfort food are refreshing and anti-American. In fact, you have adopted the German concept of Kummerspeck, or the comfort of eating, like yours. How did you do what dieters dream of doing: give up diets and allow yourself pleasure without guilt of eating emotionally?

I do not think I'll ever end up with a diet or guilt, not really. At this point, I can not imagine that many women are completely made with a diet, with guilt, with shame around what they eat, the way they eat and their appearance. But it's true, I eat mostly what I want. It is not easy! How is it possible? I have Instagram. I read magazines. I see advertisements. I have spent years of my life going on a diet once in a while. I've tried crash diets, fad diets, anything I thought could make me slim, which would make me happy if only I'd care about it. This has not happened! I stayed about the same size, a few pounds, and I was so unhappy. I do not do that anymore. Now, I try to eat what I want, when I want; I try to eat when I'm hungry and stop when I'm full. I'm not particularly skinny and I guess I'll never be, but I'm happy. I am very happy.

It's hard to imagine how you started writing Midnight Chickenbut it's even harder to imagine how you ended it. How in the world did you keep writing while the love of your life was dying?

I kept writing because John, the "big man" [as she refers to him in the book] I said of. He read every draft and every recipe. He was my greatest champion [and an autobiographical writer himself.] We had a pact that we would continue to write about our lives together, no matter what happens; we talked a lot about what should happen if one of us dies. We both believed in the power of art. He would be mad at me for saying something so fundamentally, for an embarrassing lack of freshness, but that's the truth: I was writing because it was so important to him that I was doing it.

In addition, we needed money. Even with the national health service, cancer is expensive. The bills do not go away simply because one of the people who paid them did not go to work for two years. And writing was my job: a job that allowed us to stay together as much as we needed, a job that gave us time together as long as we still had it, a job that allowed me to record good years just in case we would need to find our way home. And when it became clear that we never went home, the book became a place where he could be alive. a place where we could be together.

And after? Midnight Chicken: The Movie? Another cookbook? Something else?

I have a real butterfly spirit; I am absolutely unable to settle anything for too long. I'm just putting the finishing touches on a poetry anthology for Doubleday, Fires me: a poem for all feelings. This is poetry for those who thought to hate poetry. I also work on fiction projects, mainly for fun. Who knows, I might end up writing novels. And yes, I'm thinking of a second cookbook. I have so many recipes and stories, so many other stories of love. John's death had the side effect of showing how much he was loved and how much I am still loved and lucky. I also want to tell these stories. Crossed fingers.

Jean Fain is a psychotherapist affiliated with Harvard Medical School and the author of The regime of self-compassion.