I recently received a cookbook to review, Maggie's Harvest by Australian cook Maggie Beer. It's an extraordinarily beautiful book, with a padded linen cover embroidered with leaves and oranges, and stuffed full of lush photographs and brightly colored ribbons. And at 736 pages it's a hefty one, too.
Maggie's Harvest is clearly a labor of love and I have a lot of respect and admiration for that. But between the upholstered cover and the $125 price tag, I find myself a little reluctant to bring it into the kitchen. I wonder, is it OK for a cookbook to be this high-maintenance and expensive? More