Teeny-weeny tiny print!

March 26, 2013 by
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As I might have mentioned a while back, I'm in the middle of developing this cookbook-rating app, which means that I've been going through the backlist and re-examining cookbooks from about the last 12 years (as well as some up-to-the-minute ones). One of the many criteria I tabulate is the size of the print, because although - as we all… read more

“Table” vs. “Kitchen”

March 18, 2013 by
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A funny thing is going on at Marketing Department, c/o Cookbook Publisher, Industry St., Anytown USA.  I was just perusing the titles of cookbooks published in the last 30 days, and it seemed to me (I stress the unscientific nature of this impression) that practically half the titles contained either the word "kitchen" or the word "table".  Here are a few… read more

Database cookbooks

March 12, 2013 by
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Correction: Since this post was published, ATK has contacted me to clarify that some cookbooks (like Slow Cooker Revolution) consist of brand-new content, and others (like Cooking for Two) use database recipes as only a starting point.  So the answer is perhaps not as simple as I thought!  My point, however, stands: a database remains a critical element in a publishing… read more

Buying a cookbook, asking the right questions…

March 5, 2013 by
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So this weekend, I was making a quick visit to Manhattan with my son, and we needed a place to rest our sidewalk-weary feet.  We ended up taking refuge in the Union Sq. Barnes & Noble, as I have done so many times before.  As Noah rode the escalators of the 4-story building, I wondered what the cookbooks section would… read more

Winging it

February 25, 2013 by
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I was leafing through the new Nigella Lawson book the other day, when I came across this recipe:  Prosciutto-wrapped grissini.  Grissini, as you probably know, are breadsticks. The recipe listed two ingredients - I will leave you to guess which.   The directions were one (1) sentence long. It was a long sentence, because it instructed you not only to… read more

Street food vs. home cooking

February 18, 2013 by
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If you've picked up an ethnic cookbook lately, chances are you've seen one of two phrases either in the title, subtitle,or "teaser copy":  home cooking or street food.  As in Hugo Ortega's Street Food of Mexico or Every Grain of Rice: Simple Chinese Home Cooking.   What exactly does a publisher mean to convey by using one of those two phrases,… read more

More than just the recipes.

February 12, 2013 by
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I'm just back from the Cookbook Conference in New York, where EYB's Jane Kelly and I sat on panels and hobnobbed with cookbook authors, publishers, marketers, and others involved in food.  It was a good time, and a chance to meet with many people we work with but don't often get to see, working from our New England fastnesses. On… read more

The cookbook index in the age of EYB

February 5, 2013 by
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I don't know about you, but Eat Your Books has radically changed my relationship with the cookbook index. You remember the old days.  Say you needed a recipe for quail.  You'd go to your bookshelf and try to guess which books were most likely to have quail - books that might be fancy enough, or odd enough, or retro enough,… read more

When bad reviews happen to good people

February 4, 2013 by
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I've been reviewing cookbooks for some 12 years now.  Every once in a while, I write a critical review.  It doesn't happen terribly often - maybe 2 or 3 times a year, a small fraction of the total.   There's a reason bad reviews are infrequent: if a book looks really unpromising, my editor and I generally just don't consider… read more

Magic number

January 28, 2013 by
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Nigellissima arrived last week. My first thought was:  What am I going to do with another Nigella cookbook?  And my second thought was:  Forget that!  what am I going to do with another Italian cookbook? If your library is anything like mine, Italian is one of the most grievously swollen categories on the shelf.  I thought I'd been very strict about… read more

Getting away and eating away

January 22, 2013 by
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Those of us tapping away in icebound offices are dreaming of the spring getaway...and for many of us, that means a mainland vacation.  For me, as no doubt for many others, that means thinking hard about what we're going to eat - what regional specialties we can try, what local eateries we can dig up, maybe what local ingredients we can… read more

Top-selling cookbooks this week…guess what category?

