I have not bought all my cookbooks myself, a lot of them have been given as gifts from friends and family, and a few have been inherited. Once I have them though, it's very difficult to part with them.
The book I bought yesterday was "The Kitchen Diaries II" by Nigel Slater. I love Nigel and his cooking more than any other well known cook or chef at the moment. I think it's because I can identify with him, I'm not a trained chef, but more of an adventurous home cook, and I love how he writes about ingredients. It's much more than just recipes, it's the "why" as well as the "how" of his cooking. I can hear his lovely gentle voice as I read, he has such a calm attitude which is so refreshing compared to the "slap bang" style of for example, Jamie Oliver. Jamie has lots of good ideas and flavour combinations, but he can sometimes be a bit irritating. I've got a bit of the Raymond Blanc scientific attitude to cooking too - being a scientist in my day job that's not a great surprise. My parents went to Le Manoir once and got Raymond to sign my copy of his book "Blanc Mange" as a congratulations-on-gaining-my-MSc present, which was quite cool!
I also have a fondness for Nigella, although she can be irritating too, but she does have some tremendous recipes that are somehow greater than the sum of their parts, and I do have most of her books. She doesn't put enough sugar in her baking for my liking though. Two books that always deliver are the Riverford vegbox ones, they are totally reliable. I got their first book free when I started having my vegboxes delivered and had to buy the second one too.
Early additions to the collection when I first had my own kitchen were the invaluable reference bible - the complete Delia Smith's Cookery Course, and cheap and cheerful supermarket paperbacks on chinese food and curries. Current highlights include Larousse, The Greens Cookbook, The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook, Carluccio's Mushroom Book, the Delicious 5 of the best book, Economy Gastronomy, all the River Cottage Ones, Gok Cooks Chinese; and the Meat Free Monday cookbook. And many, many, more. I couldn't be without the Macaroon book which was super cheap from The Works and is the book I have made the highest proportion of recipes from, probably getting on for three quarters of them. I got Mary Berry's Baking Bible from my daughter for Christmas, and Baking with Julia Child from my Dad. Potatoes being my favourite food, I've got six different books dedicated to potato recipes.
What makes a great cookery book or otherwise? On the whole, I find it a bit disappointing if there isn't have a picture for every recipe. You can't tell what the finished dish is meant to look like, for a start. You get, an extra good feeling when your version looks as good as (or occasionally better!) than the one in the book. I get a bit cross sometimes when they say "until cooked" or are too vague, I would like at least an estimate of how long it might take. Great long lists of ingredients are a bit off putting too, unless there is the promise of something truly spectacular at the end. I love it when there are suggestions for variations and when you are encouraged to adapt the recipe too. Good photography also makes a huge impact, the Economy Gastronomy book has some stupendous recipes but the pictures all seem a bit grey looking and it does put you off a bit, I want my greens to look vibrant!
You can tell by looking which books are used most due to all the coloured paper tags sticking out of the top and sides of them. I try not to get them dirty and pretty much succeed, though there is the odd splat and fat stain here and there, telling a story. There are also post it notes stuck onto some of the pages, with annotations; variations, oven temperatures, even one that says "don't use this recipe - use the one on the card in the recipe folder". I forgot to mention those. I've got two folders, with twelve divisions in each so I can file in categories and find what I want more easily, housing a huge amount of recipes cut out of magazines, supermarket recipe cards and the like, and they are extremely heavy!
Storage is getting to be a problem. The picture above is the overflow bookcase, which has now itself overflowed. There is also a cupboardful, a pile on the worktop and a few upstairs. I might have to force myself to give some away... maybe to people who live close by and could let me borrow them back if I wanted... and I'll try not to buy any more. Not this week, at least.
More soon, thank you for reading.
Caroline x
No comments:
Post a Comment