My 2010 Cookbook Spreadsheet and Cookbook Recommendations

Perhaps some of you will remember from last year (January 26, 2010 blog) that I keep a spreadsheet of all my cookbooks and write the date next to the title every time I use one of them. At the end of the year, I can analyze which books I’ve used and what type of cooking I’ve done the most. All of this is really quite fascinating to me but perhaps you are not as engaged as I am. After all it’s what I’m eating, not what you’re eating. Bear with me.








Over the course of 2010, out of a total of 543 cookbooks, I used 86 of them, 32 for the first time. I prepared 218 recipes from these 86 cookbooks, 14 from magazines, newspapers, cooking classes, or the internet, 86 from my blog, and 36 of my own devising, coming to a total of 354 recipes.

This information tells me that I am still quite wed to cookbooks in the paper form, ones that I can crack open, check the index, scribble notes and paste photos. I’ve begun to use Epicurious and Big Oven apps on my IPad, sending myself emails of interesting recipes, but those numbers are still really small. The 86 from my blog are those recipes I am getting ready to post and need to photograph, as well as those I just love and “keep” using again and again.

I cooked 43 recipes from West Coast and West Coast Wine Country cookbooks, 34 from cookbooks featuring European or English food, 28 from the Healthy or Vegetarian cookbooks, and 21 from the Quick cookbook category.

I used FARMfood a whopping 18 times. This is a beautifully designed book, published by Indiana University Press. Daniel Orr is a Hoosier (from Indiana); I’m a Buckeye (from Ohio). So at our roots, he and I are neighbors—and I feel that every time I use his cookbook. He ventured away to see the world and to learn to cook but has now returned to Bloomington, Indiana and has opened a restaurant, FARMbloomington, which supports local farmers and ranchers by buying their produce. His recipes are really good.

I used The Illustrated Quick Cook and Martha Stewart Living’s Everyday Food: Great Food Fast a combined 15 times. I love spending time in the kitchen, as most of you know, so speed is not my highest priority. But I also realize that it is for many of you and I’ve been trying to find great quick recipes that are tasty and fun. Both of these cookbooks meet that criteria. There are also lots of good photos.

Aloha Days Hula Nights came in at 12 times. This Junior League cookbook from Honolulu is truly marvelous. I took it with me to Hawaii over New Year’s 2010 and used it a bunch at the beginning of the year. There is nothing slick about it. Just good recipes, well tested, and delicious.

Without Reservations came in at 10 times. I took Joey Altman’s cooking class at the Ranch in 2009, bought his book with few expectations and found it to be totally admirable.

I would highly recommend any of these five. I would love to know if any of you has tried them and what you think of them.

The New Era Cottage Cookbook

For the last couple of days I’ve been working on the New Era Cottage Cookbook, a project that I’ve undertaken with Bruce, the brother-in-law of a good friend, whose Michigan cottage I’ve visited every year, save one, since 2002. Bruce and I began gathering a collection of the recipes that have been cooked at the cottage over the years, including several from family members who are no longer with us. Coach’s Potato Salad and Rudy’s Hot Fudge to name just two. It is an act of love for both of us, perhaps a gift to the next generation of cottage-goers who want to know more about the food that nourished their moms and dads on steamy Michigan evenings.

But, as my regular dinner guest pointed out a couple of nights ago over spicy meatballs with sour cherries, rice, and tzatziki, working on it is also a distraction from writing my cookbook, a project that is both intimidating and exciting. I’d like to think that I’m learning something about doing my cookbook from organizing New Era. But actually I think his assessment is correct. I’m overwhelmed by my own project; this one seems manageable. Is there a way to make my cookbook project more manageable? Now that’s a really good question.

While I’m mulling that over, the following blog gives you two of the New Era recipes. They have been cooked a multitude of times—but not by me. I only just made the Hot Fudge last night for the first time—and I can report that it is every bit as good as I remember from the cottage. Let me know what you think.

My Favorite Brits and Their Books

There are so many incredibly talented British cooks and cookbook writers these days it is hard for me to choose my favorites. I currently have 29 cookbooks written by 13 English cooks (not including several from Australia and Ireland). Some of them are nearly household names, even here, like Gordon Ramsey, Jamie Oliver and Nigella Lawson, thanks to their numerous television appearances. And others are just splendid cooks, often heading up restaurant kitchens, who write beautifully and create wonderful dishes to share with us, their readers: Fergus Henderson, Simon Hopkinson, Gary Rhodes, John Torode, Simon Rimmer, and Nigel Slater to name a few. I have cooked from all 29 of these cookbooks. While I can’t say that all the recipes were equally successful, the great majority were very good indeed. In London this spring I made notes of a number of cookbooks which I hope will get published here in the next few months. More by women too. I’ll keep you posted.

