The Best Cookbook in the World

Once upon a time I belonged to one of those cookbook of the month clubs. I've finally gotten wise to that racket. Those people totally have my number. I'm not the sort who will religiously fill out the little return card and get it back to them in time, thus assuring that I will be sent the "Selection of the Month", every single month. Usually, I'd just not open the package and mark it "Return to Sender" but seriously, there are just more important things to do with ones time than run to the post office every month to return a book you could have avoided having shipped to your house in the first place.

Point is, one time it worked out. I got my package and had every intention of sending it back except we were in the process of moving and it was simply not a priority. I actually packed the stupid thing and moved it to the new house. Once we were settled, I was going through the bills and discovered 2 notices for the book. Yeah, I'd had it that long. But I noticed that I was being billed for a book called Patricia Wells: At Home in Provence and I thought, "Hey, I like French stuff". So I opened it.

There were beautiful photographs of delicious looking food. I started to peruse the recipes. They sounded good. Then I did something I'd never done before. I sat down and started to read the book. Not peruse, not scan - read. It was compelling. Wells has a very down-to-earth style of writing about food. She takes incredibly simple ingredients and waxes rhapsodic about them. The recipes were all very straight forward, with short ingredient lists. The food was French but it wasn't fussy or complicated. And everything sounded soooo good: I was in the game and poultry section before I found a recipe that I thought I probably wouldn't want to make. (Something to do with quail, I think; I can't be bothered with little bony birds).

After a very satisfying read, I started to cook from the book. It was summer and I exhausted every seasonally appropriate recipe. There is a gratin of tomato, basil and eggplant which became a feature at dinner parties. (People would take seconds and then ask, "What's in this?" When told they'd always reply, "But I don't care for eggplant". "Apparently, you do now," I'd reply. Her recipe for tomato confit? A pure celebration of the fruit, assuming it's been a summer for ripening (unlike this year).

She also has some very clever takes on dishes, like a penne "risotto" that has you cook the penne in oil, as you would arborio rice, then -just as you would with the rice - adding ladlesful of chicken stock until the pasta is done; finishing it off with tomato paste and rosemary. Who knew? And it's delicious.

Her recipes for bouillabaisse, roast chicken, and leg of lamb are standards in our family now. She makes a salad dressing with red wine vinegar infused with shallots that is a dream. And the desserts? Oh, lord, don't get me started. I have a tendency to drop the ball when it comes to making desserts. Baking has its satisfactions but I usually don't feel I can be bothered. She's got a fruit tart, though, that'll rock your world and it is beyond simple. (I'm going to have to give it a post of its own; yes, yes I will).

This is what my copy of the book looks like:

As you can see, I've set it on fire. Twice.

The inside is rather worn, too:

The book falls open to the roast chicken recipe. That's how often we use it.

I have no intention of replacing this well-worn volume. It's sturdily made and while it may be crumpled and burned and stained, it's holding up. In fact, I have a fantasy that some day Pat Wells will be in Seattle for a book signing and I'll take this book and ask her to autograph it. I like to think that she'd be very flattered to know it was so well used.

Kitchen Fun. Really.

My mom, affectionately referred to in Blogopia as Dame Judi, is a wonderful woman. Of all the cooking influences in my life, and there have been notable ones, hers was the first. She is a very deft cook. Sadly, her husband (my father, Sean Connery) is not an adventurous eater. At all. So her skills were used on a regular menu of established dishes, with little room for massively creative touches lest she get a "what is this" response from the crowd.

But she encouraged me when I began to show a petite interest in cooking, allowing me to experiment and serve up my dishes to the family. She gave me my very own cookbook, a true treasure, because it had been hers before. It was a sweet little book titled Kitchen Fun: A Cookbook for Children, by Louise Price Bell, published in 1932. It was already well used when I got it, with marks and spatters on the pages and a little note beside the recipe for tapioca pudding: "icky", written in Mum's childish hand. (I write notes in my cookbooks; I realized just now that this is where I must have learned that).

Charmingly illustrated by Jessie Wilcox Smith, each ingredient for each recipe was accompanied by a little drawing, so that an early reader could still work out the recipe. The instructions are very simple, with no particular information as to cooking whys and wherefores; but then,few children will sit still for that anyway. Too much like work. True to its title what the book does do is instill a sense that cooking is fun, with fanciful dishes like Cinderella Cake, Old King Cole Spinach, and Choo Choo Salad (grated carrots combined with raisins and orange juice and served on lettuce. I don't know what is supposed to be remotely train like about this dish).

Dame Judi very patiently allowed me to try my hand, guiding and answering my questions but letting me do for myself (the best way to learn, I think). I attempted every recipe in that book which didn't sound nasty to me. (Necessarily, I heeded her advice and avoided the "icky" tapioca). The family, with rather less patience, tried my efforts.

It should be noted that, sadly, nearly every recipe in the book is quite awful; inedible in some cases. This owes to the quality (or lack thereof) of the recipes. No amount of practise or increased skill could make the fudge creamy, give the cake loft or lend savor to the salmon loaf. (The salmon loaf can accurately be described as "gak").

When The Child turned 3 her aunt and uncle gave her a cooking set, an apron and a cook book. I about plotzed when I saw it...a reissue of the self-same Kitchen Fun. Being new, it was sturdier for The Child to use. (The pages from my/Dame Judi's copy having long since separated from the cover).

I tend to be a "new one in, old one out" sort of person but I still have the old copy of the book in among the Rachael Ray, Donna Hay and Pat Wells. Of course I do. it is more than a cookbook, it is a totem.

The Child, who 0 years later is well on her way to being a very good cook and an accomplished baker, will still sometimes retreat to the childish simplicity of Kitchen Fun when she's feeling peckish. She is particularly fond of the Cinderella Cake with Jam Frosting. Unfortunately, the reissue did nothing to address the paucity of goodness in the recipes. The cake still turns out dry and flat and only the young and very sugar toothed can enjoy it. Fortunately, she's never felt compelled to prepare the salmon loaf.