So you want to start a cookbook club?

The three cookbooks that your cookbook club should use:

I've always been envious of Movie people.  Not celebrities, but the characters in the movies.  Do you want to know why? Movie people are always having dinner parties!

I've been to plenty of dinner parties, and I've hosted my fair share, but it seems like the movie people are constantly moving from one dinner party to the next.  Can you imagine how much delicious food you would eat if you were a movie person?

Maybe that's just me.  Other people watch the movies and are moved by the characters and the plot; me, I'm moved by the food.

Alas, filling this dearth of dinner parties is something that I can easily fix by starting a cookbook club!

A cookbook club is a group of people who get together and eat food made from recipes in a single cookbook! Then at the party they can all discuss what they love about the food, the photography, and the writing. A little bit like a dinner club, a cooking club and a book club rolled into one super club. What a brilliant idea!

I can never make all the recipes in a cookbook, but I always want to taste everything.  The cookbook club makes it possible.

These are the three books that I would use if I started a cookbook club today.

If you're cooking club is with close friends: Bread and Wine by Shauna Niequist

Bread and Wine By Shauna Niequist via Teaandcookiesblog.com

Bread and Wine: A Love Letter to Life Around the Table with Recipes is a combination memoir/recipe collection. Niequist weaves stories of sorrow and loss with joy and elation, feelings of guilt and shame contrasted with confidence and forgiveness. Her book is filled with personal essays that point to timeless truths that revolve around life around the table. A recipe accompanies every essay.  While a lot of the recipes have been published elsewhere, her helpful tips, conversational recipe writing, and excellent taste make this a unique and accessible cookbook. It's a perfect mixture of fancy gourmet dishes and simple daily fare, and would make a great cookbook for any party that has a mixed bag of culinary skills.

I love this cookbook because it is first and foremost a book and secondarily a recipe collection.  The old saying is that a picture is worth a thousand words, but Niequist prefers to use 1000 or more beautiful words and a winding life adventure to show us her food.  The book itself has no photographs even though she discusses dozens of dishes and hundreds of meals.

I would especially love to use Bread and Wine in a cookbook club with close friends because Niequist emphasizes the role that food plays in deepening her faith and her friendships. Like Niequist, I believe that life frequently begins around the table, and I yearn to bolster those friendships with a little more time and a lot more delicious food.

If your cookbook club is full of foodies: Jerusalem a Cookbook by Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi

Jerusalem Cookbook: Eggplant with Buttermilk Sauce. Courtesy of Jonathon Lovekin via tablemag.com

Has any other cookbook in recent memory garnered as much attention as Jerusalem: A Cookbook? Personally, I cannot think of another one.  This cookbook has been inspiring home cooks with gourmet Middle Eastern flavors to the extent that cooks have started their own Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest campaign with the handle #TastingJrslm.

The excitement from this book is partially due to the fact that it elevates a lesser known cuisine (Middle Eastern food) to culinary prominence, and it is always exciting to try something new.  Additionally, the controversial melting pot methodology (featuring Jewish, Christian and Muslim dishes in a single cookbook) is an exciting connection.

Ottolenghi and Tamimi are sure to connect each recipe to the deep rooted history of the people and places in Jerusalem.  The combination of culture, the photography (second to none), and the unique cuisine, Jerusalem is the perfect cookbook club cookbook for foodies and culture aficionados everywhere.

If your cookbook club loves Pinterest: The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook by Deb Perelman

The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook via Thephoenix.com

The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook is another example of a cookbook that I use all the time, but my favorite use is for coffee parties and dinner parties. Deb's humor shines through on each page, and her rambling in the recipe section is surprisingly helpful.  While some of the recipes in this book are likely to make it into your everyday repertoire, there are some (especially among the deserts) that require an event to get you into gear.

With the deep and wide range of meal types (breakfast, sweets, seafood, salads and more), the book feels like a Pinterest Board that has come to life.  I would love to attend a cookbook club meal where each person got to choose their favorite recipe from a certain section. It would be a regular smorgasbord of delicious food.

This is an especially great choice for cookbook clubs that have a wide variety of tastes and skills.  While some of the recipes are time consuming and technically tricky, others are quick and simple (all are delicious, at least among the recipes I've tried).

If your group is beholden to a sweet tooth, this is an especially great book to focus on the desert section.  Perelman's cookies, pies and cakes are second to none.  They are a combination of home baked with love and French bakery style.  Like your grandma ran off with a mysterious French Baker.

