From the sublime to the ridiculous: a cookbook collection
Stephanie Clifford-Smith‟s culinary library
Central heating, French rubber goods, and cookbooks are three amazing proofs of man’s
ingenuity in transforming necessity into art, and, of these, cookbooks are perhaps most
lastingly delightful.
- MFK Fisher
I picked up a cookbook about the great London restaurant, Le Caprice, by AA Gill the other
day. A hardback, it was reduced from $60 to $3.99. Now, officially, I‟ve given up buying
books about food. Once my floorboards started to bow under the weight of my existing
collection and I was coming no closer to thinning it out, I had to call a halt. But $3.99! AA
Gill! Le Caprice!
It‟s a sorry tale, I know, and it only gets worse when I confess that that was actually my
second cookbook purchase that day. The first was Mediterranean Grains and Greens by
Paula Wolfert, another hardback also reduced from $60, to $9.95. Look, it was a book I‟d
seriously considered buying from Amazon because Paula Wolfert can be quite hard to track
down here, and she writes so well, and her recipes are so fabulous and her research is so
thorough and vicariously enjoyable, and think what I was saving on freight…
Cookbooks for me are about much more than working out what to cook for tonight‟s dinner.
While few books will do everything, a good collection should have the ability to transport
you to foreign places, educate you about culinary and social history, tell you what to do with
bizarre ingredients and make your mouth water. A few gems will actually give you a laugh as
well.
Brilliant references
Stephanie Alexander‟s The Cook’s Companion is as close to a desert island choice as I‟m
likely to get, though the thought of actually having to make such a selection brings me out in
hives. I put off buying it for years after it came out, arguing that for $75 and seven
centimetres of shelf space it would have to be exceptional. I also knew secretly that after
regular browsing I would eventually succumb.
The joy of The Cook’s Companion is its scope, which, in its new edition is even broader. (It‟s
also thicker and now costs $120.) It has all the classics from around the world as well as
enough new stuff to keep you happily exploring for years. But it‟s as a reference that I find it
most useful. When a recipe from elsewhere told me to wrap a terrine in caul fat, it was
Stephanie who told me where on the beast it came from, how to prepare, use and store it.
When I wondered after a meal in a French bistro if the meat I‟d been served really was veal
[it was redder than the white veal I‟d known] it was Stephanie who explained the definition
of veal and its various uses, colours and textures.
If you‟re approaching your cooking by ingredient, having picked up say, a really fresh ridged
gourd or some great feta cheese, then Charmain Solomon‟s The Encyclopaedia of Asian Food
and Greg Malouf‟s Arabesque are fantastic. Then of course there‟s the extremely daggy and
dated The Good Cook series edited for Time Life by Richard Olney in the late 70s, early 80s.
This series is great on technical detail with clear photos of boning, stuffing, clarifying and
rolling and is just the thing if you feel moved to spin sugar or carve carrots. But go to the
anthology at the back for the most incredible selection of recipes from books you‟re never
going to pick up at Angus & Robertson. This opens a whole new world of sources, many
interpreted from old or foreign texts. You could try Beef Stew Saint-Honoré with parsley,
tarragon and capers from Néo-physiologie du Goût by Comte de Courchamps (1849) or a
simple Wine Jelly from Theory and Practice of the Confectioner by JM Erich Weber (1927).
Travelogues
Call me old fashioned but I‟m a mug for a cookbook that gives me a bit of visual context for
the food I‟m reading about. ‘The Beautiful Cookbook’ series from the late 80s, early 90s has
good, dependable recipes as well as vast, glossy photos of rice paddies, vineyards, temples,
markets and maps to really get you inspired. Some of the food photography is less than
appetizing, with amber filters and thick glazes featuring in some shots, but I like props, local
crockery, cutlery and materials. Murdoch Books is now doing a similar series, “The Food of
France/China/Italy” with better photography but which focuses on the classic, rather than
unusual dishes of the countries.
I‟ve never actually cooked anything out of The Taste of France based on a Sunday Times
magazine series from 1983 because the food all looks a bit dark and the layout‟s confusing.
But the photo of a chipped pottery bowl filled with three kinds of wild mushrooms, five eggs
still in their shells and an old wooden spoon holding sea salt, ground pepper and garlic cloves
is fantastic. It doesn‟t immediately make me want to make scrambled eggs with mushrooms
but it does make me want to rent an old house in the Auvergne, in October (mushroom
season), shop at the markets for my eggs and butter and then make the recipe. It‟s just
something a white-styled Donna Hay book can‟t do.
Street Food from around the World by James Mayson brings out my inner backpacker. It‟s
among my most splattered cookbooks and it‟s the writing, rather than the photography that
transports you. It‟s a compilation of recipes picked up over eight years of budget traveling
throughout South-east Asia. Thailand, India and Nepal, Egypt, Morocco and Mexico and
while his prose sometimes verges on the purple, his love of the places, food, vendors and
markets is obvious.
Fish man, Rick Stein, is another writer whose enthusiasm for the subject is infectious. He‟s
the only British chef who has a handle on Asian food because he spends so much time there
(and here for that matter). The openings to his chapters in Seafood Odyssey which also covers
Australia, Italy, Spain, the US, England and France, show a man who hangs out at markets,
pestering fishermen and hawkers for recipes and rushing home to replicate them. Not for him
the timid, self-conscious use of lime juice and palm sugar we see with Delia Smith (God
bless her); Rick‟s laksa pastes and Thai fish cakes are the real deal.
