If you really intend to be the star of your own cookbook, you need to watch out. Brother Rick Curry, S.J., author of The Secrets of Jesuit Breadmaking, schooled in humility, gets it about right: when he says that his Loyola Academy Buttermilk Bread "goes great with peanut butter," we instinctively believe that he's plugging a good idea rather than himself. The trouble starts with celebrity cookbooks and tie-ins; try as I might, I cannot conceive of a time when I will want to concoct a meal from the pages of The Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. Cookbook or its literate successor, Forrest Gump: My Favorite Chocolate Recipes. Entertaining with Regis and Kathie Lee is remarkable less for the quality of the cuisine than for the photographs of Kathie Lee, who seems to spend half her time with her mouth wide open, as if to catch any mouthfuls flying by. Then there's Rosie Daley, whose food looks perfectly nice, but whose In the Kitchen with Rosie might not have reached the bestseller list were she not employed as a cook by Oprah Winfrey. It's kind of hard to concentrate on the ingredients, what with Oprah's cheerleading ringing out at regular intervals. "I have thrived on pasta. I can eat it every day and practically do." You'd never guess.
Anthony Lane, in David Remnick's Secret Ingredients: The New Yorker Book of Food and Drink
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850 Cookbooks Printed in the Usa in Year 1962. Increasing at a Rate of 100 Per Year
Photographic Print
Joel, Yale
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