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There are literally hundreds of cookbooks in our
house. The bookshelves in the pantry are packed so tightly that it’d
be impossible to squeeze in an extra sheet of paper, so we’ve ended
up jamming some of them horizontally wherever there’s space on the
top of the rows. There’s another row lined up in an antique hutch in
the kitchen. The biggest concentration resides upstairs on shelves in one
of our kids’ old rooms that we’ve converted into an office-cum-library. There are even a
couple of shelves of cookbooks in our master bathroom. There are how-to
cookbooks, ethnic cookbooks, single-topic cookbooks, encyclopedic
cookbooks, old cookbooks, new cookbooks, and what a chef friend calls
“food porn” — cookbooks with beautiful photographs of
beautiful food and recipes so complex that most of them would be difficult
if not impossible for home cooks to duplicate. It’d be impossible for me to pick a favorite.
There are so many I regularly turn to that are accurate, reliable,
interesting, and delicious. (Oddly enough, sometimes cookbooks authored by
chefs are the least reliable: Professional cooking in a restaurant is far
different than cooking at home, and some chefs just don’t seem to be
able to translate what they do in their restaurants into accurate recipes
for home cooks.) When it comes to gift-giving, however, there are two I
find myself buying over and over. One has been around for a while, the
other for a decade.
The original Betty
Crocker’s Picture Cook Book (General
Mills) has been around for a very long while — since 1950, in fact. It was my
mother’s main cookbook when I was growing up. Though it was no longer
in print when I married, my mother was able to find a like-new copy at a
garage sale for me. Years later, it was falling apart: Pages had come
loose, and the battered covers were almost completely gone. General Mills
had periodically revised the book, but newer versions didn’t measure
up to the original. I’d just begun looking in used bookstores for a
copy when the company began publishing a facsimile of the original.
Betty Crocker’s Picture Cook Book is a fount of information, especially for beginning
cooks. I’ve given it to my kids as they’ve set up housekeeping
and to their friends as a wedding or shower present. Its ’50s retro
look is fun. Certainly some of the recipes and information are outdated,
but it’s incomparable for showing the beginning cook “how
to,” especially because so many people today have had little or no
experience with cooking beyond nuking food in a microwave. Illustrations
and photographs demonstrate everything from measuring flour, sugar, and
other ingredients to identifying utensils and different sorts of pots and
pans. There are instructions on how to follow a recipe and definitions of
measurements and pantry staples. I turn to it when I need to remember how
to substitute cocoa and butter for unsweetened chocolate and for recipes
such as snickerdoodles and the cornbread below. The Dean & DeLuca
Cookbook, by David Rosengarten with Joel Dean
and Giorgio DeLuca (Random House, 1996), is the cookbook I give to anyone
ready to expand his or her culinary horizons. I’m on my second copy
of this one, too. Dean & DeLuca opened a specialty food shop in New
York in 1977, introducing such foodstuffs as balsamic vinegar and sun-dried
tomatoes to the United States. If those gorgeously photographed cookbooks
are food porn, the Dean & DeLuca store is the culinary equivalent of a
triple-X-rated adult-novelty shop. Whereas the Betty Crocker cookbook is classic
Americana, this 500-plus page tome features ethnic dishes from around the
world, as well as regional American specialties, and explores ingredients
that have come to the forefront in recent years. There’s a section on
grains, including couscous, polenta, and quinoa; another on beans and
legumes; and guides to Asian and tropical vegetables. The meat and fish
sections explore different kinds, cuts, and methods of preparation. The Dean & Deluca Cookbook doesn’t attempt to be a comprehensive cookbook in the sense that such
volumes as Joy of Cooking do (there’s nothing about sweets, for example), but
it’s become absolutely indispensable to me. So if you’re thinking of giving — or
getting — a cookbook this holiday season, check these two out.
Send questions and comments to Julianne Glatz at
realcuisine@insightbb.com.
CORNBREAD
1/4 cup melted bacon fat (preferred) or unsalted
butter, plus additional for greasing the pan. 1 1/2 cup buttermilk One large egg 1/2 teaspoon baking soda 1/2 cup unbleached all-purpose flour 1 1/2 stone-ground cornmeal, preferably yellow 1 tablespoon sugar 1 tablespoon baking powder, preferably without
aluminum salts, such as Rumford 1 1/2 teaspoon salt
Have all ingredients at room temperature. Preheat
oven to 450 degrees. Heat a 10-inch iron skillet, corn-stick mold, or
9-inch-square pan, in the oven, with enough bacon fat or butter to coat.
Whisk the bacon fat, buttermilk, and egg until combined. In a separate bowl, mix the dry ingredients, making
sure there are no lumps. Make a well in the center and quickly stir in the
liquid mixture until the ingredients are just combined. Remove the skillet from the oven and brush the sides
with some of the bacon fat or oil. Quickly add the batter, smooth to evenly
distribute, and return to the oven. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes or until a
knife inserted into the middle comes out clean. Serve immediately.
This article appears in Nov 16-22, 2006.