He recounts watching the action at the market in Hua Hin: „I remember a smiling Thai lady
mixing raw, shelled mussels with a tapioca and ground-rice batter and pouring it on to a hot
flat griddle. As the mixture started to cook she broke it up a little, then cracked an egg on to
it. Alongside, she fried some chopped garlic, then she added bean sprouts, chilli vinegar,
fresh coriander, shredded spring onion, fish sauce, sugar and salt. She flipped the omelette
over on to the vegetables, and scooped it all up to serve it with a chilli dipping sauce.‟ Next
flight to Bangkok please.
Good recipes, honest cooks
Bistro Cooking by American, Patricia Wells, is stuffed with accessible, reliable, delectable
recipes that are so well written pictures are unnecessary. The woman I‟ve bagsed coming
back as in my next life lives in Paris (where she reviews restaurants), and in her restored
farmhouse in Provence (where she visits markets, inhales the aromas from her wood-fired
oven and occasionally conducts cooking classes for small groups).
The fact she‟s a journalist and not a trained chef has given her the facility to entertain while
informing, and to write recipes that anyone can tackle. She prefaces recipes with anecdotes
about the inspiration behind them, be they cosy Paris bistros, Provencal butchers or wine
growers from the Languedoc. Think of this book and think garlicky roast chicken, creamy
potato gratin, green salad with bits of bacon and walnuts, and Tarte Tatin.
Paula Wolfert, another American, is a purist who assumes a higher level of commitment to
cooking in her readers. I love her recipes and the stories about the people behind them (chefs,
housewives, goose fatteners) but there are quite a few that require you to start them several
days before you want to serve them. Thankfully there are many simple ones as well and all
I‟ve tried have worked.
Too many cookbooks written by high end restaurant chefs seduce with pictures and recipe
titles but exasperate as soon as you read the recipes in full. The Roux brothers and Christine
Manfield are indisputably fantastic cooks and by no means the only ones guilty of writing
ridiculous cookbooks, but you‟d need their full army of sous chefs and kitchen hands to
tackle their instructions. I‟ve eagerly fallen onto recipes which at first glance appear to have
only six ingredients but half of those turn out to be recipes in themselves (1 quantity of Chilli
Cumin Dal, 300ml Pepper Glaze, 3 teaspoons of Chilli Jam).
Essays, asides and opinions
Some of the best food writing is as much about evocation as recipes. A big part of Elizabeth
David‟s appeal was her timing. She wrote about Summers in France, Italy and Greece, eating
delectably al fresco, for an audience of sun-starved British struggling with post-war rations.
She understood the potency of an aside to a recipe for a tuna and salad sandwich: „Pan bagnia
is served in Provençal cafés with a bottle of wine when a game of boules is in progress.‟
Jane Grigson, Claudia Roden and Madhur Jaffrey share David‟s astuteness and their own rich
culinary backgrounds give them plenty of raw material for their writing. Grigson comes
closer than the others to matching David‟s hard-line opinions, a trait that can be amusing and
at times excluding.
Where Elizabeth David expects her readers to be able to make pastries and bind sauces with
no instruction other than ingredient measurements, Edouard de Pomiane sympathetically
anticipates the cook‟s struggles. In his recipe for Boeuf à la Ficelle (top rump suspended in
boiling water by a string) he says: „Lift the beef from the saucepan and remove the string.
The meat is grey outside and not very appetizing. At this moment you may feel a little
depressed.‟
AA Gill, the notorious restaurant critic for London‟s Sunday Times, isn‟t big on sympathy but
is wildly entertaining. The Sydney Morning Herald quoted him in May as opening a review
with the line "Why is there never a Palestinian suicide bomber when you need one?" and
finishing with: "My chickpea soup was like sucking wet sand, the Blonde's bourride was an
accident involving a hair-dryer and an aquarium, the flat chicken supreme was a battered hen,
the ham was sweaty and curling, the wine (I'm told) was having a sex change to vinegar, and
the service was resting while its agent placed the treatment/novel/play."
His essays in the Le Caprice book on subjects including brunch, etiquette and cocktails are
just as much fun but he does occasionally go overboard, a tendency that‟s made him a regular
in Private Eye‟s Pseuds Corner. AA on Eggs Benedict is Pseuds Central:
„Eggs Benedict is as direct as an advertising punch line, it is a dish that says something about
you and the person you want to be. Eggs Benedict is a people person, it‟s dressed down, it‟s
loafers and a polo shirt, it‟s unisex cologne, it‟s Sunday papers and films with subtitles and
baby papooses. It‟s sybaritic without being self-indulgent. It‟s that smooth, smart, committed
liberal, sexy, witty, off-white, lifestyle thing, that PR agencies and glossy magazines have
been teasing us with for a generation… It‟s you and it‟s me and it‟s the whole shtick of post-
war, post-modern, politically savvy, free-market, free-thinking, free-from-want, free-as-a-
bird, happy-ever-after, Western capitalist dream, and which of us in the goddamn world
doesn‟t want that? … Reading „Eggs Benedict‟ on a menu is politically and socially potent
and pregnant with meaning - the clenched fist, the „High Five‟ manifesto of nice people.‟
And while we‟re on opinionated writers, Italian chef and former MP, Stefano de Pieri can‟t
just stick to writing great recipes; his books include essays which frequently reveal his strong
views on politics and the national palate. Bernard King‟s cookbooks are typically opinionated
and hysterical, the humour often winning out over the palatability of the recipes.
So it seems just these few cookbooks, a mere sample of my library, give me everything I
could ever want from a collection. Really, I‟ll never need to buy another volume. But there‟s
nothing wrong with browsing, is there?
© Stephanie Clifford-Smith, first published Good Reading magazine