Look Inside the Sqirl Cookbook and Live the Fancy Toast and Rice Bowl Life

Chef Jessica Koslow built her brand by savvily predicting — then refining — exactly what Los Angeles residents crave. At her Silver Lake neighborhood cafe Sqirl, Koslow serves up thick slabs of fancy toast (sweet and savory), avocado and Meyer-lemon-dotted rice bowls, vegan horchatas, and dishes topped with runny duck eggs and lacto-fermented hot sauce.

It’s unapologetically "Southern California," and Koslow is unrepentant about that approach. "Mark Bittman came into Sqirl and said, ‘Oh, of course you have avocado toast,’" she writes in her first cookbook, Everything I Want to Eat: Sqirl and the New California Cooking. "And yeah, of course we do. We’re in California. We’re surrounded by avocados, and they are delicious."

From its title to its contents, Koslow’s book embodies that same ethos. "I really want anybody to be able to re-create these dishes and enjoy them at home with friends," she writes in the book’s introduction. "What I’m giving you is the real deal." Sqirl classics, including that "famous ricotta toast" (as its described on the menu) and the equally ubiquitous-on-Instagram sorrel pesto rice bowl are featured, as are takes on beef ravioli (in a pierogi-like pasta dough) and rabbit ballotine, which uses the entire animal for one plated dish.

Everything I Want to Eat is out October 4 from Abrams; get a peek at the inside below:

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