Cheever Bio Wins NBCC Award
Congrats to my dear friend Blake Bailey, whose
bio of John Cheever, won best bio of 2009 from the National Book Critics Circle on Thursday.
I mentioned this bio when it came out. It’s fabulous, highly recommended. Blake also wrote a bio of Richard Yates, which is every bit as good, if not better. I have no doubt his Charles Jackson bio (
which he talks about on the WSJ blog) will be the same, even if
Jackson is all but forgotten. ()
Michael Symon and I At Jo-Beth Legacy Thurs at 7
Michael Symon and I will be at
Joseph-Beth Booksellers at Legacy Thursday from 7 to 9. He no-doubt wants help flogging
that damned book of his. I’ll be out front selling out of my van. If it’s good enough for Bourdain, it’s good enough for me. ()
Cleveland Converts Mall into Farm
Cleveland’s
Galleria mall has turned indoor vacant retail space into farmland. Great idea more cities can adopt! ()
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My two favorite cookbooks are BITTERSWEET by Alice Medrich and MAKING ARTISAN CHOCOLATES by Andrew Garrison Shotts. Aside from both being about chocolate, they explain the whys and wherefores and give you a basis for experimentation and improvisation while encouraging you to go for it. If I could find a boneburner’s cookbook like that, I’d be all over it.
Agreed I would love a fundementals cookbook that includes basic ratios, as well as a cookbook for one/two people.
First, to the person who said “there are already techniques books out there” (Pepin, Cordon Bleu, etc.), yes, that’s true. And I have them and read them. But they tend to have few, if any dishes along with them, so as a novice cook, I’m left with a “now what?” feeling. And when I find some recpie that uses a method I want to try, it’s cumbersome to be referring to two or more books simultaneously–one for a recipe, one for a technque.
Clearly, when writing a cookbook, a first decision is who the audience will be. The comments above illustrate that that the needs of a novice cook and an accoplished cook are quite different.
It appears that many of us are looking for the same thing….teach us how to cook relatively simple, flavorful dishes using good quality ingredients. I, too, fall into that camp.
I’m new to cooking, so I’m still recipe-dependent. I don’t yet have intuition about what flavors go well together. So, I want two things in a cookbook. One is a thorough explanation of a cooking technique (roasting, braising, etc.) followed by lots recipes that utlitize that technique. Sort of like what Alton Brown did in his first book, but with lots more recipes.
The other thing I’m looking for in a cookbook is “quick and easy” that uses good quality ingredients, not convenience products. Flavorful, awesome dishes that can be prepared quickly after a long day at work. Ideally, scaled down to 2-4 servings.
I think these two goals could be met in one book. I need “quick” (30-60 minutes) recipes for weekedays, but I like to do things that require longer cooking times or are more complex to create on weekends.
I’ve found quick recipes in my CIA and Cordon Bleu cookbooks, but sometimes it’s difficult to scale them down to just a few servings. So I was thrilled when I stumbled upon these books that meet the criterion of “quick and easy quality food for two” fairly well: Eating Well Serves Two; Pop It In The Toaster Oven by Lois Dewitt, and The Gourmet Toaster Oven by Lynn Alley.
Gourmet cooking in a toaster oven? Yes, it can be done. For example, tonight I’m going to try red snapper with capers and olives, I think. Toaster ovens aren’t what they used to be, so don’t snigger. They can do real cooking.
Those looking for recipes for two that use quality ingredients might want to take a look at these books. So far, I’m pretty happy with them.
Thanks for posing the question, Ruhlman. You hit upon a topic I’ve been thinking about a lot lately (what I want from a cookbook), and most don’t meet my needs. Thanks for giving us the opportunity to sound off.
