“How” books

May 9, 2011 by
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In today's mailbox were two bits of nonfiction from the shadowy waysides of the cookbook industry: food memoir and food exposé.  I call them "how" books, as opposed to "how-to" books.  That's because of their subtitles, which tell you so much about the content that they almost save you the trouble of reading it. Exhibit A is Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial… read more

Looking out for number one

May 3, 2011 by
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It was just a little over a year ago, I think, that Judith Jones' little book came out--The Pleasures of Cooking For One seemed charming, quirky, contrarian in an age of conspicuous entertainment.  But like any successful species, the "Serves 1" book has survived to produce offspring, and this year brings at least two more. Joe Yonan's Serve Yourself makes liberal use of… read more

London eating

April 29, 2011 by
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Although I now live on the opposite side of the world to my home city of London, I'm fortunate to get back often enough to still feel in touch.   I don't tend to keep up to date while I'm away, so sometimes I find a new trend has gripped the country since my previous visit, though I'm still hoping for… read more

The Southern books are here

April 26, 2011 by
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Like grill books, Mexican cooking books, and beach entertaining books, Southern cookbooks are usually published in late spring.  There's a good reason--because that's when the rest of the country starts warming up enough to feel at least a little bit, once in a while, like the South. I've always found that to be a wry bit of timing, because if… read more

400,000th recipe indexed

April 24, 2011 by
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We reached another milestone this week when we indexed our 400,000th recipe on EYB.  I remember when we started EYB that the 100,000th recipes seemed a phenomenal amount.  But then we had just 15,000 cookbooks in the Library and now we have launched EYB in the UK, we should reach 100,000 in the next few months.  We now have (I… read more

Camp cooking

April 19, 2011 by
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This week brought a brace of camping cookbooks, which I regarded with curiosity.  Though our family lives on 20 rustic acres, all my outdoor cooking--whether on propane burner or kettle grill--takes place no more than the requisite 10 feet away from the house.  Every dash back inside for a forgotten tool or ingredient counts as a hassle.  So how indeed,… read more

And yet another Joy of Cooking gets indexed

March 31, 2011 by
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We've just indexed the 1997 Revised Edition of Joy of Cooking, which contains 2,547 recipes (thanks to our indexer Tracey who labored on this one for weeks).  Since this is the third edition of the book we've indexed, the number of JofC recipes on EYB is 8,614 (2% of our total).  The book (in 31 different editions) is on 1,635 Bookshelves. … read more

Subliminal marketing and the “Every Day”

March 28, 2011 by
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I've just been noticing that suddenly the words "Every Day" are appearing in the new cookbooks I see, well, every day.  This week it was Heidi Swanson's Super Natural Every Day and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's  River Cottage Every Day.  That's "Every Day" the adverbial phrase, not "everyday" the adjective.  "Everyday" the adjective has overtones of the humdrum, I suppose, even though you do see… read more

A very special dinner

March 27, 2011 by
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Every so often we get to do something that is so special we can't believe it's really happening.  I had that feeling this weekend when I had the privilege of attending a dinner cooked by two of the world's greatest chefs - Heston Blumenthal and Thomas Keller.  They had got together at a beautiful spot on the east coast of New Zealand at… read more

Joan Nathan

March 17, 2011 by
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Joan Nathan talks about how she unearths the stories she includes her books. The question I am most frequently asked is, "how do you find all the people with their stories for your books?"  And secondly, "how do you get the recipes?"  I answer that writing a cookbook is like going fishing.  Sometimes you find nothing.  Sometimes you reel in a… read more

Memoirs from chefs, recipes from home cooks.

March 16, 2011 by
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I guess there's no two ways around it: chefs live more interesting lives than the rest of us.  On the whole, that's because their lives are also harder: late hours, low pay, high stress, a demanding public.  With success comes the expectation of simultaneously expanding, and reinventing yourself.  Not surprisingly, those chefs who survive have enormous character, and those who… read more

The death of the cupcake

March 4, 2011 by
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Every once in a while I open a cookbook envelope and find something so, so, so strange I just have to drop everything and tell you about it.  That happened this week, when out popped: Zombie Cupcakes! Unless you've been hiding in a cave for the last 5 years, you know that cupcakes--specifically, cupcakes that look like something other than cupcakes--are all the… read more

Spring and Summer 2011 Cookbooks: Special Preview

February 9, 2011 by
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One of the peculiarities of being a cookbook reviewer is that you're forever looking into the near future of food as the new press releases roll in.  Invariably, they offer tantalizing glimpses of seasonal foods that are several weeks or even months ahead of your garden, your kitchen, and the produce aisle of the grocery store. As with any fortune-telling… read more

Rolls redux

February 8, 2011 by
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A few weeks ago, you might recall, I was struggling with the Kaiser Roll Quandary--and, thanks to EYB, had found and got ready to test some hamburger buns from The Commonsense Kitchen. Well, what with one thing and another--and about 24 inches of snow--it took me till yesterday night to get round to trying it.  I had a meeting to go to after dinner,… read more

Our biggest cookbook so far

February 7, 2011 by
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It may not be the heaviest or even the largest cookbook we have indexed but Larousse Gastronomique is certainly the winner in terms of number of recipes.  We have just added the index and there are 3,880 recipes.  We had to add quite a few new ingredients for this book, notably a few songbirds such as lark, thrush and warbler (the French do… read more

Primal meat

January 31, 2011 by
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It takes a certain amount of guts, if you'll excuse me, to publish a book about meat in January, when the typical cookbook features words like "lean," "slim," and "salad". But on the other hand, it *is* the dead of winter.  The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak, and it wants meat, preferably on the bone with some… read more

In praise of red fermented bean curd

January 24, 2011 by
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Did you know, EYB friends, that EYB is good not only for cataloging your gazillion recipes, but also for helping you create entirely new ones?  That's what happened to me today. I was trying to come up with a Chinese spare rib recipe--something with a roast pork bun flavor, on a spare rib, but not deep-fried the way they would… read more

The Kaiser roll quandary

January 17, 2011 by
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I love baking in midwinter, don't you?  The heat of the oven, the smell of yeast, the golden brown perfection of baked goods...did I mention the heat of the oven? I got a kaiser roll stamp for Christmas, and I'm trying to find a good kaiser roll recipe.  Not a big, shiny, bulky one that you might want to heap… read more

The first cookbooks of the year

January 10, 2011 by
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Well, the holiday rush of cookbooks is past and the publishers are looking ahead to spring.  This week the mail held the galleys of spring--April cookbooks in their raw, pre-edited state.  I don't test recipes from galleys or advance proofs--if there's mistakes, they might be corrected in the final copy, and I don't want to base my judgment on an… read more

The January 2nd diet

January 3, 2011 by
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Happy New Year, everybody! Mine started inauspiciously.  5 minutes to midnight found me with a throbbing Class A headache, passing up a hoarded bottle of Veuve Cliquot for some sparkling non-alcoholic cider.  It's not that I'd overdone it so much on New Year's Eve.  I think it was the preceding week of cookies and chocolate and fried foods and odd… read more
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