Single Focus Cookbooks
I’ve been doing a lot of experimenting in the kitchen over the quarantine, trying out various new recipes focused on some favorite foods, and trying my partner’s patience occasionally as well as I insist on plowing on through with weird culinary projects that might turn out to be a disaster when she just wants dinner. Sorry, my love! I do like to try out new things and, more often than not, things work out well.
Doing holiday shopping at various local boutiques, it’s hard not to notice the many novelty cookbooks on the shelves, each attempting to provide a comprehensive guide to one ingredient or dish. Tracking them down at the library to check them out can be a fun way to see some interesting new ideas, though some offer more usable ideas than others.
Here are a few I tried out!
As the stereotypical “millennial” “hipster” food item, Lara Ferroni’s An Avocado a Day is a fun, though inessential, guide to utilizing avocados in some surprising and inventful ways. Like Ferroni, I came into avocados as an adult, but I really don’t think I would mind eating them on a daily basis, so I was curious to find some new ways to incorporate them even more into our menu.
The book provides some interesting background and history of avocado, including the varieties of avocado available and how they differ, and some useful tips on choosing an avocado of optimum ripeness (always a bit of an issue). Ferroni even describes some other avocado related ingredients I hadn’t heard of, such as using avocado leaves as a seasoning or even ways to use the seeds.
As for the recipes themselves, there’s an interesting mix of savory and sweet uses, a good balance of vegetarian/vegan and meat-heavy recipes, though all in all, most are simply familiar dishes like guacamole (four different types) or just find a way to include avocado in some way (i.e., in scrambled eggs, with oysters). In the end, I think I’ve found just as many good avocado recipes in other books, but here they are just concentrated together.
Growing up, I always thought of pumpkin as one of my favorite foods. Pumpkin pie was my favorite dessert throughout the fall, and I always enjoyed pumpkin shakes, pumpkin bread, pumpkin butter, all that sort of autumnal, mostly sweet dishes endemic to Northern US cultures. Now, I realize that is probably mostly due to being one of those autumn, Halloween loving types and the fact that, it turns out, I love winter squash in general.
As a squash variety, pumpkin may not be the most ideal, even the sweeter “pie” cultivars, being in general starchier, earthier types than say, butternut or kuri or kombucha squashes. They work fine in a lot of recipes calling for something squashy but not too delicate, I feel.
As far as pumpkin themed cookbooks go, though, there seems to be only so much you can do with them, really, and this one, Pumpkin It Up! is pretty typical. It doesn’t provide much of a background on culinary usages of pumpkin, though the author does give a nice rundown of preparing pumpkin for her various recipes, whether baking it or steaming it for puree rather than relying on cans, which is useful I think. The recipes included tend towards sweeter, even the more savory ones, but the bulk is made up of dessert or dessert-like bread items. I have found much more interesting uses for pumpkin in some other, non-pumpkin focused world cuisine books, and for squash in general, I’d recommend the Northern Plates entry Smitten with Squash.
Another entry in the Northern Plates series, the Minnesota Historical Society’s collection of culinary works celebrating local produce, Rhubarb Renaissance focuses on this generally underappreciated early summertime crop, which begins popping up at local farmers’ markets here in Minnesota by May and June. Like pumpkin, rhubarb is still very seasonal and usually regulated to a sugary dessert, its natural tartness cut with strawberries or some other filler, so I was very curious to see what other uses for this ingredient Rhubarb Renaissance would share.
Writer Kim Ode sketches out a bit of the history of rhubarb, traditionally known locally simply as “pie plant” from its roots in Asia to its legal reclassification as a fruit in the US by 1947, before discussing some ways to use it. Her tips for freezing it for use in the winter months and a couple of foundation recipes for savory and sweet roasted rhubarb for use in various recipes listed later are particularly useful.
All in all, though, while these base recipes have a lot of promise they only really show up in a handful of the listed recipes, which I found a little uninspiring. Rhubarb in quesadillas, for instance. Sure, sounds good, but nothing groundbreaking. I also must admit I found a few of the recipes to be a little culturally appropriative in their titles as well, including such things as “shrimp in kimonos” and “chop-chop” stir fry. Focusing on rhubarb’s use in US Midwestern cuisine seems to be where the cookbook’s strengths really are.
An interesting tome weighing in at a full five pounds or so, culinary writer Vincenzo Buonassisi’s The Pasta Codex compiles one thousand and one different pasta recipes, arranged by main ingredient, from vegetables to dairy to seafood to meat. First published in Italy in 1974, it features a short history of pasta from an Italian point of view and is really quite the treasure trove of pasta knowledge.
The recipes themselves are rather short and to the point for the most part, though often lacking such things as cooking times making the codex feel like a resource for a slightly more adventurous home cook, but also many of them are refreshingly simple and easy. With each chapter beginning with the simplest (buttered pasta, for example) before moving onto the most complex, even for vegetarians and vegans, the book features hundreds of suitable ideas, and definitely celebrates this versatile and comforting ingredient.
I’ve had a lot of success with what I’ve tried in the codex so far.
I’ve always been a fan of mushrooms, though to be honest, I’d never really been in a place to try this beloved, legendary, and notoriously expensive fungus. So when I scored a few Oregonian black truffles for an affordable price at a local market a couple of years ago, I was pretty excited.
The truffle cookbooks I had access to dated back to an earlier culinary period- I made some truffle butter and used it for a parmesan butter pasta, which turned out nicely. However, the depth of information provided in Cooking With Truffles made me wish I had this book then to give me some great tips and ideas on how to make the most out of my precious fungal prizes.
Chef Susi Gott Séguret writes an accessible and informative culinary work, exploring the historical and biological backgrounds of the truffle species, their seasonal nature, and experiments in truffle cultivation across the world, including in Tennessee and North Carolina, innovations that may increase their availability.
Seguret’s culinary advice is practical and easy to use, discussing using truffles in various forms, including the oft artificial truffle oil and truffle salt, stretching the pungent ingredient as far as you can. The recipes she includes, including influences from both her Appalachian background and French training, look very appealing, including a good number of vegetarian options, with a special focus on the four simple ingredients most tied to truffles- eggs, potatoes, pasta, and, rice. Even if one doesn’t have any truffles on hand, Cooking with Truffles is an interesting read, with some useful ideas for even times when you’re still waiting to get your hands on a bit of truffle. I’m looking forward to getting a chance to try some out again someday!
Okay, what should I plan for dinner?