Exactly. I don’t know how many times I called my mother so she could verbally walk me through carving up a chicken until I finally got it. I remember standing on a stool when I was a little girl and her showing me over and over how to make things like scrambled eggs on our old electric stove, and her explaining how electric, which she hated to cook on, holds the heat so you have to turn them off before they’re actually done and the remaining heat will finish cooking them, otherwise they’ll be dry and can burn. Every time she showed me how to make something she’d say, “Now pay attention, and you can do it next time.” It took me a long time to discover that everyone didn’t have a mother like this. Pity I was such a picky eater. I remember her watching Julia Child and reading this Charcuterie cookbook she bought for $2 that was published in 1968.
Because my Dad had traditional values from the “old country,” he insisted she learn how to cook native dishes, which were all from scratch. So every week she had to make bread, homemade yogurt, etc. It was anathema in my house to ever buy store-bought phyllo, for example, you MAKE it, what are you, stupid? If not for my Mother, I would probably be like most of my friends/colleagues and have no interest in or clue about cooking. Not that I’m any gourmet, but I know we’re cooking up a lot better meals than my co-worker who feeds her kids McDonald’s twice a week and stuff like Louis Rich carving board turkey sandwiches on the other nights because she doesn’t know how to cook.
I second the suggestion for an all inclusive book on offal, an area definitely underrepresented at my local bookstores. There are smatterings on the subject here and there in all sorts of cookbooks but nothing definitive on the subject. Plus there seems to be growing interest/demand.
I too am surprised by the amount of people asking for a book on technique – Jacque Pepin’s Complete Techniques as mentioned by another poster is excellent as are the books used for both the CIA & Cordon Bleu programs.
that’s an interesting but really tricky cookbook to pull off, rockandroller, but i like the idea.
and i LOVE reading these comments–they are so interesting to me, and heartening, not only because i’m working on a fundamental techniques cookbook, but because people are interested in the fundamentals in the first place rather than recipes. it sounds like many people want to be able to put something delicious together with what they have on hand and the only way to be able to do that is to understand the base preparations underlying all of cooking.
I guess it depends on who you want to sell the cookbook to and what you want them to use it for. I have bought a lot of cookbooks that I’ve really enjoyed reading and looking through but have never cooked anything out of, including the Les Halles cookbook Vincent Guerithault’s and the Occidental Tourist. Why?
For the amateur home cook, there’s either too many ingredients required, too much time and prep involved in making it, equipment or tools required that I don’t have, or a combination of those 3. I get the most use out of a cookbook where the recipes have a few ingredients that I probably already have on hand, supplemented by key ingredients that I can plan to purchase that week. Most home cooks don’t have pantries with absolutely everything at their fingers, all the time. If all I have to buy to make a good meal is maybe some lemons and a chicken because I have the other 4 things, that’s do-able. If I have to skip the saffron because there’s no way I’m buying that, substitute regular raisins because I don’t have both regular and golden, swap out rice for quinoa, swap out regular yellow onions for cippolinis, after a few more swaps and misses it’s not even the same dish and I just go, “well, I don’t have all the shit for that one, I’ll just make something else.”
Most of my home cooking starts with whatever i’ve bought and have on hand, and then me trying to figure out a way to prepare and combine what I’ve got to make it tasty. If I know we need some meat and I take down italian sausage from the freezer, what do I do with it? I had intentions the last 2 days of preparing the recipe on the back of my box of polenta which included sausage, but I don’t have 3 of the ingredients and nothing to swap and I keep forgetting to stop at the store just to buy those things, so by the time I get home and am hungry and tired, we just say fuck it and go out. Meanwhile the sausage is languishing, and will either be hurriedly cooked and probably eaten plain/without a recipe, with the polenta going unused still, or I won’t get to it and I’ll throw it out.
