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After Martha, the recently released Netflix documentary by filmmaker R.J. Cutler, brought Martha Stewart’s trajectory from model to mogul to first female self-made billionaire to the small screen, she’s telling her own story, on her own terms, via one of her favorite mediums, a cookbook, of course.
“It seems like not so long ago that I was working on my first book, Entertaining. My then husband, Andy, and our daughter, Alexis, flew to Utah to ski while I remained home at Turkey Hill Road in Westport, Connecticut, to put the finishing touches on that book. It was 1981,” Martha Stewart writes in the introduction to Martha: The Cookbook.
More than four decades and 99 books on the art of living, cooking, crafting, planning, and entertaining later comes a collection of tried-and-true recipes from Stewart’s coveted kitchen. To celebrate this literary milestone, Stewart’s 100th book offers an intimate look at her life and career by punctuating the collection of recipes that have stood the test of time with lessons, stories, and exclusive photographs from her 83 years of life.
In a chapter of sumptuous desserts, a young Stewart, then Martha Kostyra, donning coiffed hair and pearls, smiles in the only existing family portrait of the Kostyra family from the 1950s. On the adjacent page she traces her affinity for baking back to her mother (whom she affectionately calls Big Martha), whose tradition of baking each child their favorite “cake” on their birthday sparked a sweet curiosity in Stewart.
Following a recipe for coddled eggs, a long-haired Stewart, circa 1972, poses in front of her chickens and ducks as she tells the origin story of her trendsetting suburban husbandry—a game changer for her cakes, custards, and ice creams. Alongside an apple brioche bread pudding recipe, a picture from 1989 shows Stewart standing proudly in the Market Basket, the shop she opened in Westport after leaving her career as a stockbroker on Wall Street. There her homemade confections attracted the likes of Paul Newman and Robert Redford and would set the stage for the lifestyle empire to come.
Stewart even delves back into her modeling days, an early career started while she was still attending Barnard College that put her in Glamour and Mademoiselle magazines. Stewart would launch her own magazine, Martha Stewart Living, in 1990. An early quest at the publication, she recounts, was discovering the best method for roasting a turkey; the recipe that follows cites “en papillote” as the key to perfection.
Stewart concludes the introduction to her 100 favorite recipes by urging her readers to start compiling their very own list to pass down and share with loved ones. So in celebration of Martha: The Cookbook’s release, Stewart shares her favorite things with Vanity Fair, from dazzling diamond earrings to bespoke stationery.