Nigella Lawson is stunningly beautiful, funny, astute, and can create both complicated and simple dishes with great wit and charm. I’ve never seen her on television so all my impressions come exclusively from her many books.
Nigella Bites (2002)
Favorite recipes: Italian Sausages with Lentils (recipe below), Chocolate Lime Cheesecake, and Chocolate Pots (December 8, 2009 blog)
How To Be a Domestic Goddess: Baking and the Art of Comfort Cooking (2001)
Favorite recipe: Pizza Rustica
Other cookbooks: How to Eat: The Pleasures and Principles of Good Food (2002), Forever Summer (2003), Feast (2004), Nigella Express: Good Food Fast (2007)

Jamie Oliver is passionate about getting people to cook and eat better, without a hint of preciousness or elitism. He is congenial, even folksy, in his cookbooks, making them seem accessible to people who haven’t cooked much, especially guys. If you want to see for yourself, check out his web site and watch his TED acceptance speech. Then cook his food. You’ll be convinced.
The Naked Chef (2000)
Favorite recipes: Pappardelle with Sweet Leeks and Mascarpone, Spicy Couscous, Spiced Slow-cooked Lamb Shanks, Marinated Chickpeas with Chilli, Lemon, and Parsley, and Farfalle with Watercress and Arugula Pesto
Happy Days with the Naked Chef (2002)
Favorite recipes: Shrimp with Chilli, Parsley, Ginger and Garlic on Toast and Sirloin of Beef with Bok Choy, Soy Sauce and Ginger
Jamie’s Dinners (2004)
Favorite recipe: Sticky Toffee Pudding
Cook with Jamie: My Guide to Making You a Better Cook (2007)
Favorite recipe: Indian-style Broccoli with Spiced Yogurt (May 19, 2010 blog)
Other cookbooks: Jamie’s Food Revolution (2009)

Simon Rimmer, an avowed carnivore, bought a vegetarian restaurant called Greens in 1990 in Manchester, England with no experience running a kitchen or cooking in one. He and his partner who had been waiters previous to the purchase threw themselves into transforming “stodgy” vegetarian fare into remarkable dishes and learning to cook really well along the way.
Rebel Cook: Breaking the Rules for Brilliant Food (2006)
Favorite recipes: Warm Potato Salad with Garlic Sausage (recipe below), Warm Vietnamese Chicken Salad, and Simple Green Salad, Chinese Style
The Accidental Vegetarian (2004)
Favorite recipes: Smoky Roasties, Rendang Shallot and Asparagus Curry, and Butternut Enchilladas with Mole Sauce

Nigel Slater wrote Real Fast Food way before the “fast” thing kicked in over here. The ingredients are few, the skills required negligible, and the results quite delicious. His 2004 memoir Toast is both sad and revealing of the various situations that may lead to an interest in cooking.
Real Fast Food (1995)
Favorite recipes: Brussels Sprouts and Bacon (recipe below) and Spinach and Orange Salad
Appetite (2000)
Favorite recipes: A Smooth and Creamy Paté, and A Creamy Calming Pasta Dish
Other cookbooks: The Kitchen Diaries: A Year in the Kitchen with Nigel Slater (2006)

Two of the three recipes I’m about to give you call for sausage. The third calls for bacon. It’s safe to say that I am extremely fond of both sausage and bacon. One of my favorite easy meals when I was newly married was sausages and baked acorn squash halves filled with butter, brown sugar, and walnuts. Sound familiar? The truth is sausages are great with just about anything. Recently I made them to accompany a very tasty bulgur salad. I suggest you buy the best you can, preferably from a butcher you trust. And if you are serving them to friends, try them out yourself first to make certain they are worthy.

Making Dinner Fast

I know that a lot of you are concerned with getting dinner on the table as quickly as you can. I applaud your desire to prepare food for your family or your sweet self and to sit down to eat it. You’ve already had a full day of work, and now there is yet another task to be done. Dinner. Yikes. Years ago when I was working full-time (or more) at Duke University, I too felt the pressure to fix food fast. Getting home a little after 6:30, I learned to move quickly. I wanted to have dinner on the table within an hour. Being organized was the only way to do it.

Three things helped me out:
(1) On the weekend I would plan what we would eat for the week. I would choose three or four main dishes, doubling the recipes so there would be plenty for leftover dinners. I would prepare two of the dishes on the weekend—usually the two that took longer to prep or to cook. The other two dishes I chose were super speedy, like a stir-fry or sauté, easy to do within an hour. I would write down my plan on the store list and then shop so I would have everything I needed on hand.

(2) I had a couple of go-to recipes which could always be hauled out in emergencies. Most of them called for ingredients I usually had in my cupboard or fridge. Remember Cheese Soufflé (November 25, 2009) and Tuesday Pancakes (February 16, 2010)? Speed was uppermost in my mind; clearly cholesterol wasn’t.

