Does anyone else love a Sunday morning in bed with a cup of thick bitter coffee and a pile of cookbooks? I highly recommend it. I am a homebody who after a recent devastating house fire has moved three times in as many months with my very favorite husband and wild happy pack of dogs. But... without my books. The fire was a disaster, but one that is slowly being remedied with fire restoration experts, paint decks, boxes of fabrics, builders and... replacement books. Turns out someone else's edition is just as good a friend as mine were. I can always turn the pages down again. And the comfort of the old cookbooks reintroduced makes for a practically perfect day in deep midwinter.
There are generations of cooks who don't know Laurie Colwin. That has to change. Colwin first gave us Home Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen followed quickly by More Homecooking: A Writer Returns to the Kitchen. Then she died, which I have never quite gotten over. Laurie is a warm, generous cook, and you are going to want to sit at her table and laugh and eat. You will cry when you realize you cannot, but still she will be with you forever once you own these books. They were two of the initial ones I replaced. Her writing is simple and straightforward just like her food. Laurie once did a riff on chocolate cakes, baking a bunch until she found the perfect one with buttermilk and lots of dark cocoa. I can whip up that cake up in 20 minutes flat and wow a room of late-night guests who need one more post-party treat before bed. "One of the delights of life is eating with friends; second to that is talking about eating. And, for an unsurpassed double whammy, there is talking about eating while you are eating with friends." Laurie Colwin gets me.
Christopher Kimball has become synonymous with the trend in TV food. He founded Cook's Illustrated and America's Test Kitchen and now Milk Street. But his older cookbook The Yellow Farmhouse Cookbook is, for my money, still his best. Want to whip up a perfect tall flaky biscuit? Kimball's version never misses. How about fluffy buttermilk pancakes like Grandma made? The secret to those turns out to be egg whites. And fried tomatoes--every summer I want some but because I only make them once or twice a year, I turn to my old tattered copy so I don't waste time ruining the first batch. Eggs Benedict on top of fried green tomatoes is a wow. Spend a couple of hours turning pages here and you will be dreaming up Sunday meals for a month.
Italian food is a staple in most American homes, so The Silver Spoon should be, too. It's still the best loved cookbook in Italy 70 years after it was first published. Roasted pork with prunes? Yes. I mean, it's a game changer. I make great fried chicken--I am an evangelist for my fried chicken, taught to me by my beloved Gram. Nobody else's even comes close. Just ask me. And yet this fried chicken marinated in lemon and olive oil was a revelation. This book is fun to read too. Glazed radishes. Why? Make them and pile them on a Parmesan-encrusted pork chop, and you'll see.
When I was a little girl, my mom got the Time Life Good Cook series. Remember them? They were edited by the brilliant Richard Olney. He and Julia Child, James Beard and M.F.K. Fisher forever changed the way Americans eat and think about food. Along with Alice Waters, they introduced us to seasonal eating. Made from scratch, respecting the seasons, farmer's markets, roasting over flame... these were the lessons that took us away from all those godawful church supper Jell-O salads. Richard Olney's The French Menu Cookbook is a treatise on why eating well will make your life happier and more beautiful. Seriously. We are living in an age where it is all about what you can't eat. No meat, no gluten, no dairy, no fun. Richard Olney will remind you why food matters. It is a demanding cookbook, but as narrative nonfiction it will just make you drool. I might not cook partridge over a cherry-wood branch, tickling its skin with thyme butter every seventh minute, but I will improve my capon and I will not ever forget the flame, either.
I'm still dying to talk about M.F.K. Fisher and Marcella Hazen and Julia Child. Stay tuned for part two. --Ellen Stimson