Coastal features
Summer's a slow time in cookbook publishing, but I notice one category of books has kept up a steady, diligent trickle: seafood books. This isn't totally surprising, since summer's the time for beachgoers and weekend…
Shelf Life With Susie
Sugar & spice & everything nice
Because I enjoy asking for trouble, I thought I'd share a question which arose in my mind the other day, when a new book dropped out its manila envelope and I caught the title: Stacie Bakes, it declared. I was suddenly…
Is half a loaf better than one?
By and large, I think food photography has only gotten better and better in the decades since its aspicky, orange 1960's lowpoint. Digital cameras mean mistakes are cheap and easily fixed, and the food blogging…
Just how long should a recipe be?
For some years I've been an advocate of more explicit recipes - you know, recipes that tell you not just time and temperature ("3-5 minutes over a medium flame"), but what to look, listen, smell, and taste for - the…
Married with cookbooks
A couple of years ago, a book called Just Married and Cooking was published. The couple was cute and camera-ready, though I thought the recipes were nothing special and I didn't keep the book. But it seemed like a…
Sweet without the heat
Before Saturday, I had never once made panna cotta, I'm embarrassed to admit. I'm not sure why, since I basically can't say no to a custard of any kind. Maybe it's because I'm never quite sure the gelatin will set, or…
Is DIY turning into FIY (Forage It Yourself)?
If there's one kind of a cookbook I can't resist (and goodness knows there's more like a dozen kinds I can't resist), it's a book about weeds. Every time I try to put a book about weeds on the Give Away pile, it's like…
The "good enough" cookbook (or, the "A with B and C" cookbook)
The "good enough" cookbook is a concept that's come to me over my years of reviewing cookbooks. It sounds a little churlish (think of Obama's "likeable enough" comment and the uprorar that caused..), but it's not. In…
Return of the single-subject cookbook
I'm a bit late with this week's post, mostly because I've been up to my ears in the summer cookbook roundup. It was an exciting batch of books, but what struck me especially forcefully this time round was the…
Here come the kids...
With Mother's Day fast receding into the rear-view mirror, I thought it would be interesting to look more closely at a phenomenon which seems to be especially noticeable this year: cookbooks by those whose parents are…
About those menus...
You know those "suggested menus" offered by many cookbooks? Where they tell you what goes with what, from starters to salads to mains to sides to sweets, and what wine you should serve with what? And often they have a…
Cookbooks for Mother's Day!
Less than two weeks till Mother's Day, and we're entering the "spring bump" - next to the year-end holidays, it's the second-busiest time of year for cookbook publishing and cookbook sales. (Which is why my developer…