(3) The boys learned to fix themselves something to eat after school so they weren’t “starving” by the time I got home. Popcorn, instant ramen, macaroni and cheese from a box, and the old stand-by, cereal. It wasn’t exactly health food. But the experience gave them some independence and confidence that they could fend for themselves in the kitchen.

All these strategies worked for me. But they required planning, shopping and cooking on the weekends. And it required a husband and kids who didn’t mind waiting to eat until 7:30 or so. That sort of a schedule doesn’t work for everyone. Because I value eating home-cooked meals as a family at a table, I was willing to do whatever it took. And going out to dinner every night wasn’t a viable financial option.

In the past few years a million cookbooks have come out with some combination of quick, fast, or simple in the title. Rachel Ray is making a fortune whipping up her 30-minute meals on the Food Channel and selling her books. I’ve tried more than 30 of these cookbooks and find them infuriating, disappointing and surprisingly helpful. Infuriating because they lead you to believe that you’ll have your dinner done in a blink but then the author says “Oh yes, the time assumes that you will have done all the prep ahead.” Like you have a sous chef chopping for you in your kitchen. And they always underestimate the amount of time it takes to prepare a dish for the first time. Disappointing because in 30 minutes you can’t make a stew or bake a meatloaf, or anything which requires long slow cooking which I love. Helpful because there are an astonishing number of really good recipes which can be put together pretty quickly.

Recently I have had good luck with these books:
The Illustrated Quick Cook by Heather Whinney. Check out Beef with Soy and Lime with Grapefruit and Ginger Salsa or Chicken with Cinnamon and Peppers. Over 700 recipes.
Nigella Express by Nigella Lawson. Check out the Red Shrimp and Mango Curry. She is a pleasure to have in your kitchen.
Great Food Fast by Martha Stewart Living. Check out Thai-Style Steak Salad. A really pretty cookbook.

And thank God for canned diced tomatoes, frozen spinach, fish, shrimp, steak, red or brown lentils, canned black beans or chickpeas—all of which help you cook really quickly. I’m not much of a fan of the pre-chopped veggies available in the supermarket. But they can help in a pinch.

If you are looking for speedy dishes on this blog, check out the following:
Picadillo (Mexican Meat Hash) (September 26, 2009), pictured
Thai Chicken Coconut Soup (February 2, 2010), pictured
Spicy Soba with Tofu (March 7, 2010)
Bistro-Style Steak with Sauce Marchand (March 13, 2010)
Catfish with Cherry Tomatoes and Lemon Sauce (March 21, 2010)
Grilled Cheese (November 11, 2009)
as well as the delicious recipes given below.

A New Art Project: Picturing My Food

I only started taking pictures of my food last May when I realized that I wanted to include photographs on the blog. Never in the course of cooking these dishes over and over again had I ever thought about taking their pictures. So here I was having to cook all these old favorites again—in order to take their pictures. We ate the dishes, of course, with so many fond memories. But still it felt like the photographing was just one more thing I had to do in addition to figuring out the technology, conceiving, writing, editing, posting, and the rest. In the process, I learned something about photographing food (the first thing is to remember to do it) and I gathered quite a few pictures on my iPhoto.

But there’s more to it than that. Last fall I bought Paula Wolfert’s new cookbook Mediterranean Clay Pot Cooking which I wrote about in a blog on November 18, 2009. I mentioned the problem with the lack of photographs and how I had solved it by taking photos of my clay pots and the dishes I made in them and pasting them into the cookbook. The cookbook took on a whole new character. It was really mine—with useful information and snapshots.

The next steps happened so slowly that I can hardly remember the exact moment I noticed. First I started taking pictures of the dishes I made from cookbooks without photos. From there I proceeded to take photos of my food regardless of whether there was a photo or not. Next I took a picture of everything that went on the table. Finally I went back to all the photos I’d taken for the blog and glued them into the original recipes from which they were adapted. All of this involved lots of pasting and taping—thankfully I am very fond of both.

Slowly it dawned on me that I am embarked on an art project. I am adding color to cookbooks that have none (think of Joy of Cooking). I am superimposing my images on top of the food stylists’ versions. For my own edification, I am recording useful visual information about the cooking pot, the serving platter or the plate and documenting the dish’s appearance. I am making the cookbooks prettier and prettier. The artist in me is transforming the everyday into little pieces of color, remembrance, and art. I don’t know how long this project will last—could be a year, could be less. As long as I am amused and delighted, I'm happy to continue for a while.

