Cookbook criticism on trial

The internet wonders why bad books are rarely taken to task. Plus a sneak preview of José Andrés' 'Zaytinya,' including a marvelous recipe, and what's cooking for Easter/Passover.

Seared Scallops with Tzatziki from José Andrés’ ‘Zaytinya’

“Where the heck is all the cookbook criticism?” That was the subject line yesterday of an email newsletter to which I subscribe — Paula Forbes’ Stained Page News. After dropping a mention of New Yorker writer Helen Rosner, Forbes referenced Lottie + Doof blogger Tim Mazurek, whose recent post “Cookbooks and Criticism” has started a digital ruckus. A snippet:

“Cookbooks, like all forms of cultural production, are mostly kind of bad. But unlike film, or literature, or even opera, they seem to exist within a culture of very strange universal praise because nobody really engages with cookbooks critically. They receive press. They appear on lists of the season’s best books compiled by editors who often have not read or cooked from them.”

I do agree that there are a whole lot of bad cookbooks published every year. Part of our mission at Cooks Without Borders is to ferret out and celebrate the good and great ones. To do so, I cook from them — extensively — before reviewing them. That’s why the reviews you find over on the big site are generally glowing; the books that make it through the process (and many don’t), are the ones we recommend.

The whole thing started me wondering: Is this the first time someone noticed how rare serious cookbook reviews have become, or criticized the state of cookbook criticism? After a little digging, I found one site dedicated to serious cookbook reviews, Cookbook Review Blog, and one devoted to recipes that flop (at least I think that’s what it’s devoted to — it’s highly narrative), Kitchen Catastrophe. But not much else. (Know of someplace that does this? Tell us in a comment!)

Serious cookbook reviews were an important part of our coverage back in the aughts when I was with the L.A. Times, but as far as I can see (and I subscribe, on and off, to about 10 of them), none of the news dailies does that anymore. Roundups, yes, but not critical reviews.

So who has written about this lack? Mazarek is not the first. Take this graf from a post I love from Aesthetics for Birds. It was written in 2018 by C. Thi Nguyen, the blog’s assistant editor:

Read enough cookbook reviews, and you’ll start to notice a curious gap. Cookbook reviews mostly focus on how the recipes turn out — how tasty the dishes are, or how authentic they are. Sometimes they’ll also talk about the quality of writing, or how much you learn about some region’s culinary history  or food science or the author’s childhood or whatever. But usually they leave out what it feels like to actually cook the goddamn things.

Thank you, Mr. Nguyen! That is so beautiful. It gets to the question of why we cook — it goes so far beyond providing physical sustenance. Those of us who love to cook understand that it’s about the pleasure of being in the kitchen, reveling in the way things smell, the quiet sizzle of onions when they hit the pan, the way it feels to scoop the soft flesh from a charred eggplant, or grind cumin and coriander in a mortar with a pestle, or watch a tortilla puff on your comal. This was a reminder for me to capture more in reviews about how much joy a book lets you find as you make the dishes. (Frankie Gaw’s First Generation, included in this review of three Taiwanese cookbooks, delightfully encourages that.)

If you can’t say something nice . . .

I’ve long struggled with how to feature cookbooks I love without glossing over their flaws too much. For me, constructive criticism has always been the goal; the impulse goes back to my years as a restaurant critic. A couple years ago, a chef whose first restaurant I’d once harshly criticized hired me as a restaurant consultant (my day job). She told me she was thankful for my review because it helped her understand what it takes to run a restaurant.

How can that apply to cookbook reviews, when the book is already out there on the shelves? Frequently, when I take cookbooks to task, I’m begging the authors and their publishers to do their due diligence next time around (or in the next edition) — by carefully testing and copyediting the damn thing. Find the errors and fix them, so that their readers aren’t laying out a fortune buying ingredients and spending hours at the stove to produce a dish that flops. That happens far more frequently with books from famous chefs or food influencers with huge followings than with those from dedicated-blogger-cooks-turned-authors, by the way.

I’ve had a review of Nancy Silverton’s The Cookie that Changed My Life in the works for some time; it’s a tough one because there are so many problems in the book, as well as so much to love.

One more thought about this. Mazurek wrote in his Lottie + Doof post that “most cookbooks are not very good and very few people actually read them or cook from them, especially industry experts.” Very few, really? Lots of people I know do cook from them (though they probably don’t read them.) What about you? I’d love to know if you’re actively cooking from cookbooks, whether you buy them, how you use them.

Time to cook!

How many times has it happened to you that you made a recipe from a cookbook and the result was more beautiful than the photo in the book? I expected the opposite to happen with a recipe for Seared Scallops with Tzatziki from José Andrés about-to-be published book Zaytinya: Delicious Mediterranean Dishes from Greece, Turkey and Lebanon. (Aren’t you glad they’re telling us those three countries are Mediterranean? Who knew!?)