Accidental Hedonist

As a member in good standing of the GLBT community, let me state for the record that the upcoming cookbook “The Butch Cookbook” (edited by “two butches and a femme”) speaks more of the current state of cookbook publishing than it does of the lesbian community. Here’s an observation from Julie Bindel:

There is a similarity between this book and those aimed at men who do not know how to boil an egg. In the authors’ world, any good butch will have a beautiful femme on her arm, who, every now and again, needs to be allowed to put her feet up.

Ah yes…there’s nothing like a cookbook that plays with gender stereotypes.

via The Food Section

There’s an interesting article in yesterday’s Washington Post surrounding the intentional dumbing down of recipes.

Choice paragraph:

At a conference last December, Stephen W. Sanger, chairman and chief executive of General Mills Inc., noted the sad state of culinary affairs and described the kind of e-mails and calls the company gets asking for cooking advice: the person who didn’t have any eggs for baking and asked if a peach would do instead, for example; and the man who railed about the fire that resulted when he thought he was following instructions to grease the bottom of the pan — the outside of the pan.

This is the kind of thing that’s both sad and funny. Yeah, yeah – someone not knowing whether to grease the inside or outside of a pan contains its own pathos, but there are several reasons for this regression in cooking skills.

The article mentions one of them, with both parents working certainly being one of them. The others (not mentioned) are the prevalence of microwave ovens, and pre-processed meals that can be easily heated within said microwaves. I still remember one college friend who wanted to make me dinner, and I later found myself sharing a plate of luke-warm Stouffers stuffed peppers. I realized then that people’s ideas of what constitutes “cooking” varies greatly.

Personally, I feel this dumbing down of cooking is not a reflection of the people but rather more of a reflection of the times in which we live. There’s a reason why Rachel Ray’s 30 minute recipes have hit home…we live in an era where time is an expensive commodity and people are cutting corners where possible.

Would I love for people to be cooking more? Absolutely. But beyond extending a day by an additional 8 hours, I’m not sure how that’s going to occur.

(Thanks to Gwyn for the heads up)

Technorati Tags: Food, Recipes, Food News

Jack once again points me to a great essay in the NYTimes, entitled “Real Food Doesn’t Hold Still” (LI/PW – accidental/hedonist), which brings to light an issue I briefly touched upon during my recent review or Mark Bittman’s new cookbook: that many of the cookbooks out there are not cookbooks in the traditional sense, but rather a publicity tool used to heighten a food personality’s caché and credibility.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

As the writer of the piece, Andrew Scrivani points out:

…I own cookbooks that will never make their way into my kitchen. One is Thomas Keller’s “Bouchon” (Artisan, 2004), so heavy and cumbersome that as Kramer did on “Seinfeld,” I could put legs on it and turn it into a coffee table.

I also exclude “Bouchon” and the recent “Nobu Now” by Nobuyuki Matsuhisa (Clarkson Potter) from my kitchen for philosophical reasons. To me, they are not cookbooks but extraordinarily beautiful advertisements for very successful restaurants.

My standard for cookbooks is simple. They have to make me want to cook. I’m not looking for the perfect recipe, because how does one qualify “perfection”? Instead, when I look in a cookbook, I’m moved to recipes that teach and inspire me to get into the kitchen. When I look at Bouchon, I get inspired as well, but I get inspired to head out to a top tier restaurant.

Again, not that this is a bad thing.

But it is crucial as a consumer of cookbooks to know what the intent of a cookbook is. If you’re buying a 40 dollar cookbook, and you’re afraid to get flour on it, my guess is that you purchased a cookbook that’s meant as promotional material.

Technorati Tags: Food and Drinks, Cookbooks

I’ll admit it — one of the better things about having a food blog is the various people sending me their books to plug. As an admitted book fiend, it was difficult for me to come to terms with receiving these books and still maintain a fair amount of “ethical objectivity” that us bloggers are said to be required to maintain.

I’ve gotten over that little hump. I will gladly accept free books. I just can’t promise to read them all, let alone give them reviews.

This leads me to Mark Bittman’s The Best Recipes in the World, a book that showed up on my doorstep late last week. It’s also a book that’s been getting a fair amount of play on other food blogs, so don’t be afraid to get other opinions about this cookbook aside from my own.

