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A Different Kind of Bedtime Reading
Not everyone likes to curl up with a good cookbook for bedtime reading. But then, not everyone plans vacations around the best markets or orders the quirkiest thing on the menu (as long as it is not too expensive) just to see if it works.
This is for those who do, especially for those who are avid cookbook readers. The other two, the searching for markets and intriguing dishes, fall in place naturally. Because the cookbook reader is curious about food, likes to see what’s available wherever, and how different cooks/chefs handle their materials.
Obviously not all cookbooks are readable. Many are much too straightforward, recipes only, uninspired, and just plain boring. Maybe the recipes are the main reason for picking up a cookbook, but, as the readable cookbooks show, recipes need context, a story, something beyond a list of ingredients and instructions to tantalize the taste buds and tempt.
This is not a survey what’s out there—far too many to even try— but suggestions about a few authors and their books that have been fun, and informative, to read over the years. They include Nina Simonds (Spices of Life, A Spoonful of Ginger), Ming Tsai (Simply Ming), Patricia Wells (at Home in Province and others), Sarah Lea Chase (Nantuckett Open House, Pedaling through Province/Burgundy), Corinne Trang (Essentials of Asian Cuisine), James Oseland (Cradle of Flavor), and, of course, Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid, among others.
Admittedly, the works of the husband and wife team of Alford and Duguid are more suited for a coffee table than bedtime reading but their spectacular culinary journeys are well worth the heft. Skilled writers, accomplished photographers and cooks who understand what makes a recipe work, their books take readers into markets and home kitchens in obscure corners of the world.
In their James Beard award winning Flatbreads and Flavors, and in Seductions of Rice, for instance, they roam the globe, describing customs, ways of cooking, foods and offering recipes, along with photos and stories. In Mangos and Curry Leaves, their target area is the Indian sub-continent and in Hot Sour Salty Sweet, they traverse Southeast Asia using the same photo-journalist/cook approach to describe those tantalizing cuisines.
Their newest book, Beyond the Great Wall, provides an excursion beyond the usual Cantonese, Szechuan, Hunan cuisines into what they label “the other China,” And that makes this book particularly interesting. What do we know, much less hear, about the foods of Tibet, Kumming, Inner Mongolia and places along the Silk Road, or about the people, their customs, daily life, how they cook and eat? Despite its heft, Beyond the Great Wall makes fascinating reading, even if not at bedtime.
Another newcomer to the favorite bedtime reading list is Chocolate & Zucchini (subtitled Daily Adventures in a Parisian Kitchen) by Clotilde Dusoulier. While the very title makes one wonder how chocolate dipped zucchini would taste, the book apparently is an outgrowth of the author’s blog of the same name.
But what really made the book a bedtime reading candidate was the author’s description of her “collection of new creations and old favorites:” “Each recipe comes with a story, because we all know that a dish is much more than a list of ingredients and a set of instructions: it draws its life and color, its emotional setting, and the little anecdotes of its genesis.”
In that simple sentence, Dusoulier captured the essence of a readable cookbook, the reason why those worth curling up with at bedtime offer so much more than a list of ingredients and a set of instructions.
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