What’s the Number One thing you look for in a cookbook?

March 18, 2014 by
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Those of us who collect cookbooks are seekers.  We must be, because not one of us could argue that we need another cookbook -so we must be looking for something when we acquire another. When I think about the cookbooks I've been happiest to add to my collection, I see that they've appealed to me in many different ways.  Some, like Japanese… read more

New edition of a classic cookbook

March 11, 2014 by
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Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone first came out in 1998, quickly attaining canonical status among both the meat-free and the pro-vegetable.  10 years later, there was an anniversary edition, and now, only 6 years after that, there's a revised edition. The 10-year anniversary edition, to my mind, didn't have much to add to the original; I concluded it was… read more

“Recipes and Stories”

March 4, 2014 by
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In early 2011, I was scratching my head trying to think of an appropriate subtitle for my book, A Spoonful of Promises.  I know! I thought.  I'll use "Stories and Recipes"!  That sounds like something I'd want to read.  I thought about the way my stories reminded me of the short piano pieces I'd grown up learning, and in a moment… read more

E-cookbooks: Love ’em or hate ’em?

February 25, 2014 by
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I hear that every year, more e-cookbooks are published and sold.  Yet few people I know seem to use them (even though everyone seems to use online recipes at some point or another). It occurred to me that maybe I just hadn't put the question to people directly. So, EYB members, how about you? Do you use e-cookbooks? I'm thinking… read more

Postcards from the Cake Frontier

February 18, 2014 by
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As longtime readers of this blog know, I have a sort of fascination with the excesses of cake decorating (I'm not immune to decorating excesses myself, but my weakness lies on the cookie front).  Anyway, every once in a while I like to visit the far frontiers of cakery to see what the natives are doing.   This week's excursion was… read more

Valentine’s Day: In or Out?

February 11, 2014 by
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What's a food lover to do on Valentine's Day - especially when it falls on a Friday? On the one hand, you know it would be nice to go out to dinner, particularly if you're a couple and date night doesn't come around as frequently as you'd like.  On the other hand, as an informed eater, you know that Valentine's… read more

How long will it take?

February 7, 2014 by
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This post appeared at my blog this week.  I'm sure Eat Your Books members have a wealth of recipe-testing shortcuts and tools too - feel free to borrow my tips and share your own!  --Susie. Like anyone who regularly uses cookbooks,  I've often found a vast disconnect between how long I think a recipe will take and how long it… read more

Second chance cookbooks

February 4, 2014 by
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There are some cookbooks that become your favorites right away. They seem to spring into your hands shouting " Use me!", and within a couple of months they get so beat up it looks like they've been in the family for generations. But then there are the other cookbooks - the ones you put aside for no very good reason,… read more

Fantasy cookbooks

January 27, 2014 by
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As the polar vortex shuts everybody in with their seed catalogues and board games, I thought I'd play a little imaginary game of my own.  It's my job to test and rate already-published cookbooks.  What if I started on the other end and dreamed up cookbooks I'd like to see? - ones that I've not yet seen on the market… read more

Cooking clubs

January 21, 2014 by
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This year, my eternally-under-renovation kitchen has finally gotten to the point where I can comfortably have friends over for dinner.  I can usually squeeze them in between family obligations about once a month, and they are truly one of my great joys. Our family is lucky enough to have a number of close friends who are terrific cooks and adventurous… read more

Out-of-season cookbooks

January 14, 2014 by
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Today's post is brought to you by The Weather.  Here in New England, we're enduring a cold, heavy rain.  It's slowly eroding the mountains of gritty snow piled next to driveways and parking lots, but it's not quite warm enough to melt the underfoot ice that sends you sprawling after one ill-judged step.  It's slow cooker weather, cocoa weather, roast… read more

Summing it up

January 7, 2014 by
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2013 seems to have been an anthropological moment in American food: two ambitious tomes devoted to the subject came out, and each attempted to sum up a dauntingly diverse population of eaters in a slightly different way.   Colman Andrews takes a defiantly idiosyncratic path in  The Taste of America (Phaidon, $29.95), which features 250 US-produced goods ranging from the local… read more

2013-2014 slow cooker books

January 2, 2014 by
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I've written about slow cookers before here, but they are so popular and published in such volume that I think it might be worth doing an annual review of the genre each January. Personally, I love my slow cooker, especially at this time of year.  Although it sits unused for months on end, it comes out with the snow about… read more

Christmas! Christmas! Christmas!

