I’m not usually a blog stick-meme follower, but I did it over at KIPlog on regular books, and I wanted a chance to discuss cookbooks and this one came along. You can find a list of other foodbloggers participating at Spiceblog, who started it all.
1. Rationale behind what we’re seeing?
Your not seeing anything, since I don’t really have a cookbook shelf to take pictures of. Unlike most people with food blogs, I can count my cookbooks with only two hands. All I have is LaRousse, Alton, Trotter, a few old ones left in the pantry from old roommates (stuff like The Bisquik Cookbook, and the Bennigan’s Cookbook), and a couple of new ones sent to me by publishers and authors expecting me to be not as lazy as I am about writing about them. There’s a cookbook in my bedroom, one among the large format books on a shelf next to my atlases, and a few tucked away behind some old wine in the pantry. Basically, the internet is my cookbook.
2. Most recommended?
Culinary Artistry Andrew Dornenburg, Karen Page, When I’m done reading this one, I’ll give it a proper review, but this thing is an anti-cookbook. Sure, there are recipes in it, but it’s about learning how to cook artistically, rather than learning how to cook a recipe or a style of cuisine. It’s more about creating, than copying. I love its “teach a man to fish” philosophy – to be a great chef you need be able to walk through a market and come away with the ingredients that compose a great meal without needing a book. Lots of lists of ingredients, flavors, food pairings and menus that serve as composing and inspirational guides. Tons of interviews with Chefs that pick their brains for their experience and advice. I’m convinced this book will inspire you to close your other cookbooks for awhile and see what you can come up with on your own. DISCLAIMER: The authors sent me this book.
3. Cookbook that made you what you were? (sic)
Cooking in a kitchen made me what I were, but I’d be making a lot of mistakes without the basic Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook. Although my copy is far from New, and mostly what it makes me is sticky-fingered, since it’s extremely greasy.
4. Porniest cookbook?
Charlie Trotter’s Seafood. Tim Turner is the undisputed King of food porn.
5. Sophie’s Choice cookbook?
Probably Alton’s “I’m Just Here for the Food”, but only because it’s a personally signed copy.
6. If you were a cookbook, which cookbook would you be?
I don’t know how to answer this one. I’d like to be LaRousse, so I could be encyclopedic, or I’d love to say I’m Gale Gand’s Short+Sweet, but realistically I’m more like the Better Homes and Gardens, cause of the grease and age.
7. If your cookbook were extremely valuable, so valuable you might hide it with other valuables, where would that place be?
I try to keep Alton’s book out of the kitchen, away from the grease, because of the signature, but I don’t value cookbooks all that highly. However, you’d have to torture me with canned corned beef product to make me give up where my Wustoffs are hiding.
I should mention that unlike cookbooks, I do have lots of food magazines. Bon Appetit and Cooks Illustrated among the subscriptions, Savuer among those I occasionally pick up.