From my own perspective, a cookbook should intially accomplish one thing: Get a person off of their couch and into the kitchen.

Cookbook publishers would disagree with me, because to them, a cookbook should make money. Some cookbook authors would also disagree with my statement, because to them, a cookbook should serve to promote the author of the cookbook — or in some cases, the author’s restaurant. But to me, a cookbook unused is like an unread book in that it’s not fulfilling it’s potential. If a cookbook is unable to get you into the kitchen, it’s not really worth owning.

Luckily for Mr. Bittman, his new release passes this test. Looking through the book made me want to cook. Part of it was the sheer number of recipes, and how thorough he was in ensuring that all continents were covered including Africa, a continent often forgotten when people talk about cuisines of the world. Another reason the cookbook motivated myself was that Mr. Bittman writes in an easy style, readily accessible to those who may be intimidated by their oven. In looking over the book, it was apparent that he is aiming this book at those who are frustrated by the intricacies of “The Joy of Cooking” and other similar cookbooks.

But there are some flaws to this book. As others have noted, he seems to pick and choose which recipes are entitled with how they are known in their native land, while others are entitled with either an English translation or simply the ingredients within the dish. It would have been more engaging to carry both variations of titles on the recipe.

The other flaw found in the book was discovered by chance. In the initial recipe that I had picked to recreate in my kitchen, the recipe missed a small, but I believe crucial, step. When such an error is discovered in a cookbook, it makes it difficult to approach other recipes within it without a fair amount of suspicion. I’m quite willing to concede that it may have been a simple mistake that occurs time to time in publications, but it will affect my future use of the cookbook.

Which leads to the second goal of a cookbook — to be used often enough to be considered a reference book. I think that this is where “The Best Recipes in the World” will fall short. There are several other cookbooks in my collection which will always get the first look. It remains to be seen if this book will make it into that upper echelon of my collection. But in considering all of the above, I’m not sure that it will. Talk to me again in about 5 months or so.

What this means is that this is a good cookbook, but not a great one. Mr. Bittman’s previous cookbook “How to Cook Everything” is a much better resource for the new chef. Once you’ve mastered the recipes in that book, there are better cookbooks out there for foreign cuisines.

Technorati Tags: food, cookbooks, book reviews

My favorite Baconaholic, Meg, (of I Heart Bacon) has tapped me to do the latest meme that’s been going around. I am to answer the Five Favorite Books Questions below. I’m sticking to cook books and books about food partly because of peer pressure, but mostly because I’ve been buying food books exclisvelu over the past year or so.

1. Total number of (cook) books Iâ??ve owned:
Right now? About 42-45. Far more than I realized. This is the most I’ve ever had in a collection all at once. I don’t believe I’ve ever gotten rid of a cookbook, although that may soon be changing.

2. Last (cook) book I bought:
That I bought? Hmmm…a small cheese cookbook about 2 weeks ago, entitled “Say Cheese“. It was 5 bucks at half price bookstore.

3. Last (food) book I read:
Oh lordy… last week I purchased and read “The Cheese Primer“. Not a bad book, but mostly reference. There’s no narrative, so don’t go thinking it’s a great read. The last narrative book I read, fiction or non, was “The Perfectionist“, which is getting a lot of play in literary circles.

4. Five (cook) books that mean a lot to me:

As blasphemous as it might be to say, I don’t have any cook books which mean a lot to me. Rather, I have several books which have shaped the way I approach food as well as approach writing about food.

• 1. Anthony Bourdain – Kitchen Confidential: Was one of the first to write truthfully about restaurants, warts and all. His approach allowed me to see that not all food writing has to be flowery prose.
• 2. Alton Brown – I’m just here for the food: Understands that cooking is essentially a form of science, and has been able to communicate complex ideas into little kernals of information. He also understands that food is as much about context as it is about simply making the meal.
• 3. Calvin Trillin – The Tummy Trilogy: Not a chef, nor a cook, nor even a food anthropologist. He’s simply a guy who likes food. He’s another writer who understands that food isn’t always pretty and isn’t at all about four star restaurants. The fact that he’s funny as hell doesn’t hurt either.
• 4. Stewart Lee Allen – In the Devil’s Garden: A great book that puts food in context of history as well as the seven deadly sins. What I learned from this book is that foods do speak about us in an anthropological context. The addage is true, you can tell a person by what they eat. Highly Recommended.
• 5. Reay Tannahill – Food in History: This should surprise no one that I like this book a great deal. I keep telling everyone. Food is one of only a handful of items which we have in common with everyone else. It shapes us individually as well as within our larger social cultures.

