Back in the Saddle

Many apologies for not being more vigilant in my postings. The new goal is to try to post shorter bits with more frequency with a weekly in-depth posting. Today's a shorty. Several years ago, I joined a cookbook club to expand my culinary knowledge and to help fill an appallingly empty bookshelf. This club has a great selection of famous cookbooks and so I stocked up and now I have a fair-sized library covering the essentials and a bunch of regional cookbooks and some celebrity chef tomes with pretty pictures. Problem is, I don't really read any of them. It could be because I'm not a big reader (ergo empty bookshelf) or it could be that I didn't pick the right books. I actually like his show, despite his sometimes cloying enthusiasm. Gastronerd, Alton Brown today listed his top five cookbooks. I thought I'd weigh in on them briefly to see if I could gain any insight on my own cookbook illiteracy.

1) Joy of Cooking - I remember my thumbing through my mother's tattered edition as a child. I used it a few times and it gave me the impression that all cookbook recipes involved condensed cream of mushroom soup and/or mayonnaise and could be made in either a casserole dish or a bundt cake pan. I might get it today but only for kitsch value. Does that make me sound like a snob? Yeah, well...

2) The Frugal Gourmet - I watched his cooking show once and it was about truffles. He boiled a batch of spaghetti and drizzled a bit of truffle oil and said, "That's all you need to do." I watched half an hour of PBS for that? He did not earn much kitchen cred for that. On the other hand, he did dedicate one of his cookbooks to my grandmother so I have to give him some props.

3) Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking - This was one of the books I bought from the cookbook club but when I tried making Marcella Hazan's bread, I ended up baking flour bricks. She listed some weird technique of slamming the dough on the table which seemed scientifically dubious. I think the bigger problem was that there was a paucity of pictures. For me, cooking technique is better learned visually. But aside from technique, the recipes look tasty enough. I should try one someday.

4) Outlaw Cook - I'd never heard of this book, but it seems more my style. Its goal seems to be to stimulate curiosity in the home chef as opposed to guiding them with a series of instructions. It looks to be as much a book of essays as a book of recipes so because I'm a pedantic twat, I don't think this qualifies as a cookbook.

5) Ratio - This book looks right up my alley. Geeky and technical, where you learn the basic skills of cooking so that you can move beyond recipes. I should check it out. That said, in my previous experience with Michael Ruhlman, his recipe said that 8 grams of coriander was the equivalent to a tablespoon. He was off by a factor of over 2.5 so I can't help but scoff at the book's title.

Here's what I think: Alton Brown listed the five books that were seminal in his personal development as a food lover but not his technical development as a food professional. I don't think any of these are necessarily essential for one's library. With the exception of the Hazan and Ruhlman books, I'll bet he hasn't cracked any of them open in the past decade. In my library, I consistenly refer back to two books: McGee, which I've written about earlier, and the CIA's The Professional Chef . Yes, I know On Food and Cooking is not a cookbook, but it's an essential guide to understanding the cooking process. The CIA cookbook, however, contains great recipes that thousands of CIA grads use on a daily basis. I've used it to make mother sauces, identify cuts of meat, make croissants, desserts, stocks, etc. The no-nonsense photos make understanding technique straightfoward and it's organized very intelligently.

The recipes are sized for restaurant service so you have to scale them down but that's easy to do with a spreadsheet, if not in your head. Also, they eschew volumes (i.e., teaspoons and cups) in favor of masses (grams and kilos), which results in greater accuracy ([shaking fist] Ruhlman!) so I'd suggest investing $20 in a kitchen scale, too. It's a chunk of money to invest along with the book, but it's a helluva lot cheaper than enrolling in the CIA.

I'd be interested in hearing about other people's thoughts on essential cookbooks, which is my subtle way of saying, "Please leave a comment."