Cooking By The Book

I love to read cookbooks. I read them when I’m hungry but can’t eat, when I want to travel but can’t go, and when I want to learn about how other people live, but don’t know any other people.

But I’ve had to wade through a lot of shit lately trying to find a few worthwhile cookbooks. It seems to me that there is more junk published now than ever before. Since cookbooks have become the biggest source of publishing revenue next to the Bible, all kinds of jerks have tried to jump on the bandwagon.

Most of the junky cookbooks are gimmicky. Who needs The Between Brunch and Dinner Cookbook? If you own even a few cookbooks, the recipes in the gimmicky books are repetitious. Often, the gimmick cookbooks are quickies, slapped together to make a fast buck, and contain poorly tested or incomplete recipes, or recipes taken from some other cookbook and simplified.