Jay Rayner has been doing a weekly column on notable cookbooks – notable to him, to cooking, to cultural moments. I happen to love Rayner’s writing style and always read him anyway but these columns, every Sunday for the last few months, I have especially enjoyed. This week is the last one and it touches on the ‘cookbooks’ we create for ourselves, often not books at all but folders full of clippings, binders full of notes, etc.
It reminded me of my mother’s ‘cookbook’ which encompassed both folders full of clippings, spirals full of her absurdly neat handwriting. No, seriously you have no idea – she may drive me nuts but there is NO DENYING the woman has the best handwriting on earth. Don’t even start me on her colour-coded note taking. But I digress…
Now, my mother’s collection isn’t full of hand me down recipes – firstly, because her own mother couldn’t cook to save her life and wasn’t interested in it anyway. Secondly, my paternal grandmother who LOVED to experiment and try new things in the kitchen made all her notes in the cookbooks she’d bought (and those are hand-me-down treasures I intend to grab as my own).
So, my mother’s collection is made up of (in the spirals), very much her personal working set of recipes with tweaks from the originals or her own originals) and (in the folders), things she wants to try or tried. It sits along a vast collection of cookbooks (some of which also contain clippings).
A few years ago, I was over dog sitting for my parents while they took one of their trips to … wherever they were going. Sometimes I lose track. And I thought a good way to kill time between dog walks would be to tackle organising the clippings into a 3-ring binder. It took days. DAYS. And several hundred clear inserts. Thank goodness they had them at the dollar store.
My systems actually stood up well for about a year – but muscle memory is a powerful thing and more clippings were clipped, web pages printed and folders filled. My parents are moving house soon and once the pandemic travel restrictions end, I hope to see them and those folders in their new house. And who knows, I may give it another go.
Anyway, a superbly enjoyable finish to a very enjoyable series: The old scrapbook recipe collections that tell the story of our lives
Another favourite from the series was the column on Claudia Roden: A taste of home: Claudia Roden’s majestic Book of Jewish Food
He had me on side right at the start with his view on gefilte fish (and to which I say AMEN) : “Once cooled, the fishy jelly had the texture of phlegm and the mixture of white fish, matzo meal and a little sugar tasted of carelessness. ”
I once described this vile concoction as the perfect food except for the small details of taste, colour, texture and smell. My father adores it. He’s always been… culinarily problematic.
But, in addition to finding that moment of culinary solidarity – this is a great read about a great book (naturally there is a copy here on the shelves) and about both what inspired it and what/who it influenced.