Cookbook sales continue to climb

November 28, 2018 by
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Good news for cookbook lovers - despite concerns that we might have achieved 'peak cookbook', sales of cookbooks are still going strong. Sales are up 25% over last year, with offerings from big names like Ina Garten and Yotam Ottolenghi boosting sales. As popular as those authors are, they are not solely responsible for the uptick in sales. According to Allison… read more

Cookbook author Patricia Quintana has died

November 27, 2018 by
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We learned today of the passing of cookbook author and Mexican "culinary royalty" Patricia Quintana. She was a renowned international chef and an expert in Mexican gastronomy who studied cooking all around the world. For more than twenty years she was dedicated to rescuing the culinary heritage of the country and her research enabled her to travel throughout the different regions of… read more

Nora Ephron’s cookbook crushes

November 26, 2018 by
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When you make a recipe from a cookbook, do you imagine the book's author speaking to you through the instructions? If so, do you ever ask the author questions in your head? If you've ever had imaginary discussions with an author while cooking, you should definitely read the late Nora Ephron's 2006 article in The New Yorker describing her cookbook… read more

Running into a recipe paywall

November 26, 2018 by
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The EYB Library is a wonderful search tool to find a recipe that meets all of your requirements, whether they are for particular ingredients, meeting a dietary restriction, or excluding a certain type of dish. It can be exciting to discover a recipe that is exactly what you are looking for, and you squeal with delight (or is that just… read more

Dominique Ansel is offering his first MasterClass

November 24, 2018 by
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Cookbooks are an excellent medium for transferring knowledge and skills about cooking and baking. From their pages, I've learned how to make a myriad of meats, side dishes, and desserts. Some techniques, however, lend themselves to live demonstration. I was never able to master deboning a chicken until I watched Jacques Pépin  do it on his PBS show (you can… read more

Meet the illustrator for GBBO

November 23, 2018 by
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When The Great British Bake Off made its move from BBC to Channel 4, fans lamented that only one of the show's personalities, Paul Hollywood, was going to remain with the program. Truth is, there was another original cast member that made the switch, although no one ever saw his face. Tom Hovey, the artist who produces all of those… read more

What to do with those Thanksgiving leftovers

November 22, 2018 by
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The feast is over and our bellies are full, and perhaps we ate a little too much but oh it was so tasty. However, in a couple of days we'll be as weary of Thanksgiving food as our non-US members are of hearing about our feast day. Very soon we'll be standing and staring into the refrigerator wondering what to… read more

Chefs say skip the appetizer this Thanksgiving

November 21, 2018 by
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Many of us in the US are prepping well into the evening for the big food holiday - the second biggest in this country, second only to Christmas - and we have tons of last-minute details that will keep us busy right up to meal time. Likely one of those details is putting together the appetizers served up before everyone… read more

Cookbooks inspired by literature

November 20, 2018 by
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Most cookbook lovers are also literature lovers, so it's no surprise that there are crossovers between the two genres. As Emily Temple of Lithub explains, some of these cookbooks are based on author's lives, on fictional stories, or on characters from some of the world's most beloved books and authors. A few books are based on the diets of authors… read more

This cookbook sets the mood with color

November 19, 2018 by
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Gorgeous, color-saturated photographs of food are a given on Instagram and in most modern cookbooks. One of 2018's new cookbooks takes this concept to the extreme: Pantone Foodmood. Yes, you read that correctly, this is from the color company Pantone, which produces exacting color specifications for corporations, graphic designers, and everyone interested in the world of color. It's often said… read more

Holiday gifts from your favorite authors

November 18, 2018 by
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Jenny has already provided her comprehensive lists of holiday gifts for cooks and cookbook lovers. In addition, we have compiled a list featuring holiday hampers and more from popular chefs and cookbook authors around the world. Many of these sites offer special discounts for first-time buyers or have sales going on now just in time for the holidays.  These gifts… read more

Spice support: rosemary

November 17, 2018 by
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"There's rosemary, that's for remembrance," says the tortured Ophelia in Act 4, Scene 5 of Shakepeare's Hamlet. Greek scholars reportedly wore a garland of the herb on their heads to aid their memory during exams, and recent studies have shown that rosemary can indeed boost memory performance. But even if rosemary doesn't actually help you remember anything, its heady fragrance is… read more

Are you brave enough to attempt the turducken of pies?

