Pulp kitchen
Every chef and his sheepdog is bringing out a cookbook these days but are they all worth the paper they're printed on? Myffy Rigby gets the pulp on the grease paper
The amount of cookbooks being released every year is completely out of control with numbers up into the hundreds. It's a great marketing tool, sure, but the amount showing up in bargain bins mere months after release might suggest that the hype far outstrips the demand.
That isn't to say that every Donna, Bill or Kylie gets the glossy, though. "In a crowded cookbook market we really need it to have an original idea," says publishing director Kay Scarlett. "We've turned away very high profile chefs who just want to dump their recipe database and sell it as a book. Books have to be more than a re-telling of a restaurant menu no matter how high the profile of the chef or restaurateur."
Professional cookbook author Margaret Fulton calls hooey on the whole thing. "I can understand chefs wanting to have a book for their restaurant but a chef's in a totally different environment to the home cook. It's not realistic. I myself don't think it works as well as the old style cookery book writer like me who actually had a team testing all the recipes. We'd cook at home so it was in a home situation, whereas chefs have a lot of the chopping and the sorting already done for them. They've got a whole team of specialised chefs so when a chef is really in a top restaurant, he's creating beautiful food to eat but it's a different world to what you have at home - different ingredients and techniques. For example, if you're making a sauce at home you have to start from scratch with the stock, and a lot of chefs don't think of that. It gives you a false comfort zone of how easy it is to prepare food."
However, there are books that are written by chefs that have become culinary bibles both in commercial kitchens and in the home. Take the late, great revolutionary French chef August Escoffier, for instance. "Escoffier is like a piece of software that put in place all the culinary methods they now use in French hotels," says Bilson's chef, Tony Bilson. "There were a lot of other cookbooks around at that time, but Escoffier is the most comprehensive."
Tony's book collection is impressive and is a mix of contemporary books like Greg Doyle's new cookbook Pier, to modern French classics like Jacques Maniere's guide to steaming and, of course, Alain Ducasse's book, the Culinary Encyclopedia. "Ducasse is the new Auguste Escoffier," says Bilson, "and is now the pre-eminent modern chef. If I need a recipe I can just look it up in Ducasse without having to try and remember it myself because I know he'll have a recipe for it."
It's hard on home-cooks just starting out, too. With a plethora of cookbooks out, where do you even start? "Start by looking at and discussing all the books you have at home with your parents. These are the books that have been tried and tested and used again and again and are the most valuable resource you have," says veteran chef Janni Kyritsis. "But once you're talking on a professional level, you need to have Escoffier. And for the most instructional books ever, you need the complete set of Time Life cookbooks. And of course, anything has to do with Elizabeth David - I could read her books over and over again."