CookShelfLucky me - I just received a copy of The Photography of Modernist Cuisine - the art-book sibling of last year's Modernist Cuisine at Home and the previous year's Modernist Cuisine. It's impressive in every way,…
The fall baking books are trickling in, and a curious phenomenon seems to be cropping up: baking without a mixer. Yvonne Ruperti's One Bowl Baking is an example. Its promise of simplicity is somewhat disingenuous- one…
Maybe because my life so often seems like a messy accumulation of loose ends, I'm a sucker for completion in cookbooks. When a cookbook claims to be "complete," I sigh with satisfaction and think "Ahhh...I will never…
Just as we saw with the words "table" and "kitchen" a while back, there's a battle going on for the soul of "family" in cookbook titles. What is a family cookbook, exactly? What, or who, counts as family, and what does…
When it comes to cookbook design, it's the Wild West out there! Maybe its because cookbooks, stalwart sellers in a digital age, have the luxury of experimentation as buyers hunt down increasingly charming and quirky…
I've got them. You've got them. Pretty much anybody with over 100 cookbooks has a couple. That's right - those books that we set aside for a rainy day, or a day when the kids have a field trip, or when we've already…
While attending to the (never-ending) task of culling and organizing the cookbook library today, it struck me that publishing output in a number of categories is shifting. There seem to be fewer big-ticket restaurant…
Actually, everything's hot in New York this week. It's in the upper 80's, and as usual the steaming sidewalks, midtown traffic, and ever-present faint smell of garbage makes it feel even hotter. Nevertheless, business…
It's the end of summer, really, that makes you think you might even contemplate making doughnuts. The weather's getting just a little cooler. Your days of leisure are coming to an end. You think to yourself, "I might -…
It's the peaceful, slow part of the year. Let's step away from cookbooks for just a moment and look at an often-overlooked corner of the recipe market. Did you know that there's a whole niche of publishing devoted to…
Is it 5? 6? 8? 10? This summer's cookbooks are having a silent contest for the hearts of cooks who subscribe to the "quick and easy" school of cooking. How many ingredients do we want to see in a recipe? Salt and pepper…
A while ago, I did a feature on literary cookbooks for kids. It wasn't that long ago, but in the months seen I've been seeing a special kind of book that doesn't even pretend to be a cookbook, really - the picture book…
