Each week, 2,000 people get an email from Andrew Little’s Cambridge Recipe Club. Inside, they find a recipe with a few notes about the dish and how to make it — no ads, no website, no social media links. The seasonal recipes exist only in the email newsletter, since Little doesn’t keep a recipe archive.
“Each recipe is something I’ve cooked and loved,” he writes to new subscribers. The address at the bottom is a post office in Inman Square, his neighborhood. The recipes are simple, and he lists the number of ingredients and minutes to prepare at the top.
The free newsletter that Little has written for three years is growing. A recent recipe described how to create a spring Italian frittata with feta and spinach: six ingredients, 30 minutes, one serving. Each newsletter starts with a picture of the plated dish that Little has made. The list is locally curated — Little posts fliers around Cambridge, Somerville, and Boston — but anyone can join. For the recipe club, Little eschews social media; no YouTube or TikTok or Twitter. He posted to the club’s Instagram account only seven times.
“As much as social media promises to connect people across the world,” Little said, “it does a really good job of isolating people.”
Little sees food as a way to connect with people on a personal level. “I wanted this to feel like, instead of following a creator with hundreds of thousands or millions of followers, it feels like you’re opening an email from a family member or a friend that says, ‘Hey, here’s what I cooked this week and thought you might enjoy it.’”
Little, who lives in Inman Square, grew up in Lexington, studied physics at Colorado College, and toils 9-to-5 as an insurance software engineer. It’s his long-running love affair with cooking and food that led to the recipe club newsletter. His twin brother Robert — they are 27— has the bug, too, and is the baker of the family.
Ironically, neither Little’s parents nor his grandparents are kitchen folk. “I didn’t grow up in a family of cooks,” he said. He and his brother make all the holiday meals using “twin telepathy,” he jokes, to manage them smoothly.
“I’m not a big turkey fan,” he says of the Thanksgiving meal — his big annual challenge — “so I usually opt for like a roast chicken or salmon.” His brother bakes the bread and pies. Little said they make traditional sides of homemade cranberry sauce and stuffing, but also salads and other veggie dishes he’s been experimenting with.
The recipes Little concocts are original, and local, working with what the farms and waters of New England are producing at the time. “I’m focusing a lot on what ingredients are available in what season,” he said. “I want to be able to say, you can go to this store to get it.”
Many of Little’s creations, like his Italian frittata, are spins on traditional dishes with a New England accent. “This summer I want to do a pasta with some fresh tomatoes,” he said. Past dishes include country mustard chicken, Korean chicken soup, miso charred cabbage, cumin lamb noodles, and Thai pad kra pow.
Little diligently alternates between a meat and a vegetarian recipe each week. He’s open to input and creates recipes with other cooks. Past collaborators have included Robert Harris, owner of Season to Taste (braised beef brisket), and the creative kitchen staff at Formaggio Kitchen (stuffed cabbage rolls).
Little says he feels he’s currently in “the sweet spot” with the recipe club, but he wants to deepen the sense of community by getting traditional family recipes from subscribers and collaborating more with local restaurants that, like Season to Taste, source locally.
“Cooking had always been a way for me to build connection to the people around me,” he said.
To subscribe to the Cambridge Recipe Club, go to the club’s sign-up page.
A stronger
Please consider making a financial contribution to maintain, expand and improve Cambridge Day.
We are now a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and all donations are tax deductible.
Please consider a recurring contribution.