What about you? Are there cookbooks that you want to try for your cookbook club? Do you have a cookbook club? Can I join?

Djiboutilicious: A Cookbook that I use all the Time

I love fancy cookbooks, and cookbooks that I will never actually use for their recipe features.  I like looking at the beautiful pictures; I like the conversations that these books inspire, and I like thinking that one day, I too will get my act together and make something beautiful.

Do you want to know what else I love? I love real life cookbooks.  Cookbooks that get me from store to table, and that face the reality that if I'm out of an ingredient, I'll probably just do without it.  And cookbooks that help me realize that cooking dinner can be a powerful act of love for everyone sitting down to the table.

That is why I love the cookbook Djiboutilicious.  I love this cookbook because the recipes are simple and straightforward.  The ingredient list rarely exceed 10-12 items, and because all the items are for sale in Djibouti, its pretty safe to say that I can get them here in the land of imports.

A camel's head on the cookbook cover!

Djiboutilicious is written by American expatriate Rachel Pieh Jones, a fabulous author who chronicles her life and the culture around her, wherever she might be.  However, this cookbook does not highlight her writing skills; the book is a simple collection of recipes with a few black and white photos scattered throughout where the recipe was too short to fill the entire page.

The cookbook is not a work of art, nor is the book filled with stunning writing, nor is it some great travelog cookbook ala Anthony Bourdain.  Rather, this cookbook is an approachable recipe collection. It's a source of inspiration for something I can actually make, filled with Midwestern classics and a few exotic East African dishes to tempt my tastebuds and to convince me to try something new.

To say that I use this cookbook all the time is the understatement of the century.  Since my mom gave it to me as a gift a year and a half ago, it has become my most referenced cookbook of all.  I use it at least once a week, and sometimes multiple times in a single meal.

So have I convinced you that you want a copy of this cookbook too?  

Okay, here's the deal, it's a self-published cookbook, so you have to email Rachel at trjones.family@gmail.com and ask her for a copy.  I have no idea how much it costs, but I do think that her mom has copies left in the United States, so she should be able to get a copy shipped to you.

5 Cookbooks that make you look like great chef...even if you aren't

"These store bought dill pickles don't taste as good now that I've made homemade pickles," I said yesterday as I officially entered the world of food snobbery.  Hide the Velveeta, pass the well aged balsamic, because I'm a real foodie chef now...At least, I like to think that I am.

I want you to believe that I'm an experienced chef rather than a home cook saying "Yes, you Can...Pun," as I work on preserving pickles for the first time. To prove my point, I will be proudly displaying my five most pretentious cookbooks where all guests can see them. After all, I do have homemade pickles.

1. A Cookbook To Show Vintage Foodie Love:

Every good foodie ought to be well-versed in European cuisine and have a love of all things vintage.  After all, vintage is haute, French Women Don't get Fat, Europeans don't eat GMOs and Julia Child has made Mastering the Art of French Cooking easy. Never mind that in her famous tome, the shortest ingredient list includes 18 items and the average recipe length is three pages, and the fact that I've never attempted a single recipe from this classic.  I'm a chef now, and Mastering the Art of French Cooking, 50th Anniversary Edition (Affiliate) is on my coffee table.

I usually have enormous fish in my kitchen. Don't you?

Runner up: Cooking with Bon Viveur: The first Bon Viveur cookery book (affiliate) by Fanny Cradock. Fanny Cradock was the consumate British chef, who was dripping with personality and skill.  Her recipes and her make up were famously high fashion and dramatic. However, her cookbook is supposedly not nearly as difficult to follow as Child's, and this book is hard to come by, so I don't own a copy.

2. A Cookbook to show my Scenester Side:

Real foodies like to get out on the town and try the most wild and crazy dishes. Momofuku Cookbook (affiliate), named after Chef David Chang's Momofuku restaurants in California is a behind the scenes look at some of the most incredibly hip food in the country today. The cookbook isn't so much a recipe collection as it is a memoir and replete with beautiful photography.  But just because chef Chang manages to make these delicious dishes in bulk every day, doesn't mean that I can. Most of the recipes require several hours of cooking, not to mention some crazy ingredients like boar's head.

This face does not say, "I'll show you something easy to cook." Neither does then entire pig in his arms.

Runner up: Alinea by Grant Achatz. Alinea is prix fixe restaurant in Chicago that utilizes some of the most techy of all cooking techniques, and his restaurant is always sold out. There is no doubt that I will never attempt any of these recipes, but the sheer size of the book and the beauty of the photography make it obvious that this is a coffee table book rather than a cook book for cooking.

