Post Christmas, and I’m ill with the dreaded Norovirus. I’m not going anywhere; for something to do other than tidy my office I’m counting my cookbooks. Thanks to Neil Davey’s admirable cook book auction at the Clerkenwell Coach and Horses I’m down to 274 in my library and a small bookshelf of around 32 titles in my kitchen and I’m down to one Norwegian cookbook.
In front of me now on my kitchen table are half a dozen titles amongst them Marc Diacono’s A Taste of the Unexpected, and Niki Segnit’s Flavour Thesaurus.
A pile in the spare room that I grandly call my library is waiting to be filed. On top is my latest purchase. Something by a hot new food writer perhaps? Or a TV chefs newest blockbuster. Nope, neither. My new arrival is the Dick Emery cookbook.
For many people I’ve probably just made the cookbook admission akin to that embarrassing CD or outfit that hides in the dark recesses of the wardrobe. Something at the back of the bookshelf that should never sees the light of day. But I hold my head up and face the scorn; I love the social element that places food writing firmly in context and era. I warm to the social aspects, the anthropology of food. And if I’m honest, I wanted to see what Dick Emery’s alter egos would represent. Solid British fare with a European twist and a few surprises it seems. Pumpkin scones anyone?
It was great to give away some of the books I don’t ever use or refer to (adieu River Café cookbooks) and say hello to some of the tomes gathering dust. What does my library say about me? Whether my books represent faux pas of the highest standings or impressive credentials, I keep them because they’re part of my food experience.
My very first cookbook was a Christmas present. The Brownie Cook Book was devoured greedily but most of the recipes either didn’t really work or weren’t exactly exciting. Grilled chops? Teddy’s honey sandwiches? I could do better.
I cooked from my mother’s Family Circle magazine and we worked our way through The Carnation cook book.
A friend of my mothers emptying out her attic gave me the entire Fanny Cradock cookery course.
I loved her snobbery, the way that Fanny & Johnny over decorated their dishes, and insisted on calling pastry ‘paste’. But, her recipes worked and they taught me loads. Her frangipane was magnificent, her chocolate pancakes cutting edge, and one Christmas her iced Christmas pudding earned me praise from on high (my cordon bleu grandmother).
The book I coveted was my grandmother’s copy of Elizabeth David’s’ Italian Food. On the rare occasion I was left to my own devises at my grandparents’ house, I laboriously wrote down recipes. Her copy did eventually find its way to me, but I still have my handwritten recipe for apricot ice.
I went to college with Jocasta Inne’s The Paupers Cookbook, My flatmates and I didn’t think much of Jocasta’s recipes, but cooked our way through the copy of Delia Smith I was given for Christmas. Friends would come round on Sunday lunchtimes after their beans on toast and remark on our culinary expertise. From cheese soufflé pancakes to gigot of lamb, we did it all.
In 1984, The Observer series on British food introduced me to Jane Grigson and Jane very kindly led me to Claudia Roden, Alan Davidson, and into the world of Eliza Acton & Elizabeth Ayrton.
A la Carte was a magazine of the 1980’s and it shows. Despite the achingly dated design, and self conscious forays into the lives of the ‘A’ list (no change there then) it’s remarkable for the people who wrote for it from Frances Bissell, Marguerite Patten and Jane Grigson to a very young Nigel Slater.
The beautiful, inventive food photography was another first and opened the culinary door for the images we’re so used to seeing today. I devoured each edition in my cold Sunderland bedroom, not unaware of the extremes it represented; one mile down the road, miner’s strikes and poverty, whilst on the glossy pages of A la Carte, people living charmed lives, with fabulous houses and food. I cooked from it for my flatmates one December, making Christmas crackers out of filo, and a 12 course menu that took days to prepare.
Forays into vegetarianism led me to Martha Rose Shulman, the extraordinarily talented Colin Spencer. and Madhur Jaffrey.
Like most people I had the Cranks cook book, but I have never been able to get excited by nut loaf. No doubt there were and are people who think that marmite flavoured slops are a good thing but I wanted something different. Colin proved that vegetarian food could be a colour other than brown. Determined to make Martha’s enchiladas despite the lack of tortillas in Sunderland, I managed to track down masa harina by post and made my own. The less said about cling film in the frying pan, the better.
Few food columnists had the panache of the much missed Jeremy Round; The Independent Cook his first and only book is one I’ll never give away.
Books bought from 2nd hand shops for their design as much as contents included the David Gentleman illustrated Plats du Jour, by Patience Gray and Primrose Boyd, which eclipsed Elizabeth David when it was published in 1957.
I spent hours at Books for Cooks, staggering out under the weight of books including Patience Gray’s Honey from a Weed, Richard Olney’s Simple French Food, and The Carved Angel Cookbook. You must cook a lot, they told me.
Reading Richard Olney taught me how growing good food and cooking go hand in hand. One of his salad recipes uses rocket flowers. They were unknown and unavailable so I tracked down the seed and grew them.
