CHEF JOSEPH GOLDMAN
Healing Through Food, Connection and Craft
📧 healing@chefjosephgoldman.com
About Chef Joseph Goldman
For more than three decades, I’ve lived at the crossroads of food, healing, and human connection. My journey began in restaurant kitchens, learning the craft and discipline of culinary art and eventually led me into recovery centers, where I discovered that food can do more than nourish the body. It can restore the soul.
After years of cooking in restaurants, I never expected that the most meaningful meals of my career would happen in a recovery kitchen. But that’s where I learned something powerful: Food can heal what words can’t.
Healing with Food was born from that truth. It’s part memoir, part cookbook, part reflection, and part meal planner. Recipes for a Journey of Recovery and Renewal. Every page is written in my own kitchen voice. Like I’m right there beside you, guiding, encouraging, and reminding you that good food doesn’t demand perfection, just presence.
Whether I’m behind the stove or behind the pen, my mission stays the same: to help people rediscover joy, purpose, and self-worth through the simple, universal language of food.
Let’s connect, because healing, creativity, and community all start with one thing: sharing what we have at the table.
“Food has the power to heal what words can’t.”
🎤 Interview Topics & Media Talking Points
How food and routine can restore a sense of safety and purpose in recovery
From professional kitchens to healing spaces: redefining what it means to “cook for others”
The emotional side of cooking: why feeding others heals both ways
The intersection of culinary craft and storytelling
What it means to cook with intention and how that transforms lives
How comfort food can bridge isolation, trauma and hope
Reflections from the Kitchen
“The road to recovery sometimes runs straight through the kitchen. Where hands find purpose and hearts find peace.”
“Food can be the anchor in the storm. Steady, familiar, and strong enough to keep us from drifting.
“Every shared meal is a small act of healing. The table doesn’t judge; it simply welcomes you back.”
“You don’t have to fix everything today. Sometimes, healing starts with stirring the pot and tasting what’s possible.”
“Every meal carries a message. You matter, you’re seen and you still belong.”
“The kitchen isn’t therapy, but it heals in ways words sometimes can’t.”
After years of cooking in restaurants, I never expected that the most meaningful meals of my career would happen in a recovery setting. But that’s where I learned something powerful: Food can heal what words can’t.
Healing with Food was born from that truth. It’s part memoir, part cookbook, part reflection, and part meal planner. Recipes for a Journey of Recovery and Renewal. Every page is written in my own kitchen voice. Like I’m right there beside you, guiding, encouraging, and reminding you that good food doesn’t demand perfection, just presence.
Over the years, I’ve learned that cooking isn’t just about feeding people. It’s about connection. A warm plate and a shared table can bridge distances that conversations can’t. This book was shaped by those moments: the laughter between strangers, the quiet gratitude after a meal, the way a simple dish can remind someone they still belong here.
Inside, you’ll find 165 comforting recipes and two flexible meal planners. Not rigid diets, but adaptable guides that meet you where you are. Each reflection draws from my experiences as a chef in recovery spaces, blending technical know-how with real emotion. Because sometimes it just looks like sitting down and giving yourself permission to eat, rest, and try again.
Healing with Food is more than a collection of recipes. It’s a companion for anyone learning to care for themselves again. One meal, one story, one moment of grace at a time.
Featured Work
Healing With Food
A Pinch of Comfort| A Dash of Hope
Recipes for a Journey of Recovery and Renewal
My Mission
My mission is to bring joy, connection, and confidence to as many people as I can through food. I believe every dish has the power to teach, comfort and inspire. Cooking should never feel intimidating. It should feel alive, creative and personal. My goal is to share knowledge, practical skills and stories that make people smile and laugh while helping them find purpose and peace in the kitchen. A meal shared at the same table can turn strangers into friends in the span of a single course, reminding us that food connects us. To ourselves, to others and to something bigger than both.
Other Works by Chef Joseph Goldman
Beyond the healing kitchen lies another world of flavor, fire and imagination.
Chef Joseph Goldman’s writing reaches across the full spectrum of what food can mean. From comfort and renewal to passion and play. Each project explores a different side of nourishment, showing how cooking connects us to creativity, emotion and story.
These works come from Kitchen Kink, a deliciously deviant cookbook collection where food and storytelling collide in their own energy and voice. The series invites readers to taste the wilder edge of the culinary world. Where recipes flirt with fantasy, craftsmanship meets desire and the creative spirit of the kitchen burns bright.
If Healing With Food was about comfort, Woodfire Fantasies is about curiosity... That pull to explore what happens when flame meets flavor, when patience meets passion. Chef Joseph Goldman takes his grounded approach to nourishment and turns up the heat, inviting readers to discover the beauty and balance found in the heart of a oven. This is where food becomes movement, feeling and rhythm. Cooking not just as craft, but as connection.
Inside these pages, Goldman walks through the precision and poetry of pizza-making with the calm authority of someone who’s been burned, blistered, and baptized by fire. He breaks down hydration ratios, fermentation timing and the delicate chemistry that transforms flour into art. You’ll learn to read the heat, listen to the dough and coax flavor from smoke instead of hiding from it. Every recipe, from traditional margherita to wilder, dreamlike creations is written with the kind of care that comes from deep respect for both technique and instinct.
But this isn’t just a manual. Woodfire Fantasies is an experience. An exploration of desire, intuition and the delicious tension between control and surrender. Between the recipes are stories and reflections that smolder with humor and heat. Moments where passion spills over the edge of the pan and the line between chef and artist blurs. The writing flirts with the flame the way a cook does with the edge of the oven: close enough to feel it, careful enough not to burn. It’s proof that cooking, at its most alive, is as much about what you feel as what you taste.
If Healing With Food fed the soul, Balls Deep feeds the part of us that just wants to play. It’s the other side of the same coin. Less therapy, more thrill, less quiet reflection, more heat, laughter and a little sauce on your shirt. Chef Joseph Goldman turns the act of rolling meatballs into a celebration of what food really does best. It brings people together, breaks down walls and reminds us that pleasure and connection belong in the same kitchen.
This book may make your Nonna blush, but she’ll still be asking for seconds. Balls Deep is equal parts humor and technique. A cheeky, full-flavored dive into the art of the perfect ball. Inside, you’ll find recipes that span continents and cultures, from classic Italian beef-and-pork blends simmered low and slow to lamb koftas, seafood bites and even dessert “sweetballs.” Each one is built on real culinary foundations: fat ratios, binder structure, caramelization, temperature control and the balance of acid & salt that turns comfort food into something transcendent.
Between the recipes, Goldman serves up stories from the line. The burns, the jokes, the 3 a.m. victories when the sauce finally hits right. It’s a kitchen diary splattered with tomato and truth, proving that cooking at its best is equal parts skill and chaos. He teaches the fundamentals of texture, heat and flavor the way only a working chef can.... with grit, laughter and total honesty.
In the end, Balls Deep isn’t just about food. It’s about passion for craft, for connection and for the simple joy of getting your hands messy in the pursuit of something delicious. It’s a reminder that healing can happen through a quiet meal or through a loud one, but either way, it happens when we gather, cook and share.