Cookbooks Meme a la Spiceblog
Couple days ago, Anthony over at Spiceblog shot some of his cookbooks. Like all things on the web, this has kicked off a fun new meme, asking foodies on the web to post pictures of their cookbook collections and answer the below questions. For more info, check out Anthony’s original post here. I hope all of you out there will join in and post.
1. Rationale behind what we’re seeing?
My wife and I re-ordered all our cookbooks last year. They’re grouped by country as well as theme. The photo captures only 1/4-1/3 of the collection. The books line one whole wall in our living room
2. Most recommended?
My faves for cooking from are probably Real Food by Nigel Slater and Glorious French Food by James Peterson. There are just too many to recommend, but if pressed for 3 more, I’d also recommend Bouchon by Thomas Keller, Dishy by Kevin Gould (because it’s just plain fun), and Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything.
3. Cookbook that made you what you were?
Real Fast Food, also by Nigel Slater, and Molly Katzen’s Moosewood Cookbook got me cooking properly. I got the first in Shakespeare & Co in Paris, during the summer of 1994, when I was an intern there. The latter I picked up in 1995, after having used a flatmate’s copy for an entire year. These two books made me appreciate how easy it was to make delicious food.
4. Porniest cookbook?
Gastroporn? Has got to be French Laundry, which I pull off the shelves, look at over and over again, and almost never attempt to cook from (my wife, much braver than I, actually does though).
5. Sophie’s Choice cookbook?
Um… I’m not quite sure what this means.
6. If you were a cookbook, which cookbook would you be?
Country Egg, City Egg by Gayle Pirie and John Clark. It’s small, cute and full of wonderful things to start your morning.
7. If your cookbook we’re extrememly valuable, so valuable you might hide it with other valuables, where would that place be?
You think I’m silly enough to post that?
About Aun Koh
Aun has always loved food and travel, passions passed down to him from his parents. This foundation, plus a background in media, pushed him to start Chubby Hubby in 2005. He loves that this site allows him to write about the things he adores--food, style, travel, his wife and his three kids!
What a great collection. I think James Peterson's Essentials of Cooking is great so I'll have to look out for Food Glorious Food."5." Means "if you had to choose one to save". (obscurantism and poor taste are a weakness of mine)
only 1/4 of your entire collection? gah i am green with envy! i dont even have a single cookbook with me here 🙁
I too am extremely jealous. All of my cookbooks are packed away in boxes.. if I were to provide a picture of my cookbooks now, it would be a lonely little laptop.. and yours look so tidy too!
your’s & sl’s is definitely a cookbook collection to covet…
if the 17th floor was on fire, i would grab the bouchon/thomas keller (because i am a shameless groupie); french provincial cooking/elizabeth david (because it’s a tatty butter-smeared wine-stained paperback that’s been with me forever); family cooking/heston blumenthal (would kill to eat at the fat duck); cooking by hand/paul bertolli (what’s not to love?); and chocolate desserts/pierre herme dorie greenspan (my required bedtime reading…)
b.esq. would choose differently, of course…
Hi J,
I’d love to know what Brando would grab!
Moosewood was also a pivotal book for me. I rarely cook these days but still enjoy flipping through that one for old time’s sake.
The Alice B.Toklas Cookbook. Haute bourgeois heaven, appealingly post-post-feminist. Simple French Food, by Richard Olney, surely the original Francophile, no? Cote d’Or, by Clive Coates. Yummiest domains in Burgundy-now that’s bedtime reading. Bread Baker’s Apprentice, by Peter Reinhart. Helpful seeing as am perfecting my pain au levain.And I’ll concur on the Pierre Herme choice–I plan to publish my findings that so long as the chocolate in question is Valrhona Manjari, probability of toxic shock is significantly diminished.
I guess I should add the Sophie's Choice book. Not a cookbook exactly, but I'd save Burt Wold's The New Cook's Catalogue, the bible of kitchen tools.