Why Bother With Cookbooks?

Not a pepper, after all! See postscript.

 Some people don’t. Don't bother with cookbooks, that is. Isn’t everything on the Internet, and aren’t all the recipes your heart could ever desire a couple taps away on your phone?

 

No, not everything is online -- someone had to upload it, or it isn’t there – but yes, there is probably more at your fingertips than you’ll ever look at, let alone use, which brings us back to my original question, and if you’ve already decided to “bother” with cookbooks no longer, I’m probably not going to convince you otherwise. Don’t they take up precious space that could better be used for cookware? Aren’t they really just – clutter? Since I grew up in a family of readers (as well as a family of letter-writers, but that’s another story), as long as I live I will never see books as clutter. 

 

(When in my early teens I baby-sat for neighbors, the most challenging job was in a house that contained no books. Not a one. There was a TV Guide and a Victoria’s Secret catalog. That was it. On that job, I occasionally did homework but basically watched a lot of television, clear through to the channel sign-off signal -- something that no longer exists. But the young couple, parents of a madcap little Dennis the Menace, stayed out late and they paid well.)

 

So what I’m getting at, in my usual roundabout way, is that cookbooks for me are books first, recipe collections second. I like it best when they either have photographs or give me paragraphs – preferably pages! – of thoughtful prose, and if the author offers me both, that is a dream book. 

The first recipe in Rachel Khoo’s The Little Paris Kitchen (and how could I possibly resist a book with that title? I ask you!) is for a salad of fresh figs and chicken livers. Rather than diving directly into instruction or a list of ingredients, Rachel muses as follows: 

 

When figs appear at my local market (the best figs are available from July to September in France), I just have to buy them. Sweet, sticky, and juicy, they often don’t even make it back to my kitchen – I usually gobble them all up on my way home – but if there are a few remaining, they make a delicious addition to a salad. - Rachel Khoo

 

Oh, be still, my heart! Fresh figs! Growing up in the Midwest, I knew only dried figs and the cookies known as fig bars. When our hostess in the Ardèche offered me a fresh fig right off her tree and I bit into it, I burst into tears! Looking at the photograph of Khoo’s salad, I taste the sweetness and feel the graininess of the seeds in the fruit pulp, and I would give anything for a fresh fig!

 

Alice Waters, besides being the sister of a good friend, inspires me. Alice does not preach precision. She gives a basic idea and then encourages her cookbook readers to make substitutions and try variations. She writes: 

 

Flexibility is an essential component of good cooking. You should never feel locked in to a recipe or a menu unless it involves a basic principle regarding procedure or technique such as those involved in breadmaking and pastry. I don’t ever want to write anything in this book that is so precise that the reader must invoke great powers of concentration on every last detail…. 

 

…When you are faced with the absence of a certain ingredient, don’t panic; formulate your own acceptable or inspired replacement….

- Alice Waters

 

Isn’t that dear of her? To give us hope that our substitutions may be “inspired”? Oh, thank you, thank you, Alice!

 

It's always good to have one or two basic cookbooks on hand, and the basic cookbook I have here in Arizona is Irma Rombauer’s Joy of Cooking. (Back in Michigan I have three or four different basic books, one of them a reprint of the one I grew up using in my mother’s kitchen.) It seems I’m always looking up proportions for simple things like noodles or muffins or a conversion chart for measurements. Things like that. 

I must say, however, that Joy let me down recently when Rombauer wrote (and I believed) that “stone-cold” pans could be used for popovers. Not true! I have a whole story to share about popover failure, but that must wait for another day….

Here in our winter ghost town, I have only one shelf for cookbooks, not a whole bookcase as I have back in Michigan, so there are days when an addition to the shelf prompts me to consider de-acquisition of something else. Tough choices! 