When I was learning to cook, one of the best cookbooks I had featured different cooking purposes and methods in sidebars next to the meal. Like if you could make it in the microwave (horror!), it had a picture of a microwave and the cooking time, so you knew right away if that was where you wanted to start. Some of my faves were “cook once, eat twice,” which provided enough for leftovers or the original recipe PLUS a tasty way to use the leftovers in another meal. It provided full menus for holiday meals and helped me to understand timing when preparing several dishes, which is the hardest thing to get, I think. It also broke down the nutritional guidelines, which was very helpful. The negative was that the recipes relied too much on processed food; canned soups and such, which I don’t like so I quit using the book as I got further and further away from processed foods. It didn’t try to be fancy, it just helped you put good food on the table for your family every single night, including special occasions. No foie, no home sausage making in my tiny apartment, no chutneys or saffron, just easy to make and very tasty food.
I’d love to have another cookbook like that which was grouped by what you have on hand but NOT using processed foods at all, though those could be listed as subs if you don’t have the real thing on hand (such as canned chix broth, I know, the horror, but I use it in my stuffing every Thanksgiving and it’s always the dish that gets the most raves). Like, you could divide it into sections as a normal, traditional cookbook (meat, veg, etc.) but it would offer a “key” in the sidelines that gave you a clue whether or not you could or should even start making the recipe, offering good substitutions you might have on hand.
Maybe there’d be a picture of a chicken. And then it would say, if you don’t have chicken, you can use THIS or THAT instead. Then it would have total prep time and cook time. THEN I would be able to pick what recipe to look at, knowing that I had a chicken and 60 minutes to devote, start to finish. Almost like a tour guide – if you have 1 day, go here. If you have 2 days, go here and here. Then, in the actual recipe, it would offer substitutions that you could make if you didn’t have the particular item on hand, or things that you could easily leave out that wouldn’t change the dish that much. Like this:
1/4 c. raisins (or not, if you don’t have them on hand, or sub chopped dates)
I would use the shit out of a cookbook like that.
I think the best cookbook I´ve bought so far is The Cooks´Book (Jill Norman Ed., http://www.amazon.com/Cooks-Book-Jill-Norman/dp/1405303379/ref=sr_1_4/102-2163354-2614541?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1189866660&sr=8-4
because it is my idea of a cooking bible with tons of techniques and basic and not-so-basic recipes explained and pictured, and with a each chapter written by a famous chef who specializes in that area (i.e. Adriá on foams, Pierre Hermé on desserts). So I´d definitely recommend that one to those of you looking for techniques (and this applies to both novice and advanced cooks… and no, they aren´t paying me hahaaha)
As for what I´d want in a book, I´d say nutritional information, possible variations, the sort of footprint of the recipe so that the advanced cook can get ideas from it, a method or two and then play with it.
Like so many other folks here have said, I would also like to see a cookbook offering quick, fairly cheap recipes. Hubby and I are trying to ditch the processed food, instead using cheap(ish) fresh foods. Recipes using fresh or frozen (when they get expensive in the dead of winter here in Cleveland.) vegetables and fresh herbs. What I don’t want is “home cookin’” type recipes or great food drowned in any kind of gravy. We need good food. Simple. Fast. Reasonably priced. Thanks.
I would love to see a cookbook that teaches how to cook the fundamentals perfectly, like roast chicken, tomato sauce, etc. And then give ideas on how to expand on each of those basic meals to make them more intricate.
This way if you have a family weeknight dinner, or a fancier dinner party, you have recipes in one cookbook to choose from.
I would also like to see a “cookbook” that teaches proper cutting techniques, food handling techniques, food prep techniques. Basically a book that teaches the home cook how to prepare meals quick and efficiently even if the meal is time consuming.
Although my skill set is pretty advanced in the kitchen, what I would like to see is a cookbook that makes high-end, elegant recipes accessible to average people. It’s hard to get regular people to break out of the mac and cheese mold when you have people like Rachael Ray promoting mediocre crap to them.
I’m amazed by how many people are requesting books on techniques. Have you never seen Pepin’s “La Methode” and “La Technique”? Concise text with copious photos that show what every step should look like. Working your way through them (or going back to them for reference) will teach you pretty much anything you need to know, from knife skills to dough methods… well, at least up to the era of Adria’s foams & bubbles.
