Sarah Leah Chase breaks long hiatus to write a new cookbook

After a two-decade hiatus, Sarah Leah Chase is back with a new cookbook, New England Open-House Cookbook: 300 Recipes Inspired by the Bounty of New England, which will be released later this summer. Chase is a caterer, cooking teacher, and prolific writer who is best known for co authoring The Silver Palate Good Times Cookbook. Her other cookbooks, all highly regarded, include Nantucket Open-House Cookbook, Pedaling through Burgundy Cookbook, and Pedaling through Provence Cookbook.

After publishing the latter two books in 1995, Chase hadn’t planned to write another cookbook, according to an article in Publishers Weekly. “Writing more cookbooks just wasn’t part of my mindset,” said Chase, who writes a weekly food column for Nantucket’s Inquirer & Mirror newspaper. But in 2010, Peter Workman, the late founder of Workman Publishing, came up with the idea for a regional cookbook. He suggested to Chase that she write about New England. At first, she resisted.

She relented, however, after being inspired by the regional foods she has enjoyed. “In order to make the project feasible I chose to highlight people and places throughout New England that have been of special significance to me,” said Chase. For New England Open-House Cookbook she draws from her memories of growing up in Connecticut and Maine; her experience living and cooking on Cape Cod; and her extensive travels meeting farmers, fishermen, and chefs.