It's autumn, that wonderful time of year when publishers are scrambling to release their latest cookbooks in hopes of capturing our attention (and dollars!) as the gift-buying and feasting season revs up towards December's big finale. This usually makes me happy, as I am generally a lover of feasts and gift-buying and cookbooks. Especially cookbooks. But even geeks like me might be taken aback at the avalanche of cooking titles pouring forth right now. Just how many can we look forward to choosing from? Read on for my astonishing discovery.
This morning I counted the number of cookbooks that are slated to be released between August and December of this year, according to this article from Eater. I counted twice and still came up with 165. And even more astonishing: when I added in the titles from the Booze and Memoir/History categories, it brought us to a whopping 195 titles. And the truth is, while it's obvious that the person who compiled this list was quite thorough, there probably are a few titles missing, especially those from smaller publishers.
So roughly 200 food and cookery titles will be released this Fall. They can't all be good, so how will we know which ones to choose?
Lucky for you, many of us here in The Kitchn love to review cookbooks! We'll bravely plunge into the cookbook avalanche and hopefully emerge with a few titles to recommend. We'll test recipes, read those introductions and recipe headnotes, evaluate the sturdiness of bindings. Ingredient lists and cooking times will be carefully scrutinized, rouge suggestions for including bacon will be thoroughly investigated. So stay tuned!
Do you plan on purchasing a cookbook this fall? What's your cookbook review strategy? Are you excited by this abundance? Dismayed? Disgusted? Is there a title you're especially looking forward to?
Related: Kitchen Contemplation: How Many Cookbooks is Too Many Cookbooks?
(Image: Dana Velden)
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Wow, the only ones I would consider buying are the one on Canadian food culture and "Dining With the Washingtons."
Of course, I have little patience for celebrity chefs and am sick of people publishing cookbooks with the same old recipes in them (except the true classics, like cream biscuits) or just tarting them up unnecessarily.
I want a cookbook full of simple, good, relatively easy, from-scratch recipes that don't require ridiculously obscure ingredients. Andrea Reusing's "Cooking in the Moment" comes close, but no cigar, mainly because it's pretty specific to NC, where she lives.
I'll probably just stick to my favorite cookbooks: pre-1960 ones chock full of unique, clever, and from-scratch goodness.
I'm excited about Melissa Clarke's new cookbook and also the new pizza and flatbread from my favorite Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day authors!
I'm in the search of a good vegetarian cookbook that includes pictures for all, if not, most, recipes. It must be worth the money! At work, we sell a couple of vegetarian and vegan books. One has a great amount of delicious recipes but lacks photos, the other is mostly hype, filled with great looking photos but most of the recipes are either soups, stews or mushy looking food. :-/
I'm mostly excited about the Serious Eats book coming out in November. And Alton Brown's new Good Eats volume, although, I think if I bring any more than that into the house, my boyfriend is going to declare mutiny.
@Anita83 have you looked at the new-ish Ottolenghi book, Plenty? It's amazing. There aren't photos for everything but there are still quite a few.
I bought Homesick Texan's new cookbook! I love it!
I think the only one I'm looking at for this year is Good Eats 3: The Later Years, although I may end up with Jamie Oliver's new cookbook, Meals in Minutes, as well.
Having recently bought another cookbook, then being forced to reorganised my massive pile of cookbooks (not-enough-space!!), I think it's time for me to slow down!
The next purchases will however be the Homesick Texan and Joy the Baker books. Been waiting for those (not to mention Smitten Kitchen's) for years now.
@Anita83: have you tried this one? http://www.amazon.co.uk/Vegetarian-Alice-Hart/dp/1742663397 I LOVE it!
There is a wonderful book I discovered a few years ago, called "Eat My Words:Reading Women's Lives Through the Cookbooks They Wrote" by Janet Theophano, Palgrave, 2002. It is not a collection of recipes, but a look at how women have used cookbooks "to assert their individuality, develop their minds, and structure their lives". This is a look at recipe/housekeeping books written from the early 17th century to modern times by women who wrote them, learned from them, and organised their lives or the lives of people they cooked or kept house for. From the intro: "There is much to be learned from reading a cookbook besides how to prepare food...for me, leafing through a cookbook is like peering through a kitchen window. The cookbook, like the diary and the journal, evokes a universe inhabited by women...The stories cookbooks tell are about life and its sustenance in different eras and in different places, they are about enjoyment and desire, family and friendships, stability and change, and the contentment and longings of lives lived in worlds remote from our own". This is a great book for those who love cookbooks (as I do).
I, myself, have my great grandmother's ledger book, chock full of her own recipes, household accountings and medicinal recipes. I treasure it.