The two books were later consolidated into “Complete Techniques”, but for my money the two separate volumes are more complete. Expensive new, but fairly easy to find used, too (eBay, etc).
I’m a geeky cook and love the Alton-type stuff and the comparative-testing prefaces to recipes in ATK’s “The Best Recipe”, so I’d love to see any book that applied that comparison method. Maybe localized by region or country?
Charcuterie is the book I use the most in my kitchen, but I also work in a restaurant so maybe I’m a bit biased. My vote would be “Charcuterie Continued: Having your Pig and Eating it Too.”
I generally tend to migrate towards seafood in the cookbook section, as well as meat, hoping there will be one focusing on pork, as well as less expensive cuts of meat. I think seafood cookbooks are the ones that people pick up most often to look at because there’s a pretty picture on the cover, but they often get put back on the shelf because they’re too intimidated by them and don’t think they could be replicated at home. Maybe something along the lines of “Seafood Simplified” with some techniques from chefs that can be done in a home kitchen. Nothing too “high-tech,” but things that can be easily done. I find that the dishes I’ve done successfully in very high-volume environments are the ones that can be done the most easily at home since they have less steps and most of the prep can be done ahead of time. And if the focus were on sustainable seafood, that would be a bonus.
I’m reading this because I am writing one. Over two years of blogging, I discovered that lots of earnest cooks didn’t know important basics– many of them mentioned above. So, sure there are recipes, I am not McGee, but there are also descriptions on how to buy what there is and turn it into what you need. These are thing great grandmother knew because she had to. Today’s cook has tools great grandmother would find astounding. Use them.
What to do with the person who says “I could never do that?” I think that person was never going to really cook anyway. Too bad, because how else are you going to know for sure what you are putting into your body?
I get alot of recipes online (to counteract the article). I like websites such as cooks.com because it has a wide variety of recipes by regular people, not just chefs/tv personalities, and so I know the recipes will taste good. That’s number one, recipes that taste good (I’ve sold many a cookbook because the recipes sounded good on paper, but did not taste good).
I’d also be interested in a cookbook for one or two person meals. I like entertaining, but more often than not I’m just making dinner for a couple people.
I’ll second Sunshinegrrrl’s interest in the ratio sheet. I have been pining for one of those ever since reading your description of it. I’m a geek at heart and only began cooking once I’d been introduced to Alton Brown, and the concepts I’m still fuzzy on seem like ones ratios would clarify for me nicely.
I also like the suggestion of freedom in ratios — i.e. once you know the basic concept, you can add and tweak ad infinitum. Some of my favorite recipes are things like basic muffins that can be easily turned savory, sweet, etc.
General things I like in cookbooks: essential things that can be made ahead and kept indefinitely (stock, pancake mix, etc.) followed by recipes utilizing those ingredients. “Chef tricks” (I’m inordinately amused by each chef’s take on trussing chicken, for example). I really like it when the personality of the chef/author shines through — I enjoy the French Laundry cookbook, the Les Halles cookbook, and Jamie Oliver’s cookbooks in different ways, but I like all of them because I know what tone I can expect when I open them.
I would love a book of recipes, ideas, etc. for cooking for one-two people, as someone suggested above (and nothing in there that says “make this big dish and freeze it”). I enjoy preparing dinner every night and would like interesting recipes with one-two servings.
I also liked the idea someone mentioned above about a book of side dishes, particularly vegetable ideas.
A cookbook for parents and older kids with simplified versions of classic cuisine – something that lays a good basic foundation of techniques for kids aged about 11 or so and up, who are ready for something beyond mac and cheese.
I’d like a cookbook that focuses on ratios, where everything is broken down into its most basic elements. That coupled with inspirational ideas like Mark Bittman’s 101 Summer Express (from the New York Times) is a book I would find very useful. The fewer ‘recipes’ the better. I want to learn new techniques, I don’t want to be told to add an 1/8 of a teaspoon of cayenne pepper to anything.
uhmm… that should be “to make amazing FOOD”… oops!
