Cookery Books

I like cook books. That’s because I like my food, I enjoy the taste the texture, look and smell of a well prepared dish. I also enjoy cooking, it isn’t always successful, but for me, there is a real pleasure in presenting a good dish of food to my friends and loved ones.

Some years ago, Carol and I borrowed a book from the local library, The Sunday Times Book of Real Bread (ISBN 0-87857-368-2) is a fantastic collection of recipes for and stories about bread. We enjoyed the book so I decided to get Carol a copy for a present. It took a little while for a bookshop to source one for me, and we had both forgotten about it when it arrived.

We both like books, but enjoy them for the reading and in the case of cookery books, the using of them as well. In the Real Bread book, we were amused and pleased that when we turned to the index for one of our favourite loaves, a previous reader had starred favourites, but the one were looking for was both starred and underlined in the index. Finding this confirmation of good taste from a previous reader, was for us a bonus about the second hand book we had acquired, not a blemish.

Today a similar thing has happened. My good friend Tom has given me a good copy of Plenty by Yotam Ottolenghi (ISBN 978-0-09193-368-5). I was reading through it, imagining the preparation and smell of the dishes, and admiring the fabulous photography; when I realised that a couple of the pages had red marks on them. Puzzled, I turned over the pages before I understood. It was a beetroot dish!

I like cook books, and I enjoy knowing that others like them too.