I lied.
A few posts back I said that it was a rare cookbook that enticed me enough to spend money these days.
Yet this month, two new Australian cookbooks have captivated me. (Australians among you probably have already pored through them hungrily … they’ve been out since before Christmas…) How lucky am I: in the mail this month I received a copy of Greg and Lucy Malouf’s wonderful Turquoise. (Thanks Greg…) Sub-titled "A chef’s travels in Turkey”, it’s a rare and beautiful thing. Lisa Cohen’s in situ photography (below) and William Meppem’s pics of Greg’s dishes, Lucy’s engrossing travelogue and, of course, his recipes, come together in a stunning package.
Photographs: Lisa Cohen, Turquoise (Hardie Grant Books, 2007)
Greg is a genius, a national treasure. Born in Australia of Lebanese heritage, he has spent his cooking career discovering and interpreting the food of his ancestors and the food of the Middle East. Through his Melbourne restaurants (O’Connell’s and MoMo) and books co-authored with my good friend Lucy (Arabesque, Moorish, Saha, Turquoise, all published by published by Hardie Grant Books), he has introduced these flavours to Australians and trained a generation of chefs.
From Turquoise, I’ll be trying: these crunchy zucchini flowers stuffed with haloumi, mint and ginger; spicy fried calamari with whipped avocado, yoghurt and herb sauce; sultana yoghurt cake; and pomegranate and vodka sorbet.
The thing is, every Malouf book adds something new to the canon of food literature — there’s no regurgitating or rehashing; instead, you’ll find Greg’s original recipes, the vicarious travel and discovery of a new place, Lucy’s lovely words, and, always, terrific photography. (I’ve heard a rumour about what their next offering might be, but I think I may be sworn to secrecy…)
Photograph: William Meppem, Turquoise (Hardie Grant Books, 2007)
And Turquoise isn’t the only Australian food book to have captivated me in the past few weeks: I’ve always loved Karen Martini’s recipes and her new book, Cooking at Home, is yet another treasure. Her recipes in the Sunday Life magazine are always fabulous and figure prominently in my collection of clippings.
But following the lead of a bevy of her cooking colleagues, Martini — or her publishers — has decided that her best marketing asset is herself. As with her first book, Where the Heart Is, there she is on the cover, generous smile and generous cleavage, handsome partner and baby in the background. Is this what food porn is really all about? (I’m endlessly fascinated by the photographs that accompany Martini’s Sunday Life column: let me count the ways to look coquettish…)
Elizabeth David, Jane Grigson, Alice Waters, Stephanie Alexander, Claudia Roden, Marcella Hazan, Julia Child, Patricia Wells … some of the greatest cookbook authors of our time have mostly remained faceless, ethereally drifting through the pages of their books, comforting, shadowy, modest presences.
And then there are the others. Karen, Nigella, Jamie, Kylie, Bill and their ilk. For amusement, if you ever have a few moments to spare in a bookshop, flick through Bill’s latest release, Holiday. Count how many photographs there are of Bill and his teeth. From memory, it’s in the double digits. I couldn’t care how wonderful his recipes might be, if I ever see another photograph of Bill and his teeth I’ll throw up into his picnic basket.
It’s not as if we need any more celebrities in our lives, or more published material to tell us how woefully inadequate and unglamorous our lives are, how plain our friends, how unsatisfactory our home décor, how limited our fashion sense. Countless magazines — even the one I work for — do that very successfully on a monthly basis. (Shall I tell you how much styling goes on to achieve those images you see?)
I like modesty, I like self-effacement — vastly underrated qualities that they are — and there’s something just a bit off about the celebrity-glamour thing overtaking the most fundamental area of our lives — food. Making the food look divine is one thing, but do the people who minutes before the photo shoot might have had their hand up an organic chicken’s bum need to look divine too?
Too much more of this and I might be re-revising my opinion and declaring again that the century of the recipe book is over. English author Michael Booth's thoughts on this dovetail rather nicely into my own. In an article in The Independent a couple of weeks back he wrote about his cookbook bonfire (a pre-meditated marketing stunt?) in which he burnt his every cookbook, his every clipped recipe, in his backyard. His reason? Recipes don’t work, we don’t need them, he reckons. He adds: “Meanwhile, rubbing your failure in your face are the glossy, art-directed photographs that make up half the pages in food books these days. If they were honest, the first line of most recipes would be: ‘First, take your food stylist and renowned studio photographer...’ ”
Booth continues: “Imagine, if we could be free from the tyranny of the TV chef and learn to cook by ourselves without their help. We could skip gaily through our local farmers' market or supermarket, choosing whatever is in season, on special offer or just takes our fancy and, once at home, create our own meals.”
I like his thoughts (never mind his wit) but surely they’re not going to help him sell any books?
For those of you in Melbourne, I’ll be at the Out of the Frying Pan talk-fest on Monday (dear Melbourne, I'm coming home...). I’m moderating the panel on Recipe Writing (they might want to find another moderator after they read this) and a panelist on Web 2.0: How to Blog and How Not to Blog. For details, go here.