How to: About once a week I download the photos from my camera into iPhoto—and move them into the very large “Event” called Food and Store Lists. Then I select the photos I want to print on letter-sized glossy photographic paper. I print the photos small, 2 x 3 inches, so 8 or 10 will fit on a sheet of paper. I cut them up and paste them into the cookbooks with Yes!.

Keepers of the Flame

A couple of weeks ago, Katherine and I spent an afternoon pasting hexagonal post-it notes on a large conference room wall at her office in San Francisco. On each hexagon (see examples in the photo) we wrote the name of a recipe or a story that has appeared on my blog since the middle of May. It was quite an impressive collection. We sorted the recipes by appetizer, soup, main dish, etc. and the stories by a more complicated system. Our purpose was threefold: to see what I had done in these last nine months, to look for any holes which I might want to fill in the next stretch of time, and to ponder the question of how to turn this blog into cookbook. We didn't get very far on this last issue except to determine that I still want to create a cookbook.

Here are the stats on what’s appeared: 7 appetizers, 4 soups, 23 main dishes, 18 salads, 7 salad dressings, 6 grains/starches, 10 vegetables sides, 5 relishes, 6 desserts, and 8 baked goods. The main dishes broke down as follows: 4 chicken, 1 beef, 3 ground meats, 3 pork, 2 shrimp, 7 vegetarian, and 3 pasta. No fish. So starting today with three nice warming winter soups, I’ll be filling in some of the missing pieces.

But something more important bubbled to the surface that afternoon.
“Keepers” for me has always referred to the fishing term. Keepers are the fish you keep to eat. Everything else gets returned to the pond. The recipes I give you are the ones I love the most. Recipes worth keeping.
But there is another meaning as well.

Those of us who cook regularly, who buy produce and raw meat, who chop and sauté, who dish out steaming bowls of home-made soup are “keepers” of a cooking tradition. Not unlike Ancient Rome’s Vestal Virgins who tended the sacred flame of Vesta, the goddess of hearth and home, and prepared food for rituals necessary for the health and well-being of Rome, we cooks, male and female, moms and dads, standing at our stoves, are keepers of the flame. Sitting with our loved-ones at a table over a home-cooked meal, we too tend to the health and well-being of our friends, our families and ourselves.

In my darkest moments, I worry that we keepers of the hearth may cease to exist. After one or two more generations of families with no one cooking in the kitchen (will houses cease to have kitchens?) and with the food industry doing everything it can to process our food for us and pumping it full of cheap ingredients that make us fat or fatter, what is the future for the home-cooked meal, made from real ingredients that nourish and sustain? Who will teach the next generation how to cook? Who will teach them the difference between a tomato and a potato?

This morning, I watched the TED speech of Jamie Oliver, a celebrated British chef, who won this year’s TED prize ($100,000 and the help of everyone in the TED audience to accomplish his goal) and who, at 34, wants to change how people eat in Great Britain and now here. His acceptance speech is tough, challenging and inspiring. His wish is to form a strong sustainable movement to educate every child about food, to inspire families to cook again, and to empower people everywhere to fight obesity.
We who are the current keepers of the flame need to find a way to join him, to find each other, and to make sure that all the recipes we love, our “keepers,” get passed along to the next generation. Our future depends on it. Are you with me?

Part I: French cooking in 2009? Mais Non!

I didn’t use a single one of my 37 French cookbooks in 2009. As much as I loved the movie Julie and Julia, think of Julia Child as my fairy godmother cooking mentor, and am in awe of Julie Powell’s accomplishment, I didn’t cook French. Not once. In Part II, below, I’ll tell you how I know this astonishing fact.

What was going on? I’ve cooked plenty of French food in the past, including the months preceding Katherine’s and my trip to Paris, Burgundy and Provence in 2005. This last piece of information is, I believe, crucial. My relationship with France has grown pretty slack since 2005. It is off my radar. I have a stronger connection to other cuisines at the moment. Were I to make plans to vacation in Provence next summer, everything would change. France would be back on the screen, I would need to get my mouth ready for the trip and the French cookbooks would resurface.

What do I make of these yearnings in my mouth for particular flavors and the spurning of others? Based on the French experience, anecdotal as it is, I want to propose a theory: My tastebuds are relational. If I have a strong relationship with a place (historical, in the present moment, or in my imagination), I am more likely to want to cook from that place.
So let’s look at what I did cook.

1. The answer is Middle Eastern, North African, and Mediterranean food. Lots of it. I love that part of the world: since 2003 I have visited there five times. But I was intrigued by the flavors long before the travel. I bought my first Persian cookbook in the 60s. [Indulge me here. According to my National Geographic DNA study, my gene pool reached Europe via what is now the Middle East. Is anyone willing to speculate as to the food my gene pool ingested on the way? Might I still be influenced by it?] In 2009 I visited both Jordan and Israel and my cousin-in law, Rivka, visited Syria. In preparing for my trip and following hers vicariously, I cooked from The Arab Table by May S. Bsisu, used Joan Nathan’s The Foods of Israel Today and devoured Saha by Malouf and Malouf. I cooked more food from this part of the world than from any other.

