Cookbooks

1. Rationale behind what we're seeing?
My subconscious has been itching for an excuse to talk about the cookbooks in our house, and Anthony at Spiceblog knew just what to say to bring that out. Only the leftmost third of the shelf is mine. Sadly, I culled the weak from the herd during our last move and am now regretting it. Cookbooks are like friends. I don't always keep in touch as well as I should, but I never forget them either.

To know to whom the rest belong would require a sordid trip through the history of this house and its past and present occupants. "The Idiots Guide to Cooking Chicken" isn't being claimed by anyone and should probably be burned.

2. Most recommended?
Right now? With Sam Choy: Cooking from the Heart, because it's the one that best tells me what to do with the funky local ingredients I find in Chinatown. It also lacks even the slightest whiff of pretension. Sam Choy da kine.

3. Cookbook that made you what you were?
Although I don't crack it open as often as I used to, I can point to one cookbook on that shelf and identify it as the pivotal point that turned me from consumer to cook. Age fifteen and armed with the stereotyped appetite of a teenage boy, I scavanged our kitchen for an after school snack and came up with a bag of green apples. Armed with my mom's Good Housekeeping Illustrated Cookbook and a healthy dash beginner's luck, I made an apple pie that has become legendary in my family. Mom wasn't irked at the tremendous path of destruction I left behind in the kitchen, but that my crust turned out better than hers.

4. Porniest cookbook?
Same as a lot of people: The French Laundry Cookbook. Different from a lot of people: I've actually made recipes from the cookbook. Different from everyone else on the entire planet: the book liner is scrawled in fat permanent marker from our visit there, "Alan and Junko, It's all about finesse. Thomas Keller." The beautiful imagery in this volume and the care with which the techniques are described... breathtaking.

5. Sophie's Choice cookbook?
Faced with the option to save only one, I think I'd pick How To Cook Everything. It says it right in the title, "Everything." That should cover most bases.

6. If you were a cookbook, which cookbook would you be?
This one has me stumped. The problem with cookbooks is that they are commited to the printed page and then bound for all eternity, or the next edition. Recipes are jumping off places, and I rarely make the same thing twice. If I've gotta be a cookbook, then I'm the filing box under the bed where I organize recipe clippings and notes. It's sorted, but loose. Things can come and go.

7. If your cookbook were extremely valuable, so valuable you might hide it with other valuables, where would that place be?
The French Laundry Cookbook is hidden in a closet, far from the grubby fingers of a two year old. So far, the dust jacket has dodged several near misses and remains like new. Other valuable cookbooks are tucked in my nightstand where I can read them cover-to-cover. Currently in the nightstand (as I lean over to check) are Tradewinds & Coconuts, The Food of Paradise: Exploring Hawaii's Culinary Heritage and I-know-it-isn't-a-cookbook-but MFK Fisher's An Alphabet for Gourmets.