A cook and a book

Members of cookbook clubs like the EYB Cookbook Club are used to working their way through cookbooks, asking others for advice, and offering their own. It’s a great place learn how to decipher what a cookbook author means, or expound on changes that worked out better than the original text. 

If there is anything better than learning from your peers and hearing their thoughts on the latest cookbooks, it might be having your favorite cookbook author try a few recipes from someone else’s book and provide commentary. If that sounds like an excellent idea, head on over to Food and Wine’s website. Charlotte Druckman has a new column there called ‘A Cook and a Book’ that features cooks and authors trying recipes from new cookbook releases. 

Druckman described the new column in a recent tweet as “sorta like a cookbook review & sorta like a profile of a person of interest in his/her kitchen. sorta both those things but also not.”  In the first installment, esteemed chef and author Nancy Silverton tries a couple of dishes from Nigella Lawson’s new book At My Table. 

Even though she’s written nine cookbooks, Silverton admits that she is terrible at following other people’s recipes. She is dubious about some of Lawson’s suggestions, including heating Greek yogurt and straining some of the excess egg white before poaching an egg. Nevertheless, she gamely follows the instructions and in the end is pleasantly surprised by one of the techniques.