Coming soon: The Cookbook Test
This September, we'll dive into a monstrous stack of wonderful cookbooks together
I was a books guy before I was a food guy.
In high school, I edited the school's underground paper (The Liberator); in college, I got my start at The Daily Cardinal editing the books section. Since then I've written about books for a lot of folks (Salon, The Christian Science Monitor, Washington Post, etc.) but food has become my career. From writing restaurant reviews to curating food events to organizing live-fire culinary education camping weekends (see below), I've pretty much run the gambit.
But with THE COOKBOOK TEST, I'm planning to bring it all together.
Here's the plan - every week I'm going to dig into a new or vintage cookbook and take it apart. I'll look at everything - the voice, the style, the cuisine, the creativity (or lack thereof), the number and depth of the recipes, the overall balance of the package. And I'll cook from it, too - at least one involved recipe, maybe more. The actual cooking is where a lot of gorgeous cookbooks go to die, and it's where understated cookbooks sometimes come out and really shine.
There'll be some surprises, too: the occasional Q&A, forays into video game cooking, and so forth. The cookbook-a-week format is the bedrock, but we'll play around with some interesting things on top of that, too.
I think the value prospect for subscribers will be superb. By the end of any given year of reading THE COOKBOOK TEST, you'll find some books that you'll be proud to add to your home library, some recipes that you'll feel confident about cooking up for your people, and some authors whose output you'll want to follow for life. You're gonna learn, you're gonna eat, you're gonna be entertained.
WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS?
My entire professional career has been a series of poorly planned lurches in the direction of things that interest me. So I've been a booker for a national radio program, a Middle East news editor, a junk food / fast food vlogger, a food editor, and so on.
Right now the shiny thing that's a few inches from my face is the concept of the cookbook - why do we have these things? What makes them good, or bad, or timeless? Virtually every conceivable recipe in existence is already out there, and most are available for free - what is the compulsion we have to keep collecting and cooking out of more of these things each year?
This to me is an excuse to dive deeply into a tradition of sharing food - sharing one's soul, really - with other people.
WHO ARE YOUR INFLUENCES?
Lots. Numerous. Many. Uhm... Rex Stout's "Nero Wolfe" novels are a big influence, not just for the voice (clean, clipped, sometimes hilarious, often deadpan) but also for their old-world culinary aesthetic. Bourdain, of course. I had the good fortune to interview him for MINNESOTA MONTHLY and I found him to be a smart, kind, and seriously down-to-earth guy. THE COOKING GENE by Michael Twitty made a deep impression on me. Serious Eats and Cooks Illustrated, writ large - strip it down, get to the science, make it work. Saveur and the Art of Eating, just mesmerizing, intelligent, well-researched stuff. I love Trina Hahnemann's COPENHAGEN FOOD. And the entire Time-Life FOODS OF THE WORLD series - that's how you do something that's sweeping, and encyclopedic, but warm and human and full of life.
In a very different sense, I am influenced by the people in the city in which I live. The taquerias up and down East Lake Street in Minneapolis. The East African restaurants throughout the metro. The Vietnamese, Thai, and Cambodian spots on University Avenue in Saint Paul. First generation Americans cooking for other first generation Americans with a ton of spice, fire, and tradition. You can't eat birria on Lake Street or fat brisket pho on University Avenue or dosas on Lyndale Avenue way out in Bloomington without learning something profound.
WHAT MAKES A GOOD COOKBOOK?
Hospitality is at the heart of every good cookbook - and that's the same for restaurants, by the way. You have to be motivated by wanting to share something delicious and delightful with someone you care about and respect. One of the most ancient and sacred relationships in humanity is that between a host and their guest - sharing bread with someone under your roof goes to the very heart of being a person. So I want to find books that have a very specific story to tell and are telling it out of love, or books that are so thoughtful and careful with their words that their impeccable recipes easily become a vessel for someone else's love.
WHAT ARE YOUR PERSONAL FAVORITE RECIPES?
I ate breakfast at a friend's house on Lake Superior years ago, and he made me and family these perfect pancakes - light, chewy, delicious. He sent me the recipe (I think it originated in the New York Times) but it didn't work out for me, so I hacked away at it. After four or five adaptations I finally got it, and these are the pancakes I still make for my wife and kids, week in, week out.
I also make buttermilk fried chicken (via THE BEST RECIPE by Cooks Illustrated, originally) that really kicks some serious ass. I've embraced the boneless breast piece approach, which is a real no-no from a classic Southern cooking approach, but makes really uniform and absolutely delicious fried chicken that gets mobbed when I bring it to picnics.
Finally, there's a no-shortcuts jerk chicken recipe I adapted from Serious Eats that is an incredible slog, particularly because I make it with homemade banana ketchup and coconut rice and beans. It's basically 24 hours of work, but the result is one of my favorite meals. It would probably be my death-row last meal request, except that I'd need to trust the cook implicitly.