2. I also purchased a slim book (used and without a dust jacket) called Sara Foster’s Casual Cooking and used it a bunch. Sara Foster opened a primarily take-out market in 1990 in Durham, North Carolina where I lived from 1975 to 1995. I was an avid supporter of the market and often went there for lunch or to pick up some dinner. I ate great Southern food (Magnolia Grill and Nana’s in Durham, Crook’s Corner in Chapel Hill) and acquired a fair number of Southern cookbooks (now up to 20). Last night we ate at Pican, a restaurant in Oakland specializing in sophisticated Southern fare. I love cooking from both of Sara’s cookbooks because they combine Southern hospitality with really good food, just like the market. Below you’ll find Southern-style recipes for Pimiento Cheese and Chilaquiles with Salsa Verde.


3. And finally I notice that my taste buds are pulling me in the direction of Thailand and Vietnam. Nancie McDermott’s Quick & Easy Vietnamese cookbook which I took with me to Hawaii has been getting quite a workout, along with a Thai soup that I love for its simplicity and delicious flavor. Check on next week's blog for some great recipes. Turns out I really want to visit Vietnam in the next couple of years and I’m getting my mouth ready to go. Fish sauce really didn’t do much for me until I got this hankering. Now I can’t seem to get enough.

I would love to know if you have any special relationships to the food you cook. My friend Karyn says that her relationship is with the place she gets her vegetables: The Farmers Markets and her own backyard. Once she has the produce in her care, she starts thinking about how to cook them and reaches for cookbooks that are organized by seasons or by the fruits and vegetables themselves. What about you? How do you choose what to cook?

Part II: My Cookbook Spreadsheet

How do I know that I didn’t cook French and ate a lot of Middle Eastern, you might ask?

Because I kept a list. At the beginning of 2009 I made a spreadsheet of about half of my cookbooks. I sorted the cookbooks into 29 categories, mostly by country or region. Every night after dinner when I wrote down what I ate in my little notebook, I would jot down on the spreadsheet the date next to the cookbooks I had used. At the end of this last year, I looked over the sheets to see if anything interesting showed up. It did—but maybe only interesting to me. You be the judge.

Turns out I cooked from 104 cookbooks in 2009, 39 of which I used for the first time, another way of saying that I acquired 39 new or used cookbooks. I prepared 202 recipes from these 104 cookbooks.
As I mentioned above, I cooked a lot of food from around the Middle East. Here are the numbers in terms of recipes: Middle Eastern (20), Turkish (2), Moroccan/Spanish (13), Persian (2) and Mediterranean (8). These flavor-related regions account for 45 recipes (22 percent of the recipes I used in 2009). I also used 33 recipes from cookbooks of the American West Coast (where I live) and 23 recipes from vegetarian and healthy cookbooks. Miscellaneous others: Indian (12), International (9), Italian (9), Mexican and Latin (7), and British (11).

The prize for the most used cookbook goes to Flatbreads and Flavors by Alford and Duguid. Eight times. I really do like that cookbook; it is simple and inviting. But I can’t say that it is my very favorite, even though I used it more than any other. Truth is, I can’t even imagine choosing a favorite—too reminiscent of Sophie’s Choice. I cooked from Sam and Sam Clark’s Casa Moro seven times. John Ash’s From the Earth to the Table and Niloufer Ichaporia King’s My Bombay Kitchen both came in at six. The Food of Israel Today, The Arab Table (both mentioned above) and Paula Wolfert’s Mediterranean Clay Pot Cooking all came in at five.

I should mention that three recipe sources don’t show up in this calculation: 1) the recipes I was testing for this blog (about 84), 2) those I make up on the spot which I call “my own devising”, and 3) those which I find in newspapers, on the internet or in my handwritten notebooks or are given by friends. I might add these to this year’s list which now includes all my cookbooks (523).

Prologue: My Favorite Middle Eastern and Mediterranean Cookbooks

Here is a list of my six favorite cookbook authors (in alphabetical order in Part I below) whose cookbooks focus on the Middle East and the Mediterranean. I own and have used all of them, both those highlighted and those listed as “other.” All of them are interesting, great fun to use, and generally trustworthy. They would all make great presents. Recipes from three of the books follow in Part II below.

When I fall in love with a cookbook writer, I basically buy and use every cookbook that he or she writes. Maybe I like their aesthetic,their way of writing a recipe, their congeniality, their honesty, or their reliability. Something draws me to them and I am a devoted follower from then on.

