Two US celebrity cooks have seen their new book launches scuppered by the loss of boxes from the Madrid Bridge.
A container collapse on the 13,900-teu Ocean Network Express ship (built 2008) ended in 140 boxes going overboard or being damaged in the mid-Atlantic in a January storm.
The Guardian reported that nestled in among the cargo were two print runs of highly anticipated cookbooks by Mason Hereford and Melissa Clark.
Hereford was shipping his Turkey and the Wolf to the US. This collects recipes from his award-winning New Orleans restaurant. Clark meanwhile had published one-pot extravaganza Dinner in One.
Hereford seemed to see the funny side, however.
He described the incident as “perhaps the most hilariously 2022 thing to happen yet this year”.
The author added on Instagram: “The good news is that there were no critical injuries, as can happen in these situations. But the bad news is the books might be in a cargo container at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.”
Fans waiting for new recipes including “potato chip-loaded fried bologna sandwiches, devilled-egg tostadas with salsa macha, and his mom’s burnt tomato casserole” will have to wait until 21 June, as opposed to this month.
Clark’s book features recipes for miso-glazed salmon with roasted sugar snap peas, “cheesy meatball parm with spinach” and “cheaters chicken and dumplings”.
This will now come out on 6 September.
Missing in action
Clark also used Instagram to say her work is “missing in action on the wine-dark sea”.
“I like to think that if the books are at the bottom of the ocean, they’re teaching whole schools of fish some very tasty recipes. Poseidon and his nereids are dining in style,” she added.
Clark went on to say: “I’m wrecked about this (ha), and SO impatient to get these one-pot recipes into your hands. Sigh. Glub, glub.”
The Madrid Bridge, heading from Asia, unloaded the rest of its containers in Charleston at the end of last month.
The diversion to Charleston bypassed scheduled calls at the east coast ports of New York, Norfolk and Savannah.
