Cookbook author Kelly Vaughn to attend Tucson Festival of Books

Vaughn, managing editor for Arizona Highways magazine, will discuss restaurants and recipes when she appears on the Tucson Festival of Books’ Culinary Stage at 10 a.m. March 12, and she may pull a Tucson chef or two onto the dais with her.

Where did you get your interest in food?

“I have worked for Arizona Highways magazine for eight years and in that time we have published quite a few best-restaurant issues. Exploring those and editing those issues, I learned quite a lot about food across the state and I’ve eaten a fair amount of food across the state. My mother was always a wonderful cook and is a wonderful cook so I have grown up with a passion for food.”

How did you choose the recipes for your book?

“That was quite a labor. We had recipes submitted from each of the restaurants, the chefs actually provided us with a few recipes. I went through and culled the ones I thought would make the most well-rounded cookbook. In Arizona we had a lot of recipes for enchiladas and that sort of thing, but we knew we wanted the cuisine to be diverse and reflect all of the cuisine of the state. I laid all recipes on the floor of my office and just kind of crawled over them for an afternoon. It was a little bit of a puzzle, but well worth it. The book is in its third printing and it’s a little more than a year old.”

What makes a good recipe?

“The things I was looking for when I was editing the book was something flavorful, of course, not necessarily unique to Arizona, but unique to that particular chef. Because we were trying to market it to home cooks and moms and everyday cooking, we wanted to make sure the recipes were easy enough to do in your home kitchen on a Tuesday night or on a Saturday night if you wanted to entertain friends. We wanted to make something home cooks could accomplish on their own.

“The secondary aspect of that is the mission of Arizona Highways, to promote travel across the state. So if someone bought the book and tried a recipe, maybe they would be inspired to travel across the state to where that recipe originated.”

Your most memorable dining experience?

“I am very fond of a little Mexican restaurant that’s just up the street from my house. It’s not included in the book. We never covered it in Arizona Highways, but I go there about once a week because the food is good 100 percent of the time and, if I am being perfectly honest, their bartender makes a pretty good margarita. It’s called Via de los Santos in Phoenix.

“If I had to chose a restaurant from the book and a recipe I replicated at home, it would be Brix in Flagstaff. The pasta, when I have made it at home and when you eat it there, is wonderful.”