These authors have differing takes on authenticity. If they are purists (Paula Wolfert, for example), you are assured of an authentic dish but you’ll also have to hunt high and low or order from an on-line food purveyor to get the ingredients you need. There are others (Alford and Duguid, for example) who want to make their recipes as accessible as possible for American cooks and hence offer substitutions, allowing the cook some discretion. I value both approaches. I love approximating as true to the original a taste as possible. I also don’t want to be misled into thinking that I am making an authentic dish when in fact it is not. But I also don’t want to have to struggle to gather exotic ingredients or cook ware, especially if an easy substitution is available. The rest of these authors fall somewhere in between these two poles.

Most of these cookbooks are incredibly beautiful. Full of photographs of both the food and the countries of origin. The recipes are integrated into the culture in a way I find completely absorbing. Many are also quite expensive, some as much as $50. I figure I amortize the price every time I use it. But $50 is still a lot, amortized or not. I always check if Pegasus or Half-Price Books in Berkeley have used copies. If they don’t, I try my favorite independent bookstores, Readers in Sonoma and Books, Inc. in Berkeley on Fourth Street before resorting to Barnes & Noble or Amazon.

Part I: My Favorite Middle Eastern and Mediterranean Cookbooks

Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid 
This twosome was the subject of a great 2008 New Yorker piece by Jane Kramer called The Hungry Travelers. Naomi Duguid was a lawyer in Toronto and Jeffrey Alford was involved in various illicit and possibly dangerous activities when they met on a hotel roof in Tibet in 1985. They have traveled extensively since that momentous meeting and are excellent guides to the food they find in pretty far-flung places.

Flatbreads & Flavors: A Baker’s Atlas (1995)
Favorite recipe: Two Reds Salad (See recipe on my September 1, 2009 blog.)
I found Flatbreads & Flavors upon returning from Israel and Jordan where I was amazed by a local bread, called shrak, made over something resembling an up-side-down wok set over a heat source. This book includes a recipe for it, although I have yet to make it. This is one of their first books and has far less color photos but some nicely labeled black and whites. Great food.

Seductions of Rice (1998)
Favorite recipe: Grilled Beef Salad
This cookbook’s focus is on all the cuisines of the world that have rice as the primary staple food: China, Thailand, Japan, India, Central Asia and Persia, the Mediterranean, Senegal, and North and South America. As with Flatbreads & Flavors, they include food to eat along with the many different kinds of rice.

Other cookbooks: Hot Sour Salty Sweet: A Culinary Tour through South East Asia (2000), Mangoes and Curry Leaves: Culinary Travels Through the Great Sub-continent (2005), Beyond the Great Wall: Recipes and Travels in the Other China (2008)

Sam and Sam Clark 
Casa Moro (2004)
Favorite recipe: Carrot Purée with Caraway and Feta (See recipe below.)
I love that they are Sam and Sam (actually Samantha and Samuel). We’ve eaten at their London restaurant, Moro, which was just great. They are as fascinated as I am by the Moors, believed to be both Arab and Muslim, who crossed the Straits of Ghibraltar from Morocco to Spain in 711 bringing with them all sorts of fruits and vegetables hitherto unavailable: saffron, sugar-cane, rice, figs, grapes, pomegranates, oranges, lemons, bananas, peaches, apricots, eggplant, artichokes, cumin, coriander, and almonds. The food the Clarks offer is a rich combination of both cultures, Morocco and Spain; they are marvelous taste companions.

Other cookbooks: Moro: The Cookbook (2001)

Tessa Kiros 
Falling Cloudberries: A World of Family Recipes (2009)
Favorite recipes: Boiled Potato Salad and Red Pepper Soup with Olives, Lemon Zest, and Yogurt (See recipe below.)
This is truly an international cookbook featuring foods from Finland, Greece, Cyprus, South Africa, and Italy. It is much easier to read than Apples for Jam whose recipes were printed in a light gray color in an odd typeface, so hard to read that I didn’t use it much. This one is much improved. Lots and lots of photos, nice print face and color. The recipes are written in paragraph style which I find more difficult to follow than the numbered step-by step method. But she has a great aesthetic and design sense and the dishes are colorful and really good.

Other cookbooks: Apples for Jam (2007)

Greg and Lucy Malouf
Saha: A Chef’s Journey through Lebanon and Syria (2005)
Favorite recipes: Sweet and Sour Eggplant Salad or Braised Swiss Chard with Crisp Fried Onions and Tahini Sauce

Turquoise: A Chef’s Travels in Turkey (2008)
Favorite recipe: Green Olive Walnut and Pomegranate Salad
These are the most gorgeous books. You might think they belong on the coffee table but that would be a serious mistake. They are as fun to cook from as they are to read. Malouf and Malouf hail from Melbourne, Australia where Greg has a restaurant, MoMo. Once married, now separated, they continue to work together on cookbook projects, I am pleased to say, she as the writer, he as the chef.

