Here are 6 more ways to feed your inner foodie – Boston Herald

So you’re a “Top Chef” nerd. Maybe you loyally followed each season on Bravo, or perhaps you’re a newcomer who connected with the show via a favorite celebrity chef or recipe. But you’re hooked.

Now, with a new season kicking off on March 20, here are six ways to delve a little deeper.

1 — Let the winner of the first “Top Chef: All Stars” season teach you how to eat more plants. Richard Blais and his wife, Jazmin, filled last fall’s “Plant Forward” cookbook (Victory Belt Publishing, $39.95) with 100 recipes to help home chefs shift their cooking toward a more plant-centric diet. Recipes are built around both Blais’ creative food style, with approachable recipes for zucchini fritters, eggplant and chickpea samosas, jerk cauliflower steaks and a blended mushroom burger. 

2 — Pre-order a copy of the new Viet-Cajun “Dac Biet: An Extra Special Vietnamese Cookbook” (Knopf, $38), due out this August. It’s by Nini Nguyen, a chef-testant from seasons 16 and 17, who brings her unique Vientamese-New Orleans fusion sensibilities to her new cookbook, co-written with Sarah Zorn. It draws on the Vietnamese concept of “dac biet” — which means special and luxurious — and promises recipes for dishes like charbroiled oysters in chile butter, a Viet-Cajun seafood boil, crispy fish sauce-caramel chicken wings and coconut crispy rice crepes.

3 — Get the latest “Top Chef” analysis, broken down episode by episode. Pack Your Knives, a “Top Chef”-inspired podcast by sports analysts Kevin Arnovitz and Tom Haberstroh, will be back this season, Haberstroh confirmed. The die-hard fans interview contestants, discuss what’s happening in the restaurant industry and break down each episode of the show. There are whispers that a related Substack may also be in the works.