Seven Dials sizzles with Linda McCartney’s Family Kitchen

Seven Dials will publish Linda McCartney’s Family Kitchen: Over 90 Plant-based Recipes to Save the Planet and Nourish the Soul, by Linda, Paul, Mary and Stella McCartney.  

It was acquired from Richard Ewbank at MPL Communications Ltd by the Seven Dials team and will be published on 24th June 2021 in hardback for £25. 

“Over 30 years ago, Linda McCartney first blazed the trail for meat-free cooking, and she shared the pleasure of eating compassionately around her family table,” the Orion imprint said. “Now Paul, Mary and Stella bring Linda’s kitchen up to date, reinventing her best loved recipes for the plant-based cook, alongside their favourite family stories and the dishes that they now eat at home.”  

“The original food pioneer, Linda believed in great tasting, wholesome, meat-free food, and embraced kindness and compassion in everything she did. Her legacy lives on in Linda McCartney’s Family Kitchen, a collection of 100 simple, fresh and inventive plant-based recipes that fit perfectly with how we want to eat now.” 

The book explores how her family have “re-imagined Linda’s classic recipes, bringing them up to date for the modern, plant-based cook,” Orion said. “Because how we eat is changing, with more and more people choosing a meat and dairy-free diet, even if only for one or two days a week. And this change is kind to the planet too: a plant-based diet can reduce an individual's carbon footprint from food by up to 73 per cent.” 

Recipes include American-style pancakes, chilli non carne, sausage rolls and shepherd’s pie, pad thai, pulled jackfruit burgers, panzanella salad and crunchy pecan cookies. 

Paul McCartney said: “Years ago, before anyone had woken up to the idea of environmental and health and animal welfare issues, Linda was blazing the trail with vegetarianism, telling people about it and promoting it. At home, she would cook for the family and these recipes have been now brought up to date for a modern audience, so they’re all now plant-based and fabulous. In the book there are family photographs and stories from those days, and of course lots of great, beautiful tasting healthy recipes. So I hope this book inspires conversations about sustainability and about modern living amongst people besides also just giving them some great recipes to eat.” 

Anna Valentine, executive publisher of Trapeze, Seven Dials and Orion Spring, said: “It is such an honour to be working with the McCartney family on this important cookbook. As well as fantastic cook, Linda was a true pioneer who campaigned relentlessly for animal welfare and a sustainable future. Thirty years on, it is a privilege to help share this important message once more, and to bring her delicious recipes up to date for a plant-based audience.” 

As well as a food pioneer and activist, Linda McCartney was an iconic photographer: the first female photographer to have work featured on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine, and exhibited in the Victoria & Albert Museum and the National Portrait Gallery in the UK and the US.