On cookbooks
Jan. 8th, 2009 04:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
avreliaI love cookbooks. Do you? I loved to leaf through it and imagine myself cooking an unlimited number of simple yet delicious or outrageously complicated meals. I don't have to read a cookbook from cover to cover to get a proper enjoyment out of it, no do I have to actually cook. I love the color photos of prepared meal, but much more than that I love the description, the tone an author set when she or he is talking to you and the whole feeling you get out of it that cooking is not a grueling task, but an enjoyable time for everyone involved. I don't even have to cook anything to get this peasant feeling, but reading a good cookbook often makes me go and do something edible.
we had several cookbooks when I was little. Some were full of executable recipes and important information, but they feel.. prosaic. Probably because of that. There were cookbooks that read like books of magical spells - because it would have been just as difficult to get ingredients for them as for for enchantments. I still remember some of them: roasted wild hog, violet ice cream... I feel kind of weird knowing that all of them can be made in reality. Where has the magic gone?
One book I remember well was Domovodstvo - Housekeeping. It was a thick tome full of advice on everything from raising children to making smoked sausages, from cooking and preserving to sewing fashionable clothes (fashionable in 1950s, that is). We used only the cooking and preserving part, but the whole book was fun to read, probably because it wasn't very applicable to our life.
I also remember "The Book about Delicious and Healthy Food." We didn't have it, there were not many who had - it was out of print for several decades, but it attained a legendary status in USSR, reminding of the times of mystical plenty that were and were gone. The book was reprinted later, of course. and it was a very large and good cookbook, but the legend was gone with the USSR.
I have now several cookbooks at home, some are purely practical, some are more for imaginary cooking than a real one, some are with pretty pictures, some are with pretty test. Of course, there is also the Internet. and still, I am on the lookout for something else, and from time to time I pick up books from the library or hang at the cooking shelves in bookstores.
Points of WTF?
1) Recently I picked up a book called Girl Can't Cook from the library shelf. I skimmed it, and the recipes seemed interesting, even if the seemed to pretentious and Fabulous for me, and then I got to the chapter called "Jewish Holidays". Here happened my first WTF moment, because this chapter actually had dishes of Russian and Ukrainian cuisine. I mean, I know that many Jewish Americans' ancestors came from Russia or Ukraine, but, seriously? Call me culturally insensitive but I kind of thought that chapter on Jewish holiday cooking would include, well, Jewish dishes, and not, say, Ukrainian that are habitually cooked with pork. Strange. Or is it me that totally clueless? I am not even mentioning that the familiar dishes lookes really weird to me. lelt's call it adaptation, but I couldn't quite trust their Asian and Italian recipes after that, as well.
2) Economist has recently had an article on cookbooks. It most was fine and intersting, but it had one passage that I just have to share with you.
http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12795620
By 1944 Irene Veal was advising women how to cook with dried eggs or even with no eggs at all. Her recipe for mayonnaise is one of the most heartbreaking passages ever written in English:
"Melt 1oz of margarine in ½ teacup milk, and when the mixture is warm put through a cream machine—the five shilling kind which many of us bought before the war and still, I expect, possess. In about 2 or 3 hours' time add very gently to the cream 1 teaspoon made mustard and 1 tablespoon each salad oil and vinegar. Beat well and serve. If the oil is not available, it does not greatly matter…"
In that brief aside "I expect" is summed up the misery of wartime cooking.
This is my second WTF moment on cookbooks. First of all - this is one of the most heartbreaking passages ever written in English? I had a better notion of English language, really. Or maybe the author of this article hasn't read that much. Second, pardon me, but my grandparents survived WWII as well, and judging by everything I know, if one had ingredients to cook mayonnaise and a pastime to contemplate cooking it at home, one wasn't that miserable...
on the happier things: when people ask me to recommend a cookbook for beginners, I don't hesitate. I always suggest Evelyn Raab's Clueless in the Kitchen, which I dearly love. It's fun, easy, and though it is addressed to teenagers, it's never condescending. There are also Clueless Vegetarian and The Clueless Baker.
we had several cookbooks when I was little. Some were full of executable recipes and important information, but they feel.. prosaic. Probably because of that. There were cookbooks that read like books of magical spells - because it would have been just as difficult to get ingredients for them as for for enchantments. I still remember some of them: roasted wild hog, violet ice cream... I feel kind of weird knowing that all of them can be made in reality. Where has the magic gone?
One book I remember well was Domovodstvo - Housekeeping. It was a thick tome full of advice on everything from raising children to making smoked sausages, from cooking and preserving to sewing fashionable clothes (fashionable in 1950s, that is). We used only the cooking and preserving part, but the whole book was fun to read, probably because it wasn't very applicable to our life.