3. A cookbook to prove that I've mastered all the Techniques:

If you're a poser chef like me, then one thing that will be really important to you is pretending you've mastered a wide variety of food preparation techniques. Braising, Roasting, and Fricasseeing child's play for A Girl and Her Pig: Recipes and Stories (affiliate) author, April Bloomfield. Her anecdotes, folksy tips and tricks, and the down to earth explanation of complex techniques tricked me into thinking that I might be able to execute these recipes after all. Don't be fooled, these recipes are difficult to execute, but the fact that I've tried must count for some amount of hipster foodie cred.

I've explained everything on this board. Why don't you get it?

Runner up: Jerusalem: A Cookbook (affiliate) by Yotam Ottolenghi is a visual feast filled with scrumptious recipes.  Initially, I thought the techniques used in this book were overly complex, but I think it was the long ingredient lists that were actually intimidating. This is one book that I can use to increase my chef cred and put dinner on the table.

4. A cookbook to show that true chefs embrace the contradictory:

One thing that posers like me love to do is pretend like we understand something deep, when in fact we are just confused.  Displaying complex cookbooks is the culinary equivalent to nodding during a conversation that you definitely don't understand.  Both of which I do proudly.  For example, David Kinch is nothing if not meticulous, but in his cookbook Manresa: An Edible Reflection (affiliate) he states, "To cook simply, to cook well, is really hard to do with a recipe." What? So the same guy who is recommending weighing everything on a digital scale is recommending that I forgo a recipe. Kinch goes on to explain that cooking is a highly personal activity, and that differences can be celebrated. Basically, I think he was giving me a consolation prize for not being quite as good of a chef as him.

Photo: Eric Wolfinger: Kinch in the Kitchen, showing off his meticulous artistry

5. A Cookbook to show that I'm just a superior chef:

Thomas Keller is supposedly a chef genius. A man who eats with his eyes and thinks with his stomach.  Could there be any higher compliment for a chef's chef? I doubt it. Of course, you will have to believe this all second hand.  I've never made a single recipe of his, nor have I been to his restaurants. His recipes in The French Laundry Cookbook(affiliate) are the stuff of pretentious foodie's dreams. Oysters and caviar with tapioca? Check. Anyone who is willing to buy the ingredients required to make these dishes must think very highly of their culinary talent, and those who manage to put in the several hours required to make the dish have ascended above the status of us mere mortals. This cookbook will definitely be out, and if you ask me any questions, I will be sure to regale you with tales of learning from Keller's genius.

Definitely had these at my last dinner party...or not.

A Brief history of Cookbooks

When I was first learned to cook at around the age of 12, I used Betty Crocker's Cookbook: New and Revised Edition (affiliate link) and I joyfully poured over the pages, imagining what delicacies I could make. Reading recipes transformed me into a domestic Goddess.  At least until I began cooking.

This is the cookbook that inspired my love of cooking!

Just this weekend I pulled out our well loved edition for some birthday cake inspiration, I realized that this particular cookbook was older than either me or my husband; it's a verifiable window into America's culinary past.  And I got to wondering, how old is the oldest cookbook? Do we really know how ancient people ate?

A brief history of cookbooks:

Ancient Cookbooks- Feasts for Pharaohs and grandiose gluttons:

Early Recipe collections were not for common people because most people weren't literate.  the recordings were more for vanity purposes than they were for everyday cooking.

 500 BC- Egyptians were among the first people to have a thriving agricultural based Civiliation.  As a result, some of humanities earliest recipes come from Ancient Egypt.  Where exactly? Early recipes are recorded on the tombs of Ancient Egyptian Officials “Here lies Cleopatra, and she does love flatbread; that’s why we’ve left some in the tomb.  By the way Ra, she likes it made this way”

400 AD- The first known cookbook “Apicius”or more appropriately “De re coquinaria” was written in Rome. book is named after Marcus Gavius Apicius, the world’s first gourmet and a most pretentious glutton.  The book describes an exotic meal including Flamingo and and six recipes devoted to truffles. Mr. Apicus certainly knew what he loved, although very few people could have enjoyed these recipes.  Not only were the ingredients prohibitively expensive, most people were still not literate.

I wrote cookbooks before cookbooks were cool.