I have probably 100 cookbooks, ranging from niche things like “slow cooker for two,”ethnic cookbooks, and diet cookbooks, to more like the doubleday cookbook. My favorites are the ones like Doubleday and America’s Test Kitchen Family Cookbook. I like the test kitchen, because I know they’re going to tell me why the recipe is what it is and I know there’s a lot of trial and error behind it. I also know it has almost everything in it. I enjoy sort of researching recipes (well, not on a Wednesday night at 6 and nobodys eaten, but sometimes) and the Test Kitchen cookbooks really help, because they always explain why you really need to make a special trip to the grocery store to get that one weird ingredient they call for.
As far as good/cheap/quick, try one called “cheap and easy” it’s small, but its great!
I’ve got enough recipes in the cookbooks I have. And unless something is totally innovative or creative, I’m not really interested in more ways to whip up a pasta dish using stuff I have in my fridge or pantry. Or cook a steak, or grill a piece of chicken. I want something different.
I want a cookbook of nothing but side dishes. Poor, neglected side dishes. More ideas on what I can do to make those parts of a meal less boring than steamed veg and baked/mashed/roasted potaotes. And I want some general information on what kind main it pairs best with. Something light? Something rich? White or red meat? You get ideas over the years, of what “goes” with what, but it’d be nice to have a culinary outline for why you don’t serve certain things in the same meal, or why one prep makes a veggie a better pair for grilled chicken as opposed to a steak. You pick up bits and pieces of it by trial and error or “suggested” pairings from magazines, but I want ONE book that teaches me the basic knowledge and lets me run with it, and use it even beyond that book.
As a home cook, I can’t tell you how many nights I come home, look at the staples in the pantry, and wearily wonder what else I can do with what’s already on hand.
I love my cookbook collection and when I have the time, I have no problem going out and picking up (or preparing) the special extras I need for a particular menu, but on any given night, I’d love a book full of ideas on what do to with my standard pantry items.
Yes, I know, that’s wandering into ‘30 Minute Meals’ territory. I guess what I’m looking for is a book of more sophisticated recipes, but not so much so that you need to get a lot of specialty items to pull off a meal.
I’d love a “cooking for one/two” type book that doesn’t take me for a can’t cook/completely mediocre cook.
Another book I’d love to see takes a bit of explaining. There’s the concept that in cooking, you can have two of the following three: Good, Cheap, or Fast. I have, personally seen a lot of “good/fast” books (though, “good” is awfully subjective). I’ve seen a lot of “cheap/fast” books as well. What I haven’t been able to find AT ALL, is a “good/cheap” cookbook (similar to what Doodad is talking about). Sort of cooking like restaurants do, where you use EVERYTHING to make amazing good with the idea of getting every penny out of every ingredient we buy.
I’ve been seeing this sloppy trend of cookbooks with appealing, fast cooking recipes, but having me buy shortcut (ie. expensive) items to make the recipe. Spare me the shortcuts… tell me the long-cuts, even if it means that I’m spending all day prepping, chopping, making broth, etc, and ultimately using every last speck of that ingredient to make something (or maybe several somethings) divine and worth the money spent.
I’d like to see you talk to Alice Waters about a cookbook highlighting sustainable suppliers, with plenty of backstory and pix of the folks and farms.
I’d love to see a cookbook focused on taking some of the techniques and ingredients used in so-called “molecular gastronomy” and bringing them to the home cook – in the form of both fancier dishes, and stuff that’s less fancy than it is fun.
My own interest, would be books on techniques, and the selection of ingredients. Allow the reader to be creative with some confidence. By learning HOW something works, not just put these items together, exactly measured.