November 16, 2018 by
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Some culinary creations are a stroke of genius - take the Cronut, for instance. Others, well, leave you scratching your head wondering why. A layered combination of pie and cake baked together in a lumbering tower is a concoction that belongs in the latter category, yet it has developed a cult following.  Meet the turducken of desserts: the pumpecapple piecake (pictured… read more

Celebrate National Bundt Day

November 15, 2018 by
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Today is National Bundt Day (an offically-named celebration day here in Minnesota, birthplace of the Bundt). The iconic pan was invented in the late 1950s by Nordic Ware founder H. David (Dave) Dahlquist. According to the Nordic Ware website, Dave and his wife Dorothy (Dotty), created the Nordic Ware company in 1948. You can read more about the birth of… read more

Indexing a masterpiece – The Escoffier Cookbook

November 14, 2018 by
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The average cookbook contains about 175 recipes. Indexing a book with that many recipes takes some time, as Members who have volunteered to index a book well know. Some books fall well below this average and a few books exceed it by a significant number of recipes. Even the most prolific cookbook authors, however, generally do not exceed a few… read more

Getting to the bottom of pie

November 13, 2018 by
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Between a coworker picking my brain for Thanksgiving pie ideas and Jenny's wonderful post about the Sister Pie promotion, today left me with pie on my mind. Of all the components of a holiday meal, pie may be the one that strikes the most fear in the hearts of home cooks. People who will tackle a complicated, multi-component entree or… read more

Turkey brining has lost its luster

November 12, 2018 by
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Like many home cooks, for years I performed a Thanksgiving ritual every November. I would scrub out an oversized bucket, (often a pickle bucket that I pleaded for at a fast food restaurant), fill it with a brine that always took longer to make than I remembered, and plunge an ungainly turkey into it, trying not to slosh salt water… read more

Chefs share which underused ingredients you should try at home

November 11, 2018 by
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If you're like me, you have a pantry brimming with boxes and bags of unusual ingredients that you picked up on a whim at a farmers' market or specialty shop. Despite having so many unique items to use, I frequently wind up skipping over those because I am not familiar with how to use them. It would be nice to… read more

Pink gin is in – but is it any good?

November 9, 2018 by
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It's well known that millenials like all things pink: pink clothing, pink wine (rosé is all the current darling in that demographic), and all kinds of pink foods. Now another item is joining the fray in taking on a blushing hue to appeal to millenials - pink gin.  Unlike the neon vodkas and liqueurs that dominated in the early 2000s, pink… read more

Are we really cooking everything wrong?

November 8, 2018 by
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No doubt you have seen this phrase, or a variation of it, in your social media news feed: "You've been cooking [insert food name] wrong the whole time!" When I type"you've been cooking" into the Google search bar, the first five items that pop up are all about being wrong - apparently you've been cooking pasta wrong, along with potatoes,… read more

North Carolina chefs contribute to flood relief efforts

November 7, 2018 by
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When Hurricane Florence battered the Carolinas in the southeastern US, videos and news reports depicted the devastation that the storm wrought on the coastal communities directly in the path of the hurricane. Inland areas were also affected by the flooding that resulted from the record amounts of rain that poured down nonstop for days following the storm, but they did not… read more

The case for not lining your sheet pan

November 6, 2018 by
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When you pull out a sheet pan to make cookies, you probably line it with parchment or foil to keep the delicate items from sticking. So it makes sense to do the same when you are roasting meat or vegetables too, right? Perhaps not, says Anna Stockwell at Epicurious. She makes the case for not lining your sheet pan.  As… read more

M.F.K. Fisher’s ‘Consider the Oyster’ to be republished

November 5, 2018 by
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It's been 77 years since M.F.K. Fisher's second book, a collection of essays titled Consider the Oyster, was published. Now the work is getting a second life, with a second publication that features a foreword by food writer Felicity Cloake. It's an understatement to say that a lot has happened in the food world since the publication of this book. Is… read more

Celebrating a classic baking book

November 4, 2018 by
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Some cookbooks become icons that are passed down from generation to generation. One such tome is the Australian Women's Weekly Children's Birthday Cake Book, first published in 1990 and reissued in 2011 as a collector's edition. The book has inspired countless people to attempt baking a birthday cake for their child, eventually passing the book down to their grown children who… read more

How to eliminate Thanksgiving menu planning frustrations

November 3, 2018 by
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I will be the first to admit that I am a terrible menu planner. Either I don't start the process early enough, or I amass too many possibilities and have difficulty narrowing down the list. I also forget to check whether the timing of the foods I have selected works - it's no good when you have to do last… read more
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