1200 AD- The eating habits of rich Europeans are recorded in a two part volume of “Liber de Coquina” According to some folks at the Gode Cookery (Good Cooking for those unfamiliar with Medieval English), the habits of the aristocracy around this time were not so very different from our own.  Their translation of “Makerouns” (from “Forme of Cury” written 2 centuries later) makes me agree.  It’s basically Medieval Mac and Cheese.

Domestic Manuals- Putting housewives in the kitchen:

The Gutenberg printing press debuted in 1450 which lead to widespread literacy.  During this time cookbooks and recipe collections by and for women began to spring up.  

Mid 16^th Century- Around this time, the first cookbooks that appear to be largely for non-aristocracy. The books weren't merely recipe collections; they included everything from tips on healthful eating (based around the four humors), medicine, feast preparation and seasonal eating as well as recipes. Books such as “A proper newe Booke of Cokerye”by Catherine Frances Frere and “The good Huswifes Handmaide for the Kitchin” have survived and been translated into modern English.

These particular books did not see widespread distribution, but their household manual format became the standard form for cookbook publishing.

Growing access to rich and exotic ingredients for non-Aristocrats, accompanied by a push for international cuisine and  high literacy levels during the early 18^th century resulted in some of the most enduring cookbooks of all time, and pushed the cookbook to the in vogue status that it enjoys today.

The two most notable books of this type are:

1727 - “The Compleat Housewife” by Eliza Smith, was originally published in London but it proved to be equally as popular across the pond (Unlike King George III, the English cooking tradition certainly reigned supreme in the American colonies)

1747 – Thanks to an emerging new American food culture, Hannah Glase wrote the first specifically American cookbook “The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy” an All-American instruction manual for shopping, cooking, household management, and medicine. 

The scientific revolution... in your kitchen:

By the turn of the century, the scientific revolution was in full swing, and the leading culinary minds of the era fully adapted the scientific method in the kitchen in an effort to elevate the culinary arts into the culinary sciences.

1896 – Original 1896 Boston Cooking-School Cook Book (affiliate) by Fannie Farmer remains the most famous cookbook that treated cooking as a science rather than an art.  Farmers work is known for having a very rigorous recipe writing style, much more like a chemistry lab write up than a warm teacher in the kitchen. In her preface, Farmer wrote "It is my wish that it may not only be looked upon as a compilation of tried and tested recipes, but that it may awaken an interest through its condensed scientific knowledge which will lead to deeper thought and broader study of what to eat."

It's not cooking, it's science.

She looks so innocent in that pink dress, but watch out, this cookbook is rigorous!

Cookbooks shift from science to art and celebrity personalities:

1931- Irma Rombauer published Joy of Cooking (affiliate), a book that she originally wrote to help her cope with her husband's suicide. Rombauer makes a decided shift from the scientific method and focuses much more on infusing cooking with friendship, love and a little cheeky flair. She had no credentials when she wrote the Joy of Cooking, but thanks to her winning recipes and personality the book (revised 8 times) has been in continuous publication since 1936.

The original cover for The Joy Of Cooking featured St. Martha of Bethany (patron saint of cooking), slaying a dragon.

1960- No history of cookbooks would be complete without the inclusion of Julia Child's famous Mastering the Art of French Cooking (affiliate).  No book has ever been so loved, nor so seldom cooked from simultaneously. Julia Child was the first ever TV chef, and she inspired many people to cook outside their comfort zone.  However, Mastering the Art of French Cooking is famously full of extremely complex recipes.  Do you dare to take on some of the daunting recipes from this seminal work?

Today's celebrity chefs such as Bobby Flay, Emeril Laggasi, Paula Deen, and Rachel Ray can largely contribute their success to the pattern that Julia Child laid forth for them.

It's a famous cookbook, but have you ever cooked anything from it?

Cookbook Communities- How blogs have revolutionized cookbooks:

2009- The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Recipes from an Accidental Country Girl is one of the best known blog to cookbook success stories.  Ree Drummond who blogs under the name, The Pioneer Woman, built an online community of followers who crave her recipes and her unique voice and personality.  

Her supportive community was already in place prior to publishing the cookbook.  Unlike earlier celebrity chef personalities, the success of her print cookbooks was not due to TV or restaurant fame.  Rather, her dedicated online followers took hold of this book onto the best selling list which has subsequently allowed Drummond to publish two more cookbooks and a variety of childrens books. For Drummond and other bloggers, creating a genuine online community is one of the most important methods to ensure the success of their cookbooks.