The hunt for old imprints, especially Faber books continues. Home Baked; a little book of Bread Recipes by George & Cecilia Scurfield is one of my favourites. Publishers today sometimes scoff at books without photos. As much as I love food photography, there is something calming about books without image to show you what the perfect recipe should look like. There’s less likelihood of panic setting it. Or at least, that’s my theory.
Books from the 1950’s-1970’s fascinate me, as much for the lurid highly coloured illustrations as for the recipes.
I have a fair number of historical and novelty books; for reading, for reference and for fun. It’s badly written but the Elvis cookbook is fascinating. I’m not in a hurry to cook a congealed American salad of lime jelly, cottage cheese and tinned fruit but I wouldn’t say no to deep fried dill pickles.
The Little house on the Prairie cookbook; the Laura Ingells Wilder books contain many references to meals they ate. I continue to be amazed at their skills, their tenacity; where did it all come from, how did they know what to do in each situation? How they managed to survive and not starve and to cook using the most basic equipment is a miracle.
On the top shelf is The Forme of Cury, the very first printed cookbook; bought for the documentary I made about whelks, where we reproduced a medieval recipe using the critters. Can’t say I’ve used it since, but I can’t give it away.
The Dean & Deluca cookbook took me through my time in catering. Their recipe for Ras al Hanouut brought me compliments from Moroccan kitchen colleagues, and their mix of recipes are useful and sensible.
Friends and family have stopped buying me cookbooks; they’ve seen how many I have, but I can’t stop buying. A cookbook editor told me that we only ever cook a handful of recipes from a book, and therefore we’re always looking for the next fix. Does anyone actually cook their way through a book the way we did at college? I buy now because I’m hungry for the past, for food anthropology, or to read new styles or ideas. Because I like the style of the writer, or I’m seduced by the concept. Or quite simply, if I open a book, read a recipe and think, yes, I’d like to make that.
There are books I turn to for inspiration when I’m writing; books I use when I’m cooking for friends or family and want to find ideas. It’s rare I’ll follow a recipe to the core. I’m more likely to take ideas from one recipe and merge it with others.
I’m not the only person to take cook books to bed with me. There are books which tell stories, histories, tread paths. Food during and after the 2nd world war from Constance Spry, food from the eccentric family; The Roald Dahl cookbook. I have endless respect for food writers who research the roots of their recipes. Jane Grigson and Claudia Rodan as mentioned earlier. Wisps of food history take me from era to continent and on to new finds, new foods, new friends. I’d rather be Jane Grigson than Nigella. Scholarly writing that respects the past and recognises where an ingredient has come from, as well as its place in the present, that’s more impressive to me. So much is novelty and reinvention. That doesn’t stop me from reading Nigella or using her recipes.
Some books are more than recipes, they’re history and design and story.
Jake Tilson was a customer at our Peckham Farmers’ Market and I feel a real affinity with the way he writes and collects; I love images, graphics, tins, packaging. His book, A Tale of 12 Kitchens is a genuine reflection of his personality, one which makes me wish I’d kept more menus and shopping lists over the years.
Last Christmas I was given the Toulouse Lautrec cookbook, the Art of Cuisine, written & illustrated by the artist himself, the man who was said to have invented chocolate mousse. It’s unlikely that I will make a mock rabbit pate (veal, Bayonne ham, truffle, sausage meat) or a Whole Sheep Roasted Out of Doors and there are details I’m unable to follow to the letter; Broad beans with savory begins;
‘Have some young fava beans from the peat bogs of the Somme, still green…’
However, there are many delightful dishes such as chick peas with spinach, as long as I use Spanish chick peas, the French ones according to the author being smaller and harder.
It’s always tempting to drop into the wonderful Persephone Books, five minutes from our office I love their reissues, such as Florence White’s Good Things in England.
My current passion is Penguins’s Great Food collection. I’ve just finished Alexandre Dumas’s Alphabet for Food Lovers and am half way through MFK Fishers’ Love in a dish. The rest of these recently released slim beautiful volumes of semi obscure classics, many of which have been on my wish list for aeons are waiting for me.
Do I have a wish list? Oh yes.
The Moomins cookbook, because I love the Moomins. That I have to admit is nothing to do with the recipes.
The Len Deighton cookbook
Robert May's The Accomplisht Cook and most of Prospect Books’s intelligent catalogue
All by Colin Spencer; The Heretic’s Feast – a History of Vegetarianism, the award-winning British Food – an Extraordinary Thousand Years of History & From Microliths to Microwaves – The Evolution of British Agriculture, Food and Cooking
My wish list is a fluctuating, organic thing, that changes with whim and the seasons. After my recent cull I won’t be saying goodbye to any more books for a while but chances are I’ll be adding to them.
How do your cookbook shelves compare? What’s your culinary equivalent of the kipper tie?
Cook books are the best book for me because I love to cook and to eat too.
ReplyDeleteCookbook Company