Tattered & treasured

HOLIDAY 2008: COOKBOOKS | Staff favorites might be worn, but they're useful as ever

Recipes are everywhere. Turn on the Food Network. Do a Google search. You'll never come up short.

Want a recipe using dried figs? Plug the phrase into cooks.com and you'll get 150 from which to choose.

Recipezaar.com has 1,720 recipes for meatloaf alone.

Food magazines, already chock full of recipes, have Web sites with more recipes. Blogs have links to yet more Web sites with recipes. Pick up a kitchen goods catalog such as Williams-Sonoma and there they are -- more recipes.

You can have recipes sent to your cell phone.

And yet, the cookbook survives and thrives.

Cookbooks have heft. They endure. They are the original food porn.

Even if you crack open that baking book only twice a year, and only for that one recipe for frosting, the point is, you do. You rely on that cookbook like an old friend. What would you do without it?

To be fair, not all cookbooks deserve heaping amounts of praise. A good number of them are about as practical as mesh pot holders.

But then there are the gems, like the one pictured here, Ida Bailey Allen's Step-by-Step Picture Cook Book. It belongs to Albert Dickens, who works in the Sun-Times sports department.

Albert, an older gentleman with a kind voice and twinkly eyes, calls this book his Bible.

The book, a gift from his mother, is literally falling apart. But in 55 years -- 55 years! -- there has never been good reason to part with it, Albert says.

If you do give the gift of a cookbook this holiday season, as so many of us do, here are suggestions that we're pretty sure won't sit around, collecting dust.

The cook will thank you -- and probably cook for you, too.

The one thing that really signaled the end of summer vacations was my mom preparing food and packing a picnic basket for the family's annual day at the Iowa State Fair.

At the fair in 1953, I discovered that there was no such person as Betty Crocker.

"In Person To-day Betty Crocker 2 p.m." I couldn't believe it. This Betty was a different lady than last year's!

I also found out that Ann Page (A&P's Betty) wasn't real. Neither was Uncle Ben, the guy on the rice bag, or the man with the chef's hat on the Cream of Wheat box, or the man with the big black hat on the Quaker Oats package.

After watching the faux Betty give her presentation, I asked my mother if it was easy to cook. I knew that heat was involved and if one put meat in a pan or in an oven and left it there long enough, it somehow turned into food.

A few days after the fair, my mom gave me a cookbook, Ida Bailey Allen's Step-by-Step Picture Cook Book (Grosset & Dunlap, 1952).

I immediately knew this lady was real. How? She had three names: Ida Bailey Allen. To a 16-year-old, three names signified legitimacy.

I have had the book for 55 years. It has been out of my grasp twice: while I was in the Army, and for a long time languishing in a cardboard box after I moved to a new apartment.

The book is now an embarrassingly shabby, greasy, oxidizing mess. Its once fine cardboard and cloth cover has fallen off. It has survived falling into the kitchen sink. It has been left out on the deck during a rainstorm and, once, shamefully used as a doorstop.

It is a treasure.

It gave me the confidence to successfully try recipes from other cookbooks. I have dozens, none of them used more than this one.

A favorite recipe is the Old Fashioned Beef Stew, which comes with one of the most amusing notes I've ever seen: "To make it new-fashioned, add 1/3 cup dry white wine."

Albert Dickens, editorial assistant

Carmel High School for Boys in north suburban Mundelein was a testosterone-driven place back in the mid-1970s. No way any of us would ever have taken a class called home economics.

But the good priests and brothers knew that we scruffy soldiers of Christ -- with our dirty hippy hair, rumpled shirts and frayed ties -- would someday be off on our own. Not surprisingly, they figured few of us would become priests and some of us might not even find spouses. Ever.

So they came up with an alternative to home ec that they called "Bachelor's Survival,'' which appealed to our sense of self (James Bond is a bachelor) and our fascination with danger.

Survival? Fer sure, dude.

The Carmelites believed in an afterlife but they didn't want us to get there before our time.

And so, as I recall, kids were taught in Bach. Surv. that you separate the darks from the whites when washing, that you start from underneath when sewing on a button and that you don't use a knife to cut raw chicken, wipe it on your pants and then use it cut cucumbers.

Our textbook for eating was the Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook (Better Homes and Gardens, $19.95), a clearly written how-to with thick glossy pages held together in a three-ring binder. It included recipes such as spinach puffs (Page 153) and beer-braised rabbit (Page 240), but I don't think my classmates actually moved past any of the basics -- scrambled eggs (Page 149) and hamburgers (Page 243).

I've owned a version of the Red Plaid, as it is informally called after its checkerboard cover, ever since, lugging one to college, another to my first grad school apartment and finally a copy to the house I now share with my wife and kids.

I still don't make anything like Fish en Papillote (Page 172). But I do know that a standard, 4-pound sirloin beef roast takes about 2½ hours at 325 degrees (Page 254).

And knowledge like that can mean survival -- no matter what one's marital status.