December 24, 2013 by
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Of course, it's only Christmas for some of us. And it's not even the cooking-est holiday - that would be Thanksgiving.  Yet publishers barely lift a finger for Thanksgiving, and Hannukah and Kwanzaa and Ramadan hardly get a second glance.  Christmas, at least in the English-speaking world, gets a special place on the cookbook shelf.   Many cookbooks focus on… read more

2013 was the year for…

December 10, 2013 by
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It's cookbook roundup season, and over the next couple of weeks we'll see plenty of lists of the best cookbooks of 2013 (my own among them).  In some ways, it was such an odd year that I'm betting there won't be as much overlap as usual between the lists, never mind a white-hot winner like last year's Jerusalem.  Though I could… read more

Two great non-cookbooks of 2013

December 3, 2013 by
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For the last week, I have been consuming a steady diet of leftover turkey and 2013 cookbooks.  The turkey is great, and so are the books (you can see my top 10 picks on CookShelf, my cookbook-rating app). But for a change of pace, I wanted to showcase two really wonderful books published this year, neither of which has even… read more

What’s on your Thanksgiving menu?

November 26, 2013 by
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This Thanksgiving is a special one for our household - the first time we've ever really hosted (and by "hosted," I mean "invited people who don't usually see the house in its usual pigsty state").  We've got 3 serious cooks to prepare the meal for 13 or 14 guests - a good ratio - and the menu has gotten to… read more

The new simple.

November 13, 2013 by
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It's not like "simple" is new.  Cookbook authors have been touting the ease and speed of their authors presumably for as long as there have been cookbooks.  But these days, I get the sense that ease and speed are a means, more than an end. By that, I mean that "simple" has become an aesthetic. Maybe it all started with… read more

Make way for chocolate!

November 5, 2013 by
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It's been a while since we saw much in the way of serious chocolate books. For a while, the same chocolate book seemed to be published over and over: an introduction featuring the history of cacao's discovery and complicated processing and manufacturing, followed by well-photographed recipes of more-or-less average quality. But this year's books are, without question, distinct from both… read more

What’s a winter cookbook?

October 28, 2013 by
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The summer cookbook has always been a pretty identifiable creature: cocktails, grilling, entertaining, the odd picnic or camping book.  But although you could argue that people enjoy cooking more in cold weather, I've never been specifically sure what a winter cookbook should look like.  There are, of course, dozens of slow cooker cookbooks, but a lot of them seem -… read more

Jewish cookbooks on the rise

October 21, 2013 by
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The Jewish new year is well underway, and the calendar is heading into the frantic stretch before Thanksgiving and an early Hannukah.  And it happens that cookbooks paying tribute to one of this country's most beloved inherited cuisines are appearing in abundance this year.  I lay no personal claim to this legacy, despite having grown up with good access to… read more

Pastry! pastry! pastry!

October 15, 2013 by
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It started a couple of weeks ago, when the third book on French pastry in two weeks arrived in the mail.  What's up with that?  I wondered.  Was it a conspiracy?  Some kind of vast plot by the butter export lobby?  There was Pastry by legendary Richard Bertinet, and The Art of French Pastry by Jacquy Pfeiffer and baking veteran… read more

Don’t judge a book by its cover…except just for a second, right now.

October 7, 2013 by
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Lucky me - I just received a copy of The Photography of Modernist Cuisine - the art-book sibling of last year's Modernist Cuisine at Home and the previous year's Modernist Cuisine.  It's impressive in every way, especially its cover - 14" x 18" and featuring the top of a tomato, blown up to something like 50 times life-size.  It's a… read more

To the ovens! with, or without a mixer.

October 1, 2013 by
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The fall baking books are trickling in, and a curious phenomenon seems to be cropping up:  baking without a mixer.   Yvonne Ruperti's One Bowl Baking is an example.  Its promise of simplicity is somewhat disingenuous- one bowl, yes, but the equipment glossary (p. 14 - 17) calls out everything from pastry blender to a cake wheel.  Still, Ruperti pulls off an impressive… read more

You Complete Me

September 24, 2013 by
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Maybe because my life so often seems like a messy accumulation of loose ends, I'm a sucker for completion in cookbooks.  When a cookbook claims to be "complete," I sigh with satisfaction and think "Ahhh...I will never need another cookbook on this subject again."  Of course, that has not even once proven to be true.  For example, there was the… read more
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