I feel good when I make something, that I thought was my idea, not just copying someone Else’s. Hell, if you can write a book, that describes the technique of combining Cheese with Pasta, and at the end, I personally name that dish “FoodPuta’s Macaroni & Cheese” I would be a legend in my own mind.
Oh, and some awesome food-porn pictures always helps.
You wrote in Making of a Chef about one of your teachers having a sheet of formulas and how that was enlightening to what you were doing. I’d love to see that sheet maybe as a tear page or some such and some examples of what you and others like to do with those basic formulas. And as always history, etc on each is always a lot of fun. I’d buy that in a heart beat.
Wow, thanks for asking Ruhlman. I am working through Tony’s Les Halles cookbook and expect to get the French Laundry cookbook for my birthday next week (hint hint wifey).
What I like are books that show basic prep in one section (yes how to debone a chicken) and then what to do with the parts in a useful, economical, family budget way. Show me how to make good food that I can spin into other things as leftovers. I can buy a whole pork shoulder, but what are my choices in using it? The greatest help is a DVD included that SHOWS what is supposed to be done and how the prep should go even if the finished dish is not elegant.
Then, explain why I am doing certain things whether classic or a new twist. I need to cook the pineapple prior to marinating with proteins because the enzymes degrade it, e.g.
Just my 0.02
I really want a ‘Cooking for One’ cookbook that isn’t by one of the ‘open a can of stock and add things’ girls. Every cookbook out there seems to be oriented towards cooking for a family or assumes you of course have a fabulous social group who comes over for dinner, with dinners in 4 portions. That’s pretty tedious to get through by the third meal of the stuff. I wouldn’t even mind it being a slim book that just discusses the basics of how to scale things down (there are some things that you can just quarter, when making one, and there are some things, especially butters and oils, where the proportions need to be reduced but not on a straight divisible level. Some spices can’t be reduced a full quarter, or they disappear, etc.).
Whoops, that’s Cosentino.
I’d say my most used cookbook published in the last few years is Rick Bayless’s Mexican Everyday. In the last 15 years? Patricia Wells Trattoria. Both books focus on fundamentals, while helping enlighten the reader on slightly simplified versions of classical tasting dishes that taste great. I think Gordan Ramsay does a great job in his Fast Food, and Sunday Lunches cookbooks as well, although they are catered to a country with a slightly different palate and grocery selection than ours. Swing the focal lens on some Keller flavor combinations that you could realistically prep and cook in an hour. ( or see Bayless’s ingenious use of the slow cooker for other ideas, I make those things all the time. )
Another personal favorite is revisiting the classics from The New York Times Cookbook and American Cookery. Slight updating, voila, totally useful recipes that somehow feel like comfort food to anyone over thirty…
I don’t know if “The Fifth Quarter” already has this covered but I think a great choice would be a definitive offal cookbook with Consentino. I’d definitely buy it.
The kind of cookbook that is just more than a cookbook. It informs. Little sidebars of information about figs and the different types and the nutritional value or a quickie sidebar about preserved lemons and a recipe on how to go about making them. I really like to read my cookbooks and learn from them.
Two humble suggestions:
1) An Italian Cook Book featuring NO pasta and NO Tomato Sauce. Something that will let people experience the MANY fine Italian dishes that contain neither.
2) A Caribbean/Floribbean Cookbook. Probably bastardized by more restaurants than any other cuisine on Earth. How many of us have gone to a “Caribbean” Restaurant only to discover the only thing “Caribbean” about it is the absurd names they think of for the cocktails?
REAL Caribbean and Floribbean are perfect for the home-cook. Please include a list of GOOD Caribbean/Floribbean restaurants as an addendum.
I’d like to see more cookbooks that talk about cooking’s fundamental building blocks. And a cookbook that says it’s ok to experiment. And fail.
I’d be interested to see a cookbook that took single, simple ingredients and provided several takes on the same recipe. You know what else would be cool? Flow charts of traditionally melded flavors. Arranged by region.