The Joy of Cooking (From Used Cookbooks)

 

One of my favorite things to do when I have a few minutes to kill is to find the closest thrift store, library or used book store and to leaf through the travel and cooking sections.  I'm really not likely to go more than a couple hours from home, but sometimes the photographs of people in cafes give me ideas.  Most of the time, the food shelves in the thrift and used book stores tell predictable stories of guilt.  However, occasionally I find a real winner for 1.99. 

People buy low fat and low calorie books when their bathroom scales read a scary number or their doctors give them a scary diagnosis or they want to catch the eye of a certain fellow.  Then the books sit unopened because who is even motivated to try recipes from a book with a title like 300 Calories or Less?  Do you suppose anyone is going to put out their best candlesticks on their best tablecloth and then cook their newest sweetheart a special dish of Boiled, Boneless, Skinless Chicken Breast Squeezed Styrofoam Dry to Extract Every Last Calorie and Squirted With Half A Sour Lemon?  No one would even make such an awful meal for themselves while they are desperately dieting.  They eat rice with a drip of soy sauce.  Same calories, a lot less effort and expense.

In the midst of all this discarded guilt, once in a great while, someone will also discard something really wonderful.  Perhaps they don't like cooking, or they don't know what they had.
An old book I was delighted to come across recently was The Art of Fine Baking by Paula Peck.   Truthfully, I didn't know I was looking for it, but swooped on it when I saw it.  It's an unimposing book, a tattered gold-ish hardback, written in the days before ISBNs, so here is the  ASIN: B000NWLD4C from Amazon.com in case you want to look it up.

I don't tend to be someone who buys cookbooks for recipes to religiously follow.  But I love to read about food, about technique, about food stories and history and what it is like to cook in other cultures.  THIS cookbook was written in the late 50s or early 60s.  It is full of pastries and creams I dearly wish I knew how to make, including cream puffs.  (I grew up in the 60's, but in a no-nonsense family, so we made a lot of brown bread and roast and potatoes.  Not a cream puff in sight.)  I actually sat down and read the book all the way through, including all the recipes.  
I probably looked like our Boston Terrier, who can't help himself when he gets too excited about his dinner; drool forms bubbles at the edges of his mouth.  

Dairy products (except butter) make me ill, but I plan to make cream puffs and fill them with her lemon curd recipe, which looks absolutely divine.  More on that later.  

Although the desserts in this book are the sorts one might find in a high-end pastry shop, this book is not written in a snobby fashion and there are no special tools required.  I see no reason why I can't rush right down to my kitchen right now (except that I haven't slept in more than 25 hours) and make a batch of cream puffs right now that would come out perfectly.  Unlike other pastry books I have picked up, this looks very accessible.  What did I pay for this in a used book shop?  $8.50, in Newport on the beach.  Even less today on Amazon, I see. 

Another find was The New American Chef  by Andrew Dornenburg and Karen Page.  This is a book for reading, although it also has quite a few recipes, too.  Dornenburg churns out the cookbooks; he has a dozen or so published.  Just for that reason (I hadn't actually read any of them), I had a preconceived notion that I would think he was a bit of a hack, a pulp writer.  Well, I've only picked up this one book, and I've only read a couple chapters, but I love it.  It's well written.  He talks about balancing the need to be creative with the need to respect and honor traditions.  He even says you don't necessarily need to buy the most expensive ingredients, but that technique is important.  He works with chefs from multiple ethnic cuisines and allows them to present their favorite recipes and ideas.  I find the photographs disconcerting, though.  They are unlabeled, so on one page you may be reading about female chef but the page opposite may show a man grinning.

The guest chefs are quoted often, and are free and friendly with their advice.  Barbara Tropp says something early that delights me:  visit the home of an elderly person from the culture you admire and ask that person to teach you.  She says someone at least 70 years old, who will remember the traditional ways that are now disappearing, is best.  I work with elderly people and a lot of them would be delighted to share their memories with someone who was really interested.  Just remember to make it really easy for this person to help you.  Bring the ingredients to the dining room table so they can sit down there and watch you chop and mix and assemble.  Do 90% of the work yourself.  Write everything down and tape record it, too, since you will probably get messy.  Say thank you and follow up after your visit later with a card and a little present on the door step, maybe something from your garden.