Chef cookbooks, two ways
This week, two cookbooks from the Big Apple got me thinking about what it means to write a cookbook, when you're a famous chef. It's certainly not the first time I've given thought to the subject--most recently, we…
Shelf Life With Susie
All tied up with a bow
Lately I've noticed a new subgenre in cookbooks, hovering somewhere between "D.I.Y.", "Entertaining," and "Baking/Pastry". It's that tiny category of books focusing on homemade gifts from your kitchen. You know, the box…
Looking south, with flavor
Remember a few weeks ago when we were thinking about what defines "American" cooking? I don't think we arrived at any conclusions, but what an interesting conversation! This week, a cluster of books forced me to…
Famous at Home
This past week, I began putting together a preview of the fall and winter cookbooks I'm looking forward to--you'll see it soon in this space. As I was paging through press releases and stacks of advance copies and…
New Cookbooks Shelf Life With Susie
New book choices
You may not have seen so much as a single leaf turn, but fall is here in the cookbook world. And what a fall it is shaping up to be! There will be hundreds and hundreds of titles, as usual, but even a small selection…
Someday books
I think we all have cookbooks we keep around and never use. Books all about appetizers, say, but who has time to entertain? Books on Malaysian cuisine, for the day we find a bigger Asian grocery, one that stocks the…
"American cooking" - what's it to you?
A fat package in the mail got me thinking this week. It was The Great American Cookbook, by Clementine Paddleford--a revised edition of an older Rizzoli publication, How America Eats. I peeked inside and saw curried…
When we cook, we cook alone
Jeff Keys' ruminative author piece had me thinking about the solitude of cooks--not just chefs like Keys, who bear the responsibility for feeding and pleasing tables and tables of visitors every night, but home cooks…
Graphic innovations in cookbooks
I notice more and more of late that publishers are experimenting with cookbook design. Not just in cookbooks intended for kids, where bold pictures, big type, and the occasional Elmo are par for the course. They're…
40 degrees of latitude
I've often noticed that the equatorial and tropical cookbooks come out in summer, when the greatest number of people have a chance of getting the warm-weather produce typically found in those climates. So we often see…
Eat Your Books - minus the books
I've been away from home the last week at a summer rental house, confronting all the adjustments required in an unfamiliar kitchen: radiant burners instead of propane, non-stick pans instead of cast-iron, and above all,…
Susie's Heirloom
I'm particularly excited about our guest contributor this month. Karen Solomon's whimsically titled books Can It, Bottle It, Smoke It and Jam it, Pickle It, Cure It explore the world of DIY cooking. They'll be my guides…