January 15, 2013 by
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Every once in a great while, I enjoy putting down my silicone spatula, closing whatever brand-new, promising cookbook I'm reviewing this week, and having a look to see what everyone else is cooking from.   It's especially fun doing it at this time of year.  Because although the excesses of holiday eating seem awful to contemplate in retrospect, one can't stop… read more

Literary cookbooks for kids

January 8, 2013 by
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The other day, I had a rare spare moment in the afternoon, after practicing piano with my 6-year-old.  She'd been especially coöperative, and I didn't have to start dinner yet.  So I cast my eyes about for a book and my eyes fell on Fairy Tale Feasts. We'd received the book years ago, before she was born and when my… read more

Resolution time again

January 2, 2013 by
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Today, with a lot of groaning and creaking, I got back on the treadmill for the first time since Christmas.  It had been a rough stretch - first the slow cooker broke,, then the mixer bowl, then the sewing machine, and then some well-intentioned kitchen renovation work led to 3 days of lead decontamination.  Better stay off the treadmill! I… read more

10 Books for Giving

December 20, 2012 by
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What makes a cookbook good for giving? Well, it's a little different from what makes a cookbook good in the kitchen.  First of all, looks are more important. It has to have great design, and feel like a quality production - something worth the shiny paper it's wrapped in (that usually, though not always, means hardback).  It has to be good to… read more

Making it and giving it.

December 18, 2012 by
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Like everybody else, I've had a hard time moving on since Friday.  It's the least cheery Christmas I can remember - yet there are still trees to trim, Santas to impersonate, huge meals to prepare. Meanwhile, the searching-for-gifts time is almost over, about to give way to the giving-of-gifts.  "Some of us" (meaning me) have trouble facing the crush of… read more

Culling time

December 11, 2012 by
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I hate to say it, and I hate even more to do it, but it's time to weed out the library again.  I do it twice a year or so, and last time I failed so spectacularly that after the weeding was "done," I still couldn't even get the new batch of books onto shelves. I've tried (apparently with limited… read more

The holiday baking dilemma

December 4, 2012 by
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Ah, for the love of baking...There are those of us who love to cook, and those of us who love to bake, and those of us who like to do both, right?  I'm one of the latter. Even though bakers and cooks are supposed to have opposing personalities (to wit, meticulous and measurey vs. improvisational and spontaneous), I think many… read more

Eating with your eyes: books for the coffee table

November 27, 2012 by
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On NPR yesterday evening, a reporter was speaking with an independent bookstore owner.  What was selling?  "Cookbooks," the owner replied.  Coffee table cookbooks, the kind that never see the inside of a kitchen or the dirty underside of a spatula. Back in the 1980's, my dad and a couple of friends started a publishing company, Stewart Tabori & Chang, and produced… read more

The one thing I can’t abide in a cookbook

November 24, 2012 by
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Poivrade artichokes.  Veal kidneys.  Gilt-head bream.  Mastic crystals. These are a few of the ingredients I've seen as I page my way through hundreds of cookbooks on my long, slow path to holiday roundup.  And, though I try to be level-headed when judging cookbooks, each of these made me see red.  What is it about unannotated obscure ingredients that's so… read more

What’s up with the sausages?

November 19, 2012 by
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When the whole preserving-canning thing took hold in the cookbook world a few years ago, it seemed to me that it owed its resurgence to an essentially vegetarian source culture - you know, homesteaders and beekeepers and organic CSA share-holders. So it didn't surprise me when a whole flock of books came out on raising chickens and fresh eggs came… read more

The rise of the blog book

November 13, 2012 by
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At first, it was only Julie Powell, blogging her way to stardom as she chronicled her mastery of Julia Child's magnum opus.  David Lebovitz and Pam Anderson were out there too.   The books food bloggers used to write pretty much looked like regular cookbooks. In a few cases, the books featured little more than a bunch of recipes downloaded… read more

The year of the South

November 5, 2012 by
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With Nov. 6th one day away, our family has entered the final stages of electoral obsession.  Everyone in the family except the 6-year-old has their own electoral map, prompting dinner trash-talk like "Do you really think North Carolina's in play?" and "I can't believe you gave him Florida!"  There is ongoing contention as to whether the Eastern Seaboard or the Midwest is… read more

Cooking at home – storm edition

October 30, 2012 by
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Here in western Mass., we escaped pretty much scot-free - a power flicker or two, and then it was over.  The kids went to school this morning.  Last year, after the Halloween snowstorm, it was a totally different story.  The power was out for 3 long days (and much more, elsewhere); the roads were impassable.  The kids were sent out… read more

How geeky is your kitchen?

October 22, 2012 by
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Food science seems to have turned a corner for those of us who cook at home.  Of course, practical advice has been around as long as there have been cooks - have all your ingredients at room temperature before baking! searing seals in the juices! (WRONG.)  But the Internet has accelerated the spread of cooking do's, don'ts, and "try this"es.… read more
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