In the Southwest, a Mexican cookbook is a must, isn’t it? So I was happy to add this one to my shelf. But will it surprise you when I say that Rick Bayless’s Mexican Kitchen: Capturing the Vibrant Flavors of a World-Class Cuisine is more intimidating to me than any of my French cookbooks? Basically, it’s the peppers. There are so many of them, and their names change when they are dried (as grape becomes raisin, poblano becomes ancho), and the true Mexican cook is not only a master of capsicum but of so much more!

 

The other day, though, at last I roasted a pepper over a gas flame on the stove, something I’ve been intending to try for years and finally got my courage up to attempt. Blistered the skin, let the pepper cool, scraped off the skin, scraped out the seeds, and chopped up that pepper to add to chopped fresh tomato, white tomato, onion (Mexican cooks prefer the white, I learned from Bayless), and garlic. The pepper I roasted (what was its name???) was not particularly hot, so I did add a few drops of hot sauce. And my salsa was good! So I made a start, at least. Baby steps….

Then, last year I found and bought a German clay cooker, and this year I found the cookbook to go with it! Serendipity! That should help me get back to experimenting with “ancient pot” cooking, because my clay cooker has been feeling rather neglected, I know. A whole book, not just one online recipe at a time.

And just on the heels of a gout attack in our household (I was not the victim), which led me to think we should eat less red meat and more chicken, a visit to the FOL bookstore over in Pearce/Sunsites turned up this book: 

What could be more timely or more inspiring? I am excited already, having only looked through a dozen pages! 

 

Inspiration. Encouragement. Memories. Pleasure. That’s what I find in cookbooks. I can’t imagine my life without them.

IMPORTANT POSTSCRIPT! My sister reminds me that the catalog at the bookless household was Frederick’s of Hollywood. Victoria’s Secret did not yet exist. (That shows our age, doesn't it?) Then, a very savvy foodie friend set me straight about chiles and peppers: they are not the same genus! See an explanation here. 

So much to learn — at least I had that right!

Start With a Blood Orange

Blood oranges are not unique to Spain, but I always think of them as Spanish, from my first encountering them in Paris, and then I think also of strawberries and the protests from French farmers and agricultural workers one year over strawberries imported from Spain in what I thought of “The War of the Strawberries.” Oranges, of course, need a warmer climate than strawberries (and so we have Michigan strawberries but not Michigan oranges), but let’s stick to oranges today. Strawberries will come in good time.

Les sanguines. Blood oranges. The name is strong and yet poetic, evocative, calling up associations and mysteries far beyond citrus.

Blood orange fruit segments are a deep garnet in color (darker than Ruby Red grapefruit), and the thick orange rind surrounding the juicy pulp usually bears a deep red blush, too. They are delicious as well as beautiful, but it was the beauty and the magic of the name that first drew me to them. Some objects, like some places, simply have irresistible names, and if the objects are beautiful, too, why try to resist?

Now, to my amazement, blood oranges have come to Northport, where they are at present no more expensive than the more ordinary oranges. A dollar apiece for either kind! Cheaper than a candy bar! Too special, though, I can’t help thinking, to be merely sliced into sections for a snack. And a single blood orange goes a long way when used in a salad, half of one sufficient for two people’s salad. It dresses up mundane Romaine remarkably, along with some crumbled goat cheese and works well with a raspberry vinaigrette. 

But a blood orange inspires me to go beyond lettuce and cheese, and so my salad the next evening began with cubed cold tofu and sections of blood orange cut into thirds, which would probably have been good enough; however, I had a bit of leftover fruit salad – orange and mango and grated coconut – so I tossed that in, too, along with freshly sprouted mung beans, finally dressing the whole and tossing with a light application of sesame oil.

Done?

That would have been the end of it, except that I also found the tiniest dab of chopped cabbage and kale to sprinkle over the top for bright green contrast and added crunch. Perfect!

NOW it's done!

What inspires you in the kitchen as spring comes on? Or do you find it too hard to stay indoors?

(Bring outdoors in)