The Pedant in the Kitchen

Recipe for success

A regular cookbook cull is vitally important, writes Julian Barnes

The Guardian, Saturday March 8 2003

How many cookbooks do you have? a) Not enough; b) Just the right number; c) Too many? If you answered b) you are disqualified for lying or complacency or not being interested in food, or (scariest of all) having worked everything out perfectly. You score points for a) and also for c) but to score maximum points, you need to have answered a) and c) in equal measure, a) because there is always something new to be learned, someone coming along to make it all clearer, easier, more foolproof, more authentic; c) because of the regular mistakes made when applying a).

The main, easily accessible shelf in our kitchen holds 24 books; the two higher shelves 34; the shelf in the hole where the washing-machine lives contains an immediate back-up of 20; there are six in the lavatory, and I would guess another 10 to 15 scattered round the house. Nearly 100, let's say. Is this a) Modest; b) Just right; c) Obscenely large? As before, the correct answer is a) plus c). Every so often, in an attempt to reduce c) to b), a cull takes place, and evidence of various unfulfilled culinary ambitions (a surprisingly high proportion of them relating to stir-fry) will be Oxfammed.

The next cull, for instance, will have to consider Nigel Slater's juice book, Thirst, which I bought a few months ago. Nothing wrong with the book, I'm sure. The main problem is, we don't have a juicer. It's not that I haven't tried. I once read a newspaper survey of rival machines, and sent off a cheque to someone who proved a fly-by-night merchant. Why did I believe that a firm with apparently green credentials must necessarily be honest? (And yes, I did write to Dear Anna, and she was extremely sympathetic, but... well, that's another story).

So: a juice book but no juicer. The logic points to Oxfam. On the other hand, this could be the year of a successful juicer purchase; and it's a very attractively produced book with a citrus-coloured, rubberised binding you can sponge down when you squirt all over it. Though I suppose you're more likely to squirt all over the open pages, which aren't rubberised - maybe they should have been, like that circa 1900 Paris newspaper printed on vulcanised paper so that you could read it in the bath... Oh, all right then, keep Thirst at least until the cull after next.

If you're just starting up the vertiginous curve of cookbook-ownership, allow me to offer certain words of advice, all of it paid for in money.

1) Never buy a book because of its pictures. Never, ever, point at a photo in a cookbook and say, "I'd like to make that." You can't. I once knew a commercial photographer who specialised in food, and believe me, the post-production work that recently gave us a slimline Kate Winslet is as nothing compared to what they can do to food.

2) Never buy books with tricksy layouts: for instance, one with each page sliced horizontally in three so that in theory you can summon up a near-infinite array of three-course meals without having to keep flicking back and forth.

3) Avoid books with too wide a compass - anything remotely called "Great Dishes of the World" - or too narrow a one: "Sargasso Seafood" or "Waffle Wonderment".

4) Never buy the chef's recipe book on sale on the way out from a restaurant. Remember: that's why you went to the restaurant in the first place - to eat their cooking, not your version of it.

5) Never buy a juice book if you haven't a juicer.

6) Resist, if possible, attractive anthologies of regional recipes, which you are tempted to buy as souvenirs of foreign holidays. I proved this rule with the nec plus ultra of cookbooks, one devoted to Cantal cuisine. It hogged space for years, constantly evading the cull on sentimental grounds, and I never cooked from it once. Cantal food tastes best in the Cantal, where it rains a lot and there is no other choice of cuisine.

7) Avoid books of famous recipes from the past, especially if reproduced in facsimile edition with period woodcuts.

8) Never replace your tatty old Jane Grigson or Elizabeth David with a new version containing exactly the same text, even if it does now have pictures (see 1). You will never use it and will go back to the original tatty paperback because it has your marginal notes and you feel comfortable with it.

9) Never buy a collection of recipes put together for charity, especially one with TV newsreaders offering the secret of their favourite dish. Just give the cover price direct to the charity: that way, they will get more, and you won't have to cull next time round.

10) Remember that cookery writers are no different from other writers: some have only one book in them. Consider this possibility when the new one comes out.

Regular culling - as much as specific purchase - will leave you in the end with a core kitchen library suited to your taste-buds, skill-level, ambition and pocket. Over the years, mine has ended up being built around the following: one encyclopaedia (Alan Davidson's immense Oxford Companion to Food having ousted the Larousse), two classic compendia (The Joy of Cooking and Constance Spry), two triple-decker course-books (Prue Leith and Delia), half a dozen Jane Grigsons, three or four Elizabeth Davids, three Marcella Hazans, two River Cafes, a couple of Simon Hopkinsons, one Alastair Little, one Richard Olney, one Jocelyn Dimbleby, one Frances Bissell, one Myrtle Allen, one Rowley Leigh.

These are books in regular use; nearby are several dozen in occasional service. Some books I only ever consult for a single recipe: such as Margaret Costa's Four Seasons Cookery Book for smoked haddock soufflé, or Susan Campbell's English Cookery New and Old for autumn pudding (a far superior version of summer pudding, with elderberries, blackberries and crab apples).

Why, since these are so trustworthy, don't I try others from the same book? I don't know. Then why not photocopy the one recipe you use, paste it into your own recipe book and Oxfam the original? Because a continuing loyalty to the actual page on which the recipe was first read somehow prevents this.

Ah yes, your own recipe book. You will need some kind of small scrapbook or filing system for all those newspaper and magazine cuttings. Another word of advice: don't stick them in until you've made the dish at least twice and know it has some chance of longevity.

Such a book will, over the years, testify to the strange trajectory of your cooking. A cuttings cookbook will bring back moments in the same way as a photograph album. I used to make that? And that really stodgy vegetable pie? And that thingy in filo pastry which used to make me so cross? And didn't I cook this the night when... You will be surprised by how much emotional and psychological history you might be storing up when you innocently paste in a slightly stained newspaper clipping.

And now I think I'll go out and buy a juicer. So that I won't have to throw out my juice book next time, or next time but one.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2003/mar/08/julianbarnes.houseandgarden

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