Food Stylist Susan Spungen Releases New Cookbook Entitled Veg Forward

Remember Julia Roberts inhaling spaghetti in Eat Pray Love? Amy Adams tiptoeing her way through boeuf bourguignon in Julie & Julia, and Meryl Streep rolling chocolate croissants with Steve Martin in It’s Complicated? You saw the actors, you got hungry, but what you couldn’t see was Susan Spungen, food stylist and culinary consultant, hiding behind the camera.

This month, Ms. Spungen, who was also the founding food editor of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, is taking center stage with a new cookbook entitled Veg Forward: Super-Delicious Recipes that Put Vegetables at the Center of Your Plate (Harper Celebrate, 2023).

“As a young woman, I always wanted to be an artist,” she said recently from her house in East Hampton, “So I studied fine arts, but at twenty, I dropped out and, on a whim, moved to Aspen where I worked as a waitress.”

When suddenly there was need for more help in the kitchen, she was thrown on the line with no experience, learning on the job. After a few seasons, she moved to New York thinking she would go back to school, and took classes at the Student Arts League while working at Food restaurant in Soho. In the glitzy New York of the ‘80s that led to catering where she learned the many aspects of the food business. When she read a New York Times article on food styling in 1990, she finally felt she’d found her calling.

“I didn’t even know that job existed,” she said, “but it would bring together my culinary skills and my visual arts passion.” Ms. Spungen kept that in mind even after she met Martha Stewart who was about to start her first magazine. There was one more stint, as Pastry Chef at the newly opened Tuscan restaurant Coco Pazzo before she became a food editor at Martha Stewart.

“I was the 13^th employee to be hired by Martha,” she said. “By the time I left, twelve years later we were 650.”

Over the years, she contributed recipes to various media outlets, wrote and co-wrote cookbooks and found her place as a freelance food stylist. Then one morning, the phone rang:

“I am doing a movie about Julia Child,” said Nora Ephron. “Do you want to meet?”

That started her work as a culinary consultant for Hollywood and television. In Julie & Julia, Meryl Street who was playing Julia Child is seen tying up a duck, but it’s actually Susan Spungen’s hands doing the work! Eat, Pray Love was filmed on location in Rome with the beautiful chaos that defines the Italian capital kept off screen as much as possible. Ms. Spungen remembers how difficult (and fun) it was to navigate the small streets with plates of food meant to last until the images caught on film felt right to the crew.

“When the food is part of the story-telling in a film,” she said “a food stylist is brought in because the prop team cannot make the food into a true character.” Sometimes the food is scripted but other times, Ms. Spungen meets with the director to understand what role it plays and comes up with dish ideas. The job entails everything from understanding and refining the concept, to shopping for the food, to making sure you have the space to prep and then cook it, to finally placing the dish or ingredients on set.

For Veg Forward, her most personal cookbook so far, Ms. Spungen has done it all: She created the recipes, wrote the notes, styled the food and took every photo herself with her iPhone. She cooked each recipe seasonally, shopping for the best ingredients at green markets and farmstand whenever possible.

“I tried to imbue the process with spontaneity,” she said, “to convey the excitement of bringing back the most amazing looking tomato and shooting it right then, at home.”

Veg Forward is not a vegetarian cookbook per se, but the vegetables are definitely the most important part of the dishes

“This is the way we like to eat,” she said, “this is the way I cook.” The recipes are very accessible and often inspired by a color or a particular vegetable like the tomato tart on the cover.

“My husband and I ate everything I shot,” she said. “We didn’t use any varnish or motor oil to make a produce shine!”

Favorite recipes from the book include:

– Asparagus Pizza with Arugula Salad;

– Rhubarb Galettes with Hazelnut Frangipane and Candied Hazelnuts;

– Sungold Spaghetti Carbonara

– Zucchini Toasts with Fontina and Taleggio