Dinner is now leading the cookbook charts for 2022,with more than 74,500 copies sold. That’s three times as many sales as the second most-popular book,Jamie Oliver’sOne,at 23,000 copies,according to Nielsen BookData. Even at the end of August,Maehashi had pre-orders that were more than double the first week sales of Yotam Ottolenghi’sFlavour.
Maehashi has been overwhelmed by the response and is still processing her success,but says a big part of it is that she is “truly a home cook”.
“I am just like everybody else. I shop where everyone shops,I don’t go to gourmet stores ... The thing that really resonates,that people say to me,is that I’ve somehow managed to guess the recipes people want.”
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Maehashi’s RecipeTin Eats is one of the most popular food websites in the country,with more than 15 million visitors each week and more than 335 million views in the past 12 months alone. As anyone who has seen her videos will know,Maehashi has a warm,natural story-telling ability – anda gorgeous golden retriever named Dozer, who has his own cult following.
“Even on the street people will say,‘Oh you’re Dozer’s mum!’ They don’t know my name.”
Dinner is made up of a handful of reader favourite recipes,based on a poll conducted through the site,and the rest are new. With it,the 37-year-old breaks the mould of traditional cookbooks. There’s a QR code with each recipe that takes you to a how-to video.