by Beth Cronk, Litchfield head librarian
Cookbooks are the most popular kind of nonfiction in
libraries today. I love to look through
cookbooks with photos even if I never cook anything from them. Food can be so beautiful! Our library has a wide range of new
cookbooks, from barbecue to Thai to meat to vegetarian. You can search our catalog under the subject
“cookbooks” for newer books or “cookery” for older things; the Library of
Congress term changed not long ago. You
can also browse our library’s large cookbook collection in the 641
section.
Bobby Flay’s Barbecue Addiction seems a good choice for
the 4th of July. This
cookbook is a tie-in with the Food Network show of the same name. Bobby delves into true barbecuing, which is
slow and involves smoke, but he includes some grilling recipes in this book as
well. He also shares recipes for drinks
and side dishes to serve with your barbecued food for a backyard get-together. On Amazon, the customer reviews say it’s a
practical cookbook that uses ingredients most people would have on hand.
The Meat Hook Meat Book is written by Tom Mylan, the
co-owner of the Meat Hook artisanal meat market in Brooklyn. Mylan gives instructions on how to cut up
whole birds (chickens, turkeys, etc.) as well as sides of beef and whole
pigs. He covers the topics of blending
ground meat for burgers and making sausage, and he includes some recipes as
well. The professional reviews of this
book are good, but the ordinary people on Amazon say that the recipes are odd.
Apparently both the recipes and the language tend to be very salty. Maybe that’s not unusual for butchers in New
York City.
Simple Thai Food is a book I discovered on a list of
bestselling cookbooks in the Midwest this spring. The author Leela Punyaratabandhu is originally from Bangkok, and
she has an award-winning Thai cooking blog.
Her recipes are said to be authentic rather than typical of Thai
restaurants in the U.S., but don’t worry: pad Thai, spring rolls, curry, and
satay are included. The author
simplifies traditional cooking methods and lets American cooks know which
ingredients can be substituted with foods easier to find at the grocery store. I may try this cookbook out myself since I enjoy
Thai food but a peanut allergy in my family makes Thai restaurants too risky to
bring the whole gang along.
Food writer Mark Bittman says that you can lose weight and
dramatically improve your health by eating vegan all day and eating animal
products only at supper. His new book, The VB6 Cookbook: More than 350 Recipes for Healthy Vegan Meals All Day and Delicious Flexitarian Dinners at Night aims to give people the specifics to
make “vegan before 6” a manageable lifestyle.
Speaking of vegetables, our library has added some new
cookbooks with kale recipes in them to help you participate in this year’s One
Vegetable One Community program. We have Brassicas: Cooking the World’s Healthiest Vegetables, The Book of Kale: The Easy-to-Grow Superfood, and Wild About Greens. You’re likely to find more kale recipes in
other vegetable cookbooks, as well.
Stop in to find beautiful cookbooks that will give you the
recipes you need to make any kind of food you like. The possibilities are endless.
