I got up early this morning to make cookies for Christmas with my in-laws. While I was cooking away, using Maida Heatter's excellent and reliable, Cookies I was listening to my MP3 player on shuffle, which led me to a delicious blend of Lupe Fiasco, Miguel and Julian Casablancas. 6am was never so funky.
I tried to think about some great books that make me want to eat, and the first things that came to mind were childhood favorites: Paddington Bear's obsessive love for marmalade sandwiches and the Narnia series with that infernal Turkish Delight. These food descriptions were so deeply ingrained in me from childhood reading that I finally bought some Turkish delight a few years ago when I lived in Brooklyn and found it ...disgusting.
As an adult, I have developed a taste for more complexity in both my food and books. And while I've experienced some great books with descriptions of food over the years (Chris Abani's Graceland ; Jorge Amado's Gabriela , Clove and Cinnamon; Laura Esquivel's popular Like Water for Chocolate) I wanted to get past the obvious foodie novels. Much more so than the novel, cookbooks have been challenged significantly by the internet. It's easy to look up a recipe online, so why get a cookbook? Some cookbooks are just catalogs, but good ones do more than list recipes. They teach cooking techniques, impart a philosophy of food and eating, or introduce you to a different culture or.. in the case of two books linked below, a deeply personal story.
And since this is a blog about music and food, here are some tasty music and cookbook pairings for you as you enjoy your holiday cooking and eating season.
Carole Darden's Spoonbread and Strawberry Wine is the first cookbook I used to make collard greens, which are now a regular staple for me. I don't always follow the recipes to the letter, but I love this cookbook. It's more than a cookbook; it's the Darden family history with food and photos, starting with Charles Henry "Papa" Darden at age 16 in North Carolina, 1868.
Another of my all-time favorite cookbooks is Crescent Dragonwagon's Passionate Vegetarian. If I could have only one cookbook, this would be the one. It's massive and includes some really unusual and counter-intuitive recipes that are surprisingly delicious, like savory oatmeal with jalapenos. I once made her seitan brisket and potato pancakes for Christmas dinner and my sister-in-law pronounced them better than my father's prime rib. It also feels good to be in the presence of Dragonwagon as an author. She's very "present" in the book which is dedicated to her late husband; writing it was part of her grieving process after his death. It's soulful beyond the recipes.
And there's that "New Classic" - Julee Russo & Sheila Lukins, The New Basics, Everyone who cooks or wants to try cooking should have this cookbook. It's creative, easy for untrained cooks, and well-organized. Some of the recipes have a bit of an 80s feel: lots of sun-dried tomatoes and a whole section on polenta, but it's still very, very good, a classic for a reason. Kind of like these guys:
The best new cookbook I've acquired is Sheri Castle's New Southern Garden Cookbook. I come back to it again and again. If you live in the US south and use a CSA or shop at farmer's markets, this book is organized around major vegetables that you commonly get in your CSA box, with two sections on squash (summer and winter) and chapters on eggplant, beets, okra, etc..The book is not vegetarian, but substitutions are suggested for many recipes, and it includes a recipe for smoked vegetable stock.
and before I go, I have to mention the landmark punk-rock vegetarian cookbooks, Soy, Not Oi! compiled by the Hippycore crew. I admit to having never prepared a meal from either of these cookbooks, but it just reminds me that I should try one. I have eaten food prepared by one of the authors, the late Joel Olson, who was a friend of mine. In his honor, here's the Beatnigs' LP, which he gives as the music you should listen to while producing his "Punk-wok Stirfry."
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