5. Which 5 people would you most like to see fill this out in their blog?
I don’t know who’s done this already, so if you’ve already written one up, let me know.

Orangette
Culinary Fool
Tigers and StrawberriesLenn Devours
Anyone and Everyone at Too Many Chefs

So I’m sitting at home in my studio apartment. I am geeking out on the internet, as I am prone to do, when there is a little knock upon my door.

It’s fairly late, and I live in a building that you have to be buzzed in, so I am suspicious. I carefully open the door, and what do I see?

Why it’s a certain special someone, bearing a certain special gift: A cookbook.

Not any cookbook, but a special cookbook – Pure Chocolate : Divine Desserts and Sweets from the Creator of Fran’s Chocolates written by Seattle’s own Fran Bigelow.

I’m given specific instructions. To earn this book, I have to complete two tasks:
1) I have to make a version of the Key Lime White Chocolate Tart that’s coincidentally bookmarked already.
2) I have to make the Alsatian Onion Tart that Orangette had posted only days before.

I agree to these stipulations. The cook book is handed over and I drool over the pictures for the rest of the evening.

*sigh* My life is so good.

It’s probably surprising to no one that I have a fair amount of cookbooks in my collection. At last count, I was near two dozen. And if you must know, Five of them deal with Italian food (the latest is The Gastronomy of Italy which has been keeping me in various states of fantasizing bliss since it arrived).

That being said, I think the culture of the cookbook is misunderstood.

It seems that many people think that a cookbook should be judged by the quality of the recipes within. Personally? I think that any cookbook that motivates someone to go to the oven, or head out to their local gourmet supermarket in search of that one ingredient carries far more weight than a book that is technically proficient, but does not inspire.

As I said, I have five books on Italian cooking. And oddly, I have five different recipes for Puttanesca. If I were to judge one of the books recipe as technically proficient, would that mean that the other four recipes were less than proficient? Is there a “best” Puttanesca? Although not all recipes are created equal, the idea that one recipe in a cookbook can outshine another is often not true. Each recipe brings something to the knowledge base that I already carry with me (I’m talking about my mind here).

It’s through this knowledge base that I decide to cook…wait for it…exactly what I want to. I look at a Puttanesca recipe, and I think to myself “olive oil, Chili pepper flakes, anchovies, Tomatoes, capers, kalamata olives”. If that’s what’s in the recipe I read then all the better. If not, then I see if what differs inspires me to add something else. If it doesn’t, well heck, I’m still cooking and isn’t that the point?

The other reason I think that cookbooks are misunderstood is the fact that in teh real world, most people will not cook every recipe in the cookbook. In fact, I’ll go out on a limb and say that only 25% of recipes are ever made within a cookbook. Sure that percentage is arbitrary, but I find it hard to believe that people cook every recipe in every book they own. Considering many books have hundreds, if not thousands of recipes, it’s unlikely that most of these recipes become ultra-popular?

So why buy a cookbook? Well, I suppose I’m an exception to the rule (due to the 2 dozen cookbooks on my shelf), but I buy for two reasons:

1) Reference: If I need how to braise a goat, or make chicken stock, or grilling salmon, I have information readily available.
2) Food Porn: This is the big one. I can think of several recipes, both in books and online that make my mind salivate. There are several recipes with new techniques I want to try. There are several recipes with ingredients that I want to try (Mmmm…fresh sardines!). I’m already equating these recipes with future bliss.

And that’s what cookbooks are all about. It matters not that the food must be spectacular. Cooking is like any other skill…The more one cooks, the better one gets. If the Pillsbury Cookbook gets someone away from the Frozen Food section and makes then want something “better”, then that’s as significant as The Gourmet Cookbook.

My hope is that in that search for something “better”, those using the Pillsbury Cookbooks will eventually migrate to Gourmet.