I also remember "The Book about Delicious and Healthy Food." We didn't have it, there were not many who had - it was out of print for several decades, but it attained a legendary status in USSR, reminding of the times of mystical plenty that were and were gone. The book was reprinted later, of course. and it was a very large and good cookbook, but the legend was gone with the USSR.
I have now several cookbooks at home, some are purely practical, some are more for imaginary cooking than a real one, some are with pretty pictures, some are with pretty test. Of course, there is also the Internet. and still, I am on the lookout for something else, and from time to time I pick up books from the library or hang at the cooking shelves in bookstores.
Points of WTF?
1) Recently I picked up a book called Girl Can't Cook from the library shelf. I skimmed it, and the recipes seemed interesting, even if the seemed to pretentious and Fabulous for me, and then I got to the chapter called "Jewish Holidays". Here happened my first WTF moment, because this chapter actually had dishes of Russian and Ukrainian cuisine. I mean, I know that many Jewish Americans' ancestors came from Russia or Ukraine, but, seriously? Call me culturally insensitive but I kind of thought that chapter on Jewish holiday cooking would include, well, Jewish dishes, and not, say, Ukrainian that are habitually cooked with pork. Strange. Or is it me that totally clueless? I am not even mentioning that the familiar dishes lookes really weird to me. lelt's call it adaptation, but I couldn't quite trust their Asian and Italian recipes after that, as well.
2) Economist has recently had an article on cookbooks. It most was fine and intersting, but it had one passage that I just have to share with you.
http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12795620
By 1944 Irene Veal was advising women how to cook with dried eggs or even with no eggs at all. Her recipe for mayonnaise is one of the most heartbreaking passages ever written in English:
"Melt 1oz of margarine in ½ teacup milk, and when the mixture is warm put through a cream machine—the five shilling kind which many of us bought before the war and still, I expect, possess. In about 2 or 3 hours' time add very gently to the cream 1 teaspoon made mustard and 1 tablespoon each salad oil and vinegar. Beat well and serve. If the oil is not available, it does not greatly matter…"
In that brief aside "I expect" is summed up the misery of wartime cooking.
This is my second WTF moment on cookbooks. First of all - this is one of the most heartbreaking passages ever written in English? I had a better notion of English language, really. Or maybe the author of this article hasn't read that much. Second, pardon me, but my grandparents survived WWII as well, and judging by everything I know, if one had ingredients to cook mayonnaise and a pastime to contemplate cooking it at home, one wasn't that miserable...
on the happier things: when people ask me to recommend a cookbook for beginners, I don't hesitate. I always suggest Evelyn Raab's Clueless in the Kitchen, which I dearly love. It's fun, easy, and though it is addressed to teenagers, it's never condescending. There are also Clueless Vegetarian and The Clueless Baker.
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no subject
Date: 2009-01-10 05:52 am (UTC)I have to confess I can't read cookbooks for fun. Everytime I try, I get sort of nervous and begin to make bookmarks and plans and etc.
We didn't have "The Book about Delicious and Healthy Food" at my home, I looked through it at somebody else's house. It was indeed legendary! Funny enough, my 10-year-old self was most impressed with its recipe for watermelon ice cream. What can I say, I had simple tastes ;-)
My current favorite is Madhur Jaffrey's "World Vegetarian". Not only is it full of recipes from all over India and Asia and some parts of Africa, she also includes lots of personal stories. Next, I plan to read her "Climbing the Mango Trees: A Memoir of a Childhood in India".
About Jewish cuisine. I had the same reaction as you many years ago when I saw a Jewish cookbook at my friend's house. It looked like Eastern European food. (I had a similar experience when I picked up an old Swedish cookbook. A lot of what I saw (not all) is basically Russian dishes on steroids and $$)
Returning to Jewish cuisine. A friend just returned from a trip to Israel and when I heard his descriptions of what he ate, I immediately started drooling. According to him, the food is heavily influenced by Arab cuisine (which is one of my top favorites), light, spicy, savory. Excuse me, I'm drooling again.
no subject
Date: 2009-01-12 10:52 pm (UTC)Jews just adapted what was available regionally wherever they settled. Back in the middle ages, there was only local cooking. They'd change things to make them kosher and meet holiday traditions. That was it.
I have a wonderful cookbook called "Classic Cuisine of the Italian Jews" by Edda Servi Machlin. It's mostly an Italian cookbook that's kosher, of course. But seeing what was traditional at Italian Jewish homes for Passover or the Sabbath was a revelation to me with my Polish background.