Maxine Sharf says ‘you’ll never be bored’ with her new cookbook — or hungry
Food had been a constant in her life ever since Maxine Sharf was a kid. It started with cooking with her parents as a child (“I was actually kind of overweight as a kid because I just loved food so much.”) and that dovetailed into a 12-week course in college to explore that passion even more.
But a life away from food called and then tossed her back. She was laid off from her job in tech sales and searching for a path: enter Maxi’s Kitchen.
“I sat on the idea for over a year because it’s hard to figure out how to actually start, and then you’re kind of feeling embarrassed to put something out there,” Sharf told CharlotteFive recently. “I remember we even filmed my mom, and I even filmed some YouTube style videos that I never ended up posting.”
After an impromptu filming, the blog was born. The easy-to-follow recipes have become a hit for professionals looking for tasty options during the week.
“The (recipes) that tend to be the most popular are those more easy, simple, weeknight dinners that still turn out fantastically delicious,” she said. “I’m a huge foodie, so it matters a lot that it’s not just simple and easy, but it also turns out really delicious; where people are like, wow, I just made that. That’s insane.”
Those approachable meals made way for her latest venture: a cookbook. Debuting on March 3, “Maxi’s Kitchen: Easy Go-To Recipes to Make Again and Again” builds on the online success of Maxi’s Kitchen while opening it up to a whole new audience.
For Sharf, the cookbook was a new venture. “It was refreshing working on the cookbook because for my typical content creation job, I do all the camera work myself, so a lot of the time is spent setting up the tripods and getting the perfect angle, and even getting myself ready to be on camera,” she said.
“I really looked forward to the cookbook (writing) days because I was able to just get into a flow state, focus on the cooking and not the other stuff.”
It also allowed her to bring to the page the endless recipes she had been crafting on social media. That tactile feeling of holding a book that brings together all of your work heightened the flame of being able to share her cooking with the world.
“Something that was exciting about a book was creating a body of work that lives together; different recipes within the book pair well with others and things like that. Whereas I feel like with Substack or Instagram, or any of the social media platforms, I’ll create a recipe and I’ll share it, and then I kind of feel like it floats off into the ether and disappears,” Sharf said.
“(Writing the cookbook) really helped me reconnect with what I love about cooking. When the rest of the world melts away, you can really focus on the recipe.”
It also brings together some of what folks have come to expect from Sharf through Maxi’s Kitchen. As you flip through the books, QR codes for tutorials that she’s filmed will pop up and an illustrated guide helps the preparation go easier.
The cookbook brings those easy to make recipes that Sharf has become known for, but also blends her cultural influences. She said her mom is half Korean and half Chinese while her father is a mix of Eastern European, so there was always a melding of cultures that happened in the kitchen.
“I feel like people could cook out of only this book for the rest of their life and never get bored because there’s such a wide variety of different cuisines and flavors. But again, everything’s really approachable, and I am confident in that, because honestly, all the recipes that my family has been cooking kind of on repeat for my entire childhood and life are in the book.”
At its heart, Sharf hopes this will become a resource for those people living busy lives and an opportunity to create those family dinner moments she had. “I’m a huge foodie. It matters a lot that it’s not just simple and easy, but it also turns out really delicious; where people are like, ‘Wow, I just made that!’ That’s insane.
“I think the need for most people is just getting dinner on the table for their family, right? And so that’s why most of the book is just those really approachable, easy kinds of weeknight dinners.”
Sharf will be in Charlotte on Thursday at 6 p.m. at Williams Sonoma in SouthPark to share her recipes with the foodies of the Queen City. You can purchase tickets here.
