All About My Cookbooks

Clivia invited me to this Meme asking to know all about your cookbooks. I'm not affraid to say cookbooks are my favorite "how-to" books and I have so many of them I wasn't sure I'd be able to count them all. Two regular-size book shelves are totally stuffed with them. And this doesn't include cookbooks I owned before I moved to Canada 11 years ago. I had to give them away to friends and family because there was no-way I could bring them here with me without spending a fortune. I remember thinking about them in the plane and trying to reason my sad feeling about my gone cookbooks, telling myself they were in good homes between hands of good people who will enjoy them greatly.

3 years ago we bought a 155 years old house we decided to renovate entirely. When I tackled the task of boxing our books for moving, I was appaled by the number of boxes it took only for my cookbooks. And I felt slightly panicked too because I knew we were moving to a house where space would be at a high premium until we finish renovating the basement and the second floor. This time, I decided cookbooks wouldn't be given away... Very egoistically, I pared-down my sons' library, giving away the books they didn't use anymore and sending to the recyling bin the ones which were in bad shape. When that wasn't enough, I decided to get rid of my novels and other story books except for those which were given to me as gifts by dear ones. But I kept all of my cookbooks, even the ones I never used.

I know I'm not reasonnable with my cookbook hoarding. After all there's always new one under press and there's no point keeping a book I've never used and will probably never use. Or keeping those in which only one or two recipes are of interest to me. Let alone the ones which have it all in the cover, design and photographs while the recipes are a nearly disasters, if not mostly wrong. So right after we moved to this house 3 years ago, I decided to put some reasonning and intelligence in my cookbooks buying habits. I set up a few rules:

• I will buy only cookbooks that I've seen positively reviewed in the medias or internet.
• I won't buy cookbooks which subjects or themes are redondant with books I already have unless I've heard absolute great reviews about them from a wide range of different sources.
• I will give away one of my cookbooks for each new cookbook I buy.
• I will test recipes I'm attracted in the hundreds of magazines I have and when I know they are keepers, I will scan them, print them and organize them in a tabulated 3 inches binder before buying a new cookbook. I will not forget to put the "recipes tested" magazine in the recycling bin.

I'm happy to say I respected my rules so far... And since I havn't yet systematically tested recipes from magazines I have, I didn't allow myself to buy new cookbooks. And since lately I discovered the great ressources of food blogs, I think I might not buy any for... at least 3 more years, unless some 8th marvel of the world is published.

1. How many cookbooks do you own?
   I'm embarrassed to say I counted just those in plain sight in 2 bookshelves I placed in the corridor and there are 157 cookbooks there. I'm a bit affraid to go count those stored in the basement... For my defense, I must say I realised when counting them that quite a few (may be 30% of them) are gifts I recieved from people who know well my passion for food and cooking.
   
2. Which cookbook is the one you bought most recently?
   It's a book which is all about legumes and it features recipes from around the world. Only they are revisited and refined. "Légumineuses - Saveurs et Parfums des 4 Coins du Monde" by Alexandre Libedinsky. I made 2 or 3 recipes from it and I was satisfied but not really blown away. I will probably try 2 or 3 more before I decide on the fate of this cookbook, either it'll stay on the main floor bookshelves or it'll go downstairs in the basement. It was the last cookbook I bought 3 years ago.
   
   
3. Which cookbook is the one you read most recently?
   It's a "coffee table" cooking book I read last week-end. The huge and beautiful "Europe à la Carte" from the Koneman "Culinaria" collection. I regret I didn't keep on buying the other books in this collection because the one I have is really interesting. It's a kind of world food encyclopedia, approached from the cultural and geographic ressources of countries, in my case, countries of Europe. It's a book I have since at least 6 years and every now and then, I take it and read it almost from the 1st page to the last. Especially for you Clivia I took a picture of pages regarding Sweeden.
   
   
4. Name five cookbooks which mean a lot to you.
   The one I couldn't do without is "Baking with Julia". There's in there all the baking basics of mostly french tradition. All recipes and instructions are very detailed and all are from world-caliber chefs. I use it extensively, though it's the techniques often which I need to refer to. For exemple, I have a croissant recipe I like better than the one in Julia Child's book, but the techniques and leavening times and rythm are perfect in her book. So I make my croissant recipe to make the dough and I use Child's book for all the leavening and rolling and shaping my dough. I do this a lot with this book, as it is laced with excellent thourough technical explanations for classics such as brioche, baguette, ladyfingers, meringue... I may be will need to buy an other copy of this one by the way because mine is in terrible shape. I use it intensively.
   
   
   There's also an other very dog-eared cookbook I absolutely love and which I use very often. It's a french book about chineese cuisine. I previously said chineese cuisine I ate in Paris is quite different from the one I tasted here in Montreal. It is important that I precise in both towns I ate in china-town restaurant, anthentic chineese restaurants. I'm not comparing canadian-chineese food with chineese cooking developped to please french palates. The difference has probably to do with immigration and geographics. May be chineese who immigrate in France are not from the same region as chineese who choose to live in Canada. I really don't know but all this to say I love this french book about chineese cuisine because the recipes taste and look like what I had in Paris China-Town.
   
   The third cookbook which means a lot to me is one I bought in a second hand store. It's about traditionnal quebec cuisine and it's very old. I don't particularly like the recipes in it but my husband loves quite a few of them. When I cook from that book, the resulting meals make him think he's eating his grand-mother's cuisine. My husband grew-up with a mother who doesn't feel particularly at ease or happy in the kitchen and consequently, is quite a bad cook. So he of course put his grand-mother's cooking on a piedestal as she was a great traditional and intuitive cook. This old book I have acquired has recipes which are up to the memory of my husband's grand-mother. It makes his culinary happiness and bliss. For that it means a lot to me.
   
   
   I know that makes only 3 books but other than these, I don't have in mind an other book which would deserve a special place in my heart. I can think of my Larousse de la Cuisine Française perhaps but only because it's a gift from one of my sisters. The Larousse is laced with errors in the ingredients or describe techniques which can only lead to disasters. The recipes lack refinement and are often so simplified that the result is often just mediocre. So this book only matters to me because it's a wedding gift from my sister. I wouldn't recommend it though even to my worse ennemy. I heard the subsequent editions were improved in the quality of the recipes. I wouldn't take the risk though...
   

So here we go... You know now quite a lot about my cookbooks. I will tag for this Meme:

Kat&Satoshi in Japan and Sailu.