Other cookbooks: Artichoke to Za’atar: Modern Middle Eastern Food (2008)

Claudia Roden
Arabesque: A Taste of Morocco, Turkey, & Lebanon (2005)
Favorite recipe: Eggplant Slices with Pomegranate, Yogurt, and Tahini (See recipe below.)
I acquired Claudia Roden’s first cookbook A Book of Middle Eastern Food in 1974, a comprehensive survey of Middle Eastern food but without photos or much charm in terms of design. I fell in love with the flavors. Thankfully Roden is a very good writer and her explanations and stories were great. Thirty-some years later, cookbook aesthetics have changed. Arabesque has a lot of photos showing the food in all its glory. All the dishes I’ve cooked from it have been wonderful and it is a pleasure to read.

Other cookbooks: A Book of Middle Eastern Food (1972), The New Book of Middle Eastern Food (2000)

Paula Wolfert
Mediterranean Clay Pot Cooking (2009)
Favorite recipe: Creamy Bean Soup with Florina Red Peppers (I used Gypsy)
Paula Wolfert wants us to cook food that is as close to authentic as possible and gives detailed recipes on exactly how to attain the best results, whether it’s handmade couscous or duck confit. I truly admire her dedication to keeping ancient cooking traditions alive.
Mediterranean Clay Pot Cooking is her most recent book. The clay pots are simply a joy to use. Among other places, you can buy them at Bram in Sonoma or The Spanish Table or on line. The recipes I’ve tried so far are just great. The publisher must have decided to put as little money as possible into the design, printing and photographs. For all the effort and care Paula put into the recipes, the book is not a joy to read. The photos are humdrum and there are some page numbering mistakes. I have taken matters into my own hands by photographing the dishes I’ve cooked and gluing them into my book to give it a little more character and color.

Other cookbooks: Mostly Mediterranean (1988), Mediterranean Cooking (1994), Mediterranean Grains and Greens (1998), Couscous and Other Good Food from Morocco (2001), The Slow Mediterranean Kitchen (2003), The Cooking of Southwest France (1983) and (2005)

Why I Write in my Cookbooks

How did I know that I had cooked 66 recipes from Mastering the Art of French Cooking? (See August 15, 2009 blog on the movie Julie and Julia.) Actually all I had to do was flip through the pages and count up every recipe that had my penciled notes in the margins. They were the sure give-away that I had cooked it. And I could give you a count for every one of the more than 500 cookbooks that I have amassed over the past 43 years of cooking. I have written in them all. I owe this habit to my mom whose battered and speckled Better Homes and Gardens was sprinkled with her black ball point notes. How useful, I thought.

But why, you might ask? Here are my thoughts.

1. I make notes because I want to remember that I’ve cooked a particular recipe. I want to record whether we liked it or not. God forbid that I should cook a recipe again if we hated it. But other comments are useful too like “too weird for my taste” or “just great” or “too much trouble for the end result” or “the best.” I also note any changes I might have made, like adding less olive oil or more salt or making a substitution, like red onions for shallots, or if some procedure simply didn’t work and what to do about it.

2. I make notes because my cookbooks have been my cooking teachers from the very beginning. Like notes from a good lecture, the recipe notes help cement the learning and help me remember the experience. I want to record what I have learned so I won’t forget.

3. I make notes because I am an historian (BA in History, University of Michigan, 1965 after all), recording/archiving my cooking history. Flipping through a well-used cookbook is a trip down memory lane. The notes reveal the likes and dislikes of my sons Franz and Ben through the years. They reveal how our tastes have expanded. They reveal that at one period we were eating chicken livers, salmon cheeks, and finnan haddie. They tell me what I ate for Thanksgiving dinner in Japan in 1972. Ah yes, jujubes in the stuffing. Might future historians enjoy looking through my cookbooks and seeing what I was cooking and eating in the late 20th and early 21st centuries? Without the notes, how could they tell?

4. I make notes so that as my memory gets increasingly sketchy, I don’t accidentally cook the same dish for guests that I made for them on another occasion or serve bread salad to a treasured guest who hates it. So on each recipe I write the month and year I made it and for whom, including any relevant comments.

5. Most of all, I write notes because I am making these recipes my own. Over the years some recipes, especially “the keepers,” have a vast array of notes scribbled all over the page. The dish that results is still recognizable as being Chicken Marbella, for example. But it has become “my” Chicken Marbella. Isn’t that the whole point? To make the dish our own?

So you, my dears, are the beneficiaries of my learning and my note-making. I have taken these scribbled up recipes, typed them up fresh and clean, including helpful notes and worthy changes, and put them on this blog. Now I turn them over to you so that you too can write on them, change them to suit your tastes, and make your own.

