More Than Just a Cookbook

You could count these on your Goodreads challenge.

When is a cookbook more than just a cookbook? When it understands that the best recipes have rich back stories. Hello, welcome back. As ever, thank you so much for being on this page and reading my little thoughts on food and life. This week, I thought I would bring you three books that, to my mind, are the perfect meeting of food and words.

The cookbooks dreams are made of.

I love a cookbook that lets you live vicariously through the thoughts and experiences of the writer as well as providing amazing recipes and I wonder if this is the natural result of so a plethora of recipes at our fingertips online. A good cookbook now needs to be more than just a compendium of recipes. With the thought that you also might love or be looking for something similar in your life, here are three of my favourite cookbooks that are more than just recipes.

The Little Library Cookbook

I love this book. I love it so much. It so perfectly scratches the itch of wanting to deeply inhabit the worlds you read about in books. The Little Library Cook Book by Kate Young collects a series of recipes of food inspired by different novels. Each page begins with a quote from the book that features the food in the recipes. Some of these recipes are foods central too the story of the book like the Enormous Round Chocolate Mud Cake from Roald Dahl’s Matilda or , others are interesting cultural insights to the novel’s context such as the Jollof Rice from Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

Some of my favourites from this book are the sausage rolls which I made and wrote about here, the Winnie-the-Pooh Hunny and Rosemary Cakes which I’ve made for my husband’s birthday more than once. This is the book that truly deepened my passion for cooking and food as it allowed me to bring some of my favourite stories to life. I have spent more than one late night in the kitchen preparing cinnamon rolls from The Goldfinch and crumpets from Rebecca, ready to eat for breakfast the next morning. She somehow captures the tone of each book in her recipes. Even when made by my inexpert hands her cinnamon rolls are as classic and comforting as I imagine the Barbour’s home to be in The Goldfinch and her crumpets as decadent as the glistening pile on the breakfast table in front of the second Mrs DeWinter. Each recipe also includes a little reflection on Young’s interaction with the novel and the food in the recipe. If you’re a reader and a baker I can’t recommend this book enough.

The Farm Table

This is a new addition to my collection, a leaving gift from our old church that I adore so far. Julius Roberts is a chef, farmer and advocate for seasonal eating and sustainable agriculture. If I have ever served you a zucchini tart, I got that recipe from him.

The Farm Table organises recipes seasonally and Julius includes reflections on life on his Dorsetshire small holding in each seasonal section. As I wrote about here, eating seasonally goes a long way in combating the climate impacts of food production and Julius’ recipes make the most of what is best in each season. I’ve tried to stick with the summer recipes in recent months and have enjoyed the ratatouille galette and courgette (Zucchini) pasta, chicken traybake particularly. As we move into Autumn in Australia, I’m excited to try the slow roasted crispy pork belly and the damson frangipane tart in the Autumn section of the book. I must say that the anticipation that comes with eating seasonally is really lovely. You eat one collection of foods just long enough that you love it, enjoy it and start to get sick of it and look forward to what is coming in season next! The only downside is following seasonal content creators online can mean always being out of step with their seasons in the southern hemisphere, so having a static cookbook that I can follow in my own time is perfect.

The photos of farm life are stunning and the writing is beautiful and xxx, so much so that my toddler and I have laid in bed and read The Farm Table before lights out more than once. I can’t recommend it enough.

Dishoom

I have never been to Mumbai, the city that was known as Bombay under British colonial rule, but I simultaneously feel like I have been on a walking tour after pouring over Dishoom’s “highly subjective guide to Bombay with map” (this cookbook comes with a poster!). The written introductions to each section, paired with beautiful photography generates the atmosphere of Bombay streets and brings the reader along on a tour of Bombay, punctuated by meals throughout the day (including first, second and third dinner).

“Your first stop of the evening will take you to the bustling precinct of Kala Ghoda…” the introduction to “First Dinner” reads, “it is somewhat removed from the Bombay we have seen today…”

These recipes are not quick and contain ingredients I don’t typically stock in my pantry, which makes them exciting but needing to be planned ahead. So far I have made The House Black Dahl, Chicken Ruby (named in reference to rhyming slang associated with the 1950’s pop singer Ruby Murray. Ruby Murray - Curry), Chole Bhature, a delicious dish of chickpeas and potatoes seasoned with tea and spices. I’m looking forward to trying the biriyani and some of the sweet and breakfast recipes such as the Breakfast Lassi and Nankhatai, a biscuit similar to shortbread. My husband is a recipe ignorer, adapter and improver, whereas I am a strict recipe follower. A cookbook like Dishoom goes a long way in justifying my position as a recipe follower because there truly is something special about getting to enjoy the menu of a restaurant on the other side of the world, created in your own kitchen.

Dishoom: From Bombay with Love by Shamil Thakrar, Kavi Thakrar and Naved Nasir, Bloomsbury
The Little Library Cookbook by Kate Young, Bloomsbury
The Farm Table by Julius Roberts, Ebury Press