When you bought the cookbook, you were sure it was
forever. You browsed through it on the first day, turning
down pages or maybe sticking post-its on the pages. Within a
week you had tried a couple of the recipes and while they weren't
all great, one of them knocked your socks off. I'll have to
remember that, you said to yourself.
And you did. You remembered that the citrus pork roast was
in the big book with the blue cover (maybe, if you're better about
these things than I am, you even remembered the name of the book
and the author), and you made it many, many times over the
years--though not quite enough times to be able to pull it off
without at least glancing at the recipe. After a while, the blue
book began opening to the page all by itself. You could even
see the crease in the spine corresponding with the location of the
much-loved recipe.
And one day, you looked up from preparing the roast to realize
that you hadn't cooked anything else from that book since the day
you bought it, and that you had essentially paid $25 or $35 for a
single recipe. On the other hand, you consoled yourself, what
a recipe!
We all have books like
these--cookbooks full of promise when purchased, yet which
gradually became equated with a single iconic recipe in our
repertoires. I have dozens of them. To name just a few: the
Everyday 100% Whole Wheat Sandwich Bread from Artisan
Breads Every Day, the lamb burgers with dried fig and
mint relish from the New York Times
Country Weekend Cookbook, the Butter Roasted Pecans from the Savannah
Cookbook, the Corn Salad with Walnuts and Goat Cheese
from The Young
Man and the Sea, the Chicken and Dumplings from Refined
American Cuisine, the Classic Cole Slaw from Bon Appetit
Y'All.
A few years ago, to save wear and tear on my one-recipe books, I
started xeroxing their single contributions and keeping them in a
binder, along with handwritten recipes and recipes from friends and
family. I pull that black binder out almost every week for
one old favorite recipe or another, even though I spend most of my
stove time testing new recipes from unfamiliar cookbooks.
I always feel a twinge of guilt, though, for all the unexplored
recipes in those books. Thanks to Eat Your Books, I have hope
that redemption lies in store for my one-recipe cookbooks.
Sometime I'll be searching for the perfect non-boring green bean
recipe--which I do practically every week, so far in vain--and
there it will be! in a book I know has got one great recipe…and
just maybe, so much more.
What are your favorite one-recipe cookbooks? And has Eat Your
Books changed the book's yield, since you started using it?