Julie and Julia

We just saw Julie and Julia, the much talked about movie, based on My Life in France by Julia Child's great nephew and Julie and Julia by Julie Powell. Both are wonderful books in and of themselves. I knew that Meryl Streep would be just great as Julia and she was. I didn't know how much I would love and admire the way Nora Ephron put the two books together. She did a brilliant job of showing the parallels between the two without being ham-handed, so to speak. And I was once again filled with a huge amount of admiration for Julie Powell: cooking all the recipes in Mastering the Art of French Cooking is a stupendous accomplishment.

I acquired Mastering the Art, my first serious cookbook, on August 20, 1967, my first wedding anniversary, from my then husband Rick Kunst. Over the years I made many different recipes from this cookbook: seven soups, three sauces, pie dough (multiple times), five quiches, three gratins, two souffles, crepes, a turnover, scallops, five chicken, a duck, six beef, a lamb, five pork, seventeen vegetables, four composed salads, and three desserts. One of the desserts was Tarte au Citron et Aux Amandes (Lemon and Almond Tart) which I made in trying out for an assistant pastry chef position at Chez Panisse in 1974. I delivered my tart to the restaurant one morning and never heard from them again. I guess they didn't like it. So I've cooked 66 recipes from Mastering the Art, some multiple times--and it seems like a lot from one book. But that is 458 shy of what Julie Powell cooked. Quite amazing. Just think of it. By all means, see the film. I'd love to hear what you think if it.

Affection for My Cookbooks

I have great affection for my cookbooks for any one of a number of reasons. Here are just a few:

I love to read them and imagine the flavors of the recipes.

I love the personality of the writer that comes through in the books.

I love that they provide me with an incredible wealth of ideas that I could never come up with on my own, especially about ethnic cuisines, like Persian.

I love how beautiful some of them are and I love the gorgeous photographs, misleading as they may be.

I love to “test” a new cookbook to see if the recipes are accurate, well-conceived, and well-written. I watch out for egregious errors: 2T for 2t, for example, can cause serious damage if the ingredient is salt, chipotle chili pepper, or baking powder. But I also watch for excitingly new combinations and methods. The end result of the testing is, of course, a nice meal. Yum. Yum.

I love that they are artifacts and reflections of the culture of which I am a part. Joy of Cooking from the 50s is different from Joy of Cooking in 00s. Food fads come and go like skirt lengths. Now we’re back to fondue.

I love that over time they provide a history of my cooking experiences. Notes I have written in them over the years tell me what I fixed for Thanksgiving dinner in 1994 or how my sons, Franz and Ben, now grown, reacted to a new dish (“Yuck”), or how I changed the recipe to fix it or to suit my taste.

Do you love your cookbooks? I would love to know the ways.

Traveling, Cooking, and Eating

Four years into my marriage, we moved to Taipei, Taiwan for my husband to study Chinese at the Stanford Program at Taida University. Because we were so very Berkeley, we decided that we would shop and cook for ourselves rather than hire an amah. This was a pretty radical decision in 1970. So I learned to count in Chinese. I learned the names of vegetables. I shopped nearly every day at our neighborhood market. I bought a couple of pirated Chinese cookbooks. I took some cooking classes. In the course of the year I learned a huge amount about Chinese food but the shopping also brought me into the community. Neighborhood grannies would peek in my shopping basket to see what I had bought, ask how much I had paid for my cabbage and offer suggestions on how to prepare it.
















When we moved to Kyoto, Japan with our month-old baby, Franz, I did pretty much the same thing. Counting. A couple of cookbooks. Daily shopping. Asking questions of neighbors. And cooking a lot of Japanese food. I also taught Western cooking to some women in my neighborhood, as shown in the photo. They reciprocated by teaching me Japanese cooking. Just great for me.

So I’m going to jump ahead to the near present.

In 2003 I caught the travel bug. It started with the Middle East and went on to Spain and Morroco, southern France, South Africa, Brazil, Mexico, Turkey and Greece, Malawi, back to South Africa, Spain, Sweden on and on. And most recently Italy, Iran, Israel, Jordan, and Palestine. An amazing opportunity to see the world and to delve into cultures so different from my own.

Before going on trips, I educate myself about the new place by doing three things: I buy cookbooks (from my favorite used bookstore), read them, and cook some of the special dishes of the region. Good cookbooks tell me so much about the agriculture, immigration patterns and influences, the climate, and the traditions of the country. And then I get to eat their food. Smell it. Taste it. I literally ingest the culture of the new place before I take a step outside this country. When I finally get there, I can look for the dishes I want to try and delight in seeing how closely my dishes approximate the “real” thing.