Thanks first to Michael Sand and my editor, Holly Dolce, for their enthusiasm for this project and their confidence in my work. I’m also grateful to their colleagues at Abrams, especially Sarah Massey, Mary O’Mara, and the book’s designer, Deb Wood. Special thanks to Jane Bobko, my copyeditor, and Leda Scheintaub and Regina Castillo, my proofreaders: I know from good copyediting and proofreading, and their work was absolutely stellar.
Warmest thanks go to my agent, Leslie Stoker, who must be the most patient and helpful representative a writer could hope for. It’s because of Leslie and her work that I have started referring to myself, when asked, as “a cookbook author [period]” rather than “a sort of freelancer, I guess [question mark].”
Once again, I’m indebted to my friend Rinne Allen, the photographer whose photographs are probably the reason you picked up this book in the first place. Thanks to Rinne and her husband, Lee, for making the photo shoot in Athens not just possible but a pleasure (except for those few painful hours after I lopped off a large part of my thumb, which wasn’t anyone’s fault but my own). Our team in steamy Georgia, Kristin Karch, Jessie Genoway, and pinch-hitting pro food stylist Tami Hardeman, deserve much of the credit for how great these photographs look. I’d also like to thank Susan Hable for loaning us her heirloom griddle (pictured on this page), which has become for me something of an obsession.
I’d like to express my sincere gratitude to all my friends who contributed advice, recipe suggestions and feedback, and professional-level testing and tasting services: Marisa Bulzone, Krystina Castella, Suzanne Furlong, Mary Jessica Hammes, Stacy Hester and Haley Slagle, Kathy Mitchell, Jess Shoemaker, Eric Wagoner, and Jenny Wares.
To Leda Scheintaub, I offer my special thanks for her array of efforts on behalf of this book: She tested a boatload of the recipes and provided invaluable advice throughout the process; she convinced her husband, Nash Patel, to loan his amazing goat curry recipe to the project (my slow cooker adaptation of it is on this page); and she proofread the first-pass page layouts. I’m so lucky to have her as a friend and sounding board.
Finally, thank you to my parents, Dave and Diana, who tested, tasted, and suggested a huge proportion of the recipes here—their influence is on every page. And, as always, I thank my very best friends and loves, Derek and Thalia, for eating stew after stew after stew for the last year or so—and usually enjoying it.