CookShelfHere's an interesting exercise I thought we could try. Let's take 3 up-to-the-minute cookbooks at random off the pile and see how they address an everyday ingredient. Say shrimp. Shrimp Biryani (Indian Shrimp and Rice),…
Here's a completely new cookbook micro-trend: ground meat. To me, it seems surprising because meat cookbooks have been, if anything, increasingly DIY in recent years. There are smoke-and-cure books, and sausage books,…
Well, I've just about emerged on the other side of my first holiday cookbook roundup, and this time, I was unusually aware of my decision-making process. You know how you're standing in front of the cookbook shelves at…
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…
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…
There seems to be a lot of online debate in the last few days on what the future holds for cookbooks. The most exciting article for us, because EYB was the focus and it was carried around the globe, was the Associated…
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…
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
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…
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…
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…
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…
