When Allison McEntee first moved to Winnetka, she was looking for a community to join and a way to meet new people. So, she founded the Kenilworth Cookbook Club, a monthly cookbook club that, over the years, has expanded its reach nationwide.
After moving from New York, McEntee was living in Chicago’s Southport Corridor but looking for a more permanent home to move into with her family. She felt inspired by her love of John Hughes movies and “Home Alone” to go check out the North Shore.
“One day we went to check [the ‘Home Alone’ house] out, and we drove up and were like ‘This is it,’” McEntee said.
Once McEntee and her family moved into their Winnetka home, she was busy with raising her children, living the family life and settling into a new area, but she still wanted to find a way to meet new people.
“I found some moms that I really, really liked, and I wanted to get to know them better, so I invited them over to my house,” McEntee said. “I picked an Ina Garten cookbook, because everybody loves her, and I said ‘Just pick out a dish you love and we’ll eat together.’”
From there, the Kenilworth Cookbook Club began.
The club features monthly dinners where anyone can come. Anyone interested can sign up for the Kenilworth Cookbook Club’s email list. Each month, a member volunteers their home, and their address is sent out to the email list a few days before the dinner. Guests are encouraged to make one item from the cookbook, and bring it to share.
“It naturally picked up,” McEntee said. “There was a thirst for casual, inclusive get-togethers.”
This month, the club celebrated the launch of a new cookbook, “Nights and Weekends: Recipes that Make the Most of Your Time,” by Alexis deBoschnek, a New York-based cookbook author, recipe developer and writer. The book was released on Aug. 12, and contains a range of recipes that were developed with busy weeknights and longer weekend days in mind.
Event attendees snack on appetizers before the club’s special dinner on Sept. 3.
Unlike other Kenilworth Cookbook Club dinners, this ticketed event was held at the Elawa Farm Foundation in Lake Forest on Sept. 3, with a set menu featuring several dishes from deBoschnek’s new cookbook.
Each dinner attendee received a tote bag with deBoschnek’s book, candles, toffee and canned THC beverages.
The book has 110 recipes, which are broken into two main categories: nights and weekends.
The nights recipes — which include entries like crispy gnocchi caprese and sheet pan sausage with corn, peach and cucumber salad — are designed to be quick and easy to make for a busy weeknight.
The weekends recipes, like cacio e pepe popovers and ribeyes with a party wedge salad, take more time.
“I feel really proud of this book,” deBoschnek said. “I had such a clear vision for this book; it made it really easy.”
At the dinner, guests were served a menu made up of dishes from “Nights and Weekends,” including the everything bagel tomato panzanella, a big green seedy salad, braised chicken thighs with prunes and lemons, slow-roasted salmon with grapefruit and crispy shallots, whole roasted spiced cauliflower with herby yogurt sauce, and an assortment of seasonal desserts.
“Food is my love language,” deBoschnek said. “It’s how I show people that I’m thinking about them, and how I take care of them. It’s how I want to delight them. It’s really important to me, even if you don’t have a ton of time, you’ll be able to make something really delicious.”
Buffalo Grove resident Rita Ratskoff said that the event was her third Kenilworth Cookbook Club dinner that she has attended, after hearing about the dinners from social media.
McEntee (right) with author Alexis deBoschnek, whose cookbook was the center of the club’s event Sept. 3 in Lake Forest.
“The whole format where you just come and bring a dish sounded inclusive and very interesting to me to try it out,” Ratskoff said.
At the monthly dinners, McEntee said that attendees can bring any dish that they want from the cookbook, and that it doesn’t matter if multiple people bring the same dish.
“Everybody pick out a recipe that you love and bring it,” McEntee said. “If we have 10 guacamoles, then, how awesome is that?”
One of the biggest misconceptions about the club, according to McEntee, is that, because of the club’s name, people assume it’s only for Kenilworth residents. But McEntee, who lives in Winnetka, picked the name because she thought “it sounded better than the Winnetka Cookbook Club,” and that it’s open to anyone who wants to come.
Participants don’t even have to live in the area. Attendees have driven in from different towns and those in different states have just started their own branches of the Kenilworth Cookbook Club.
“It just blew up,” McEntee said.
There are currently seven additional branches of the Kenilworth Cookbook Club outside of the North Shore: Claremont, California; Polk County, Arkansas; Fairfield County, Connecticut; Rochester, New York; Brookhaven, Georgia; Atlanta; and Oak Park, Illinois. The club has instructions on how to start your own Kenilworth Cookbook Club on its website.
She said that her favorite part of the club is that it has not only fulfilled her initial goal, which was finding friends and forming a community, but that she’s seen that happen for others as well.
“I watch friend groups be formed right in front of my eyes,” McEntee said. “To actually connect people, and watch it happen, and then they are friends for the rest of their life, that’s what serves my purpose. That’s not why I started it — I started it to make my friends — but really, what’s happened is it’s a way for others to connect.”
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Dining and Cooking