Forward 50 2017

Molly Yeh

By Forward Staff October 30, 2017

Just Your Typical Jewish Chinese Percussionist Food Blogger In North Dakota

If you’re going to write a cookbook based on a personal and popular blog, then the expectation — rightly so — is that the book will reflect its author’s point of view and personality. Molly Yeh’s cookbook, “Molly on the Range,” takes her confessional form of literary and culinary expression to the highest heights, not only presenting the reader with creative, colorful, delight-inducing recipes and stories, but also offering a window into Yeh’s unusual, inventive, enviably made-for-romantic-comedy life.

Yeh’s bio in a nutshell: Jewish Chinese Juilliard-trained percussionist with a passion for food and photography falls in love with a young fifth-generation farmer who whisks her from Brooklyn to the wilds of North Dakota — where he works the family farm while she turns their kitchen into a Wonka-like wonderland where Jewish, Chinese and American-heartland cooking come together in endlessly appealing and colorful combinations.

Since the book’s release, the genuinely gregarious and confident (yet somehow always self-deprecating) Yeh, 28, has traveled the country, leaving audiences charmed and magically convinced of how easy it is to make a multilayered, intricately decorated and utterly delicious Funfetti cake. The trick, if Yeh has one, may be in showing her audience that any mistakes only add to the charm and the fun of it all. She is currently at work on a yogurt book — and if anyone can make that sound interesting, it is Yeh.

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