Shelf Portrait (Number Eight)

Once upon a time I had about twice as many cookbooks as I do now. The survivors are shown in the picture above. They occupy the bottom shelf in the downstairs bookcase. In recent years I’ve been on something closer to an ‘eat to live’ regime than a ‘live to eat’ one, owing to a variety of food sensitivities and a need to keep my weight under some semblance of control. These books get opened quite seldom now – they’re the remnants of a tastier past.

I came by these volumes by a variety of means. Anjum Anand’s Indian Every Day caught my eye in a Malmö bookshop. I learned of the existence of Eula Mae’s Cajun Kitchen (“Cooking Through the Seasons on Avery Island”) while searching Amazon for On Avery Island, i.e. the debut album by Neutral Milk Hotel. Catalan Cuisine and A Culínaria Paulista Tradicional (the latter featuring recipes from the São Paulo area of Brazil) were sent to me by on-line acquaintances. Welsh Heritage Food & Cooking was a gift from my mother. The Downhome Household Almanac & Cookbook (with its hundreds of recipes from my late wife’s native Newfoundland) was sent to us by our Canadian niece. We already had a copy, albeit a worn & tattered one, that this one replaced.

Some others have seen a great deal of use: The Conran Cookbook, Indian Every Day and The Gastronomy of Italy have all lost their damaged dust-jackets, while the spine of Jaimie Oliver’s first publication The Naked Chef is faded, cracked and stained. On the other hand, Rick Bayless' Authentic Mexican and the Sopranos Family Cookbook have seen much less in the way of active service. In the case of the former title, the difficulty of obtaining many of the necessary ingredients in Northern Europe proved too much of an impediment in re-creating its recipes. Even then, it allowed for some tantalizing ‘window-shopping’ onto another cuisine.