Andrew Herrmann, staff reporter

I was a reluctant vegetarian cook. I loved veggies and wanted to eat healthy, but I didn't want to sacrifice flavor. But my first foray into such cooking, using veggie cookbook queen Mollie Katzen's The Moosewood Restaurant Low-Fat Favorites (Clarkson Potter, $25.95), didn't go well. The recipes just seemed to lack substance, let alone taste.

Flash forward to last spring. A cholesterol test came back through the roof. I couldn't rely on eating just veggies sometimes; I needed to eat them all the time and reduce my meat intake.

This time, I turned to Katzen's New Enchanted Broccoli Forest (Ten Speed Press, $19.95). I'm glad I did: I have yet to find a recipe I don't like. That even includes times when I left out the cheese or butter, which she typically lists as optional in most recipes.

I know it might sound cliche, but she makes the best of fresh herbs. I always found figuring out the correct combination from the pots on my patio a little daunting, but she typically picks the two or three that blend perfectly.

The book is perfect for finding something to do with all those excess vegetables that pile up in the harvest months. When our farm co-op sent me gobs of kale, I wanted a recipe that didn't just involve braising it as a side dish. I found the wonderful Artichoke Sauce with Mushrooms and Greens, which blends fresh basil with sage, thyme, garlic and white wine. Over noodles, it is a full meal.

Too many cucumbers? She has an easy pickling-like recipe that's out of this world. She calls it Wilted Cucumbers -- you basically boil vinegar, honey, salt and water and then pour it over cucumber slices with black pepper and dill. Stick it in a jar in the fridge and it will last for several weeks.

Do you like cornbread with your chili? Try the Frijoles, Etc., in which you pour the batter directly over a pan of zucchini, bell peppers, onions, pinto beans, cumin, basil and oregano -- and then bake it. It comes out with tasty bread on top and chili on the bottom, so you get a bite of bread with every spoonful of chili. You won't even miss the ground beef.

And I shouldn't forget the title recipe. The secret ingredient: fresh mint. With broccoli? Yes, along with parsley and dill. Together, this recipe really is enchanting and, with the stalks arranged like trees in a pan of rice, attractive enough to even please my 6-year-old daughter.

Kids happily eating veggies? Now that's a great gift.

Dave Newbart, staff reporter

There, on Page 169, is the chicken enchiladas and tomatillo sauce recipe, a meal my roommate and I devoured in our Lake View apartment back in the day. Very often, spinach was a wonderful substitute for the chicken.

Then there was the veal-broccoli lasagna (Page 149) that my co-workers and I enjoyed at an early summer concert in the park in Cincinnati.

And, of course, there is the 22-ingredient spaghetti sauce (Page 135) that got raves at a larger-than-expected dinner party in the Twin Cities.

No matter where journalism has taken me, my beloved Creme de Colorado Cookbook (Junior League of Denver, 1987) has been a constant companion.

Props go to my sister-in-law Shirley for this one. As a teen, I marveled at the dishes she'd whip up: beautiful roasts, rustic mashed potatoes, salads and vegetables often dressed with nuts. Nuts! That was very glamorous in the 1980s.

Near her prep space, she'd have her own Colorado Cookbook, opened, dog-eared and tattered.

Rearing eight kids, my own mother had to be frugal and practical. That didn't always lend itself to creativity in the kitchen.

(She was no slouch. To this day, I still can't replicate her gravy and have struggled to figure out how to make those better-than-Ann Sather sweet rolls.)

But with this cookbook, a girl could really dream beyond meatloaf-stuffed peppers. No-fail crepes. Nana's Italian meatballs. Never-will-make-it potted quail.

I got my very own copy in 1992 as a gift, and 16 years later I've still not tried every recipe.

But the picture-free cookbook with its crisp white pages and forest green type continues to inspire and, lucky for me, even suggests a nice accompaniment to the barbecued chicken (Page 193) -- the cold pea confetti on Page 264.

Lisa Donovan, staff reporter

If I listed life's regrets, it would include the childhood mistake of neglecting to study how my mother cooked.

Back in the late 1950s, families didn't order pizza delivery. Frozen food dinners that you could pop in a microwave didn't exist. The solution was Mom's to-die-for combination of plain old American cooking with the Slavic twist she inherited from her mother -- potatoes, noodles, bread, cookies, pies, pot roast and beef stew, to name a few.

Over the years, I've often telephoned Mom for cooking advice.

"A smidgen of sugar, a handful of flour and a lot of eggs and butter," she would say.

Mom didn't cook with exact measurements, and no matter how I tried to improvise, it never turned out the same way.

That's why I adopted an edition of Back-to-Basics: American Cooking (G.P. Putnam's Sons, $18.95) by Anita Prichard.

The cover promo was luring: "An all-purpose collection of classic American recipes for the modern cook."

For someone who is not a gourmet cook, this was a reference book that has been carefully filed for nearly 25 years in the kitchen cabinet with the cans of soup and beans. My recipe bible also has become a catch-all file for recipes from old newspapers and friends.

The pages are yellowed, worn and stained from past kitchen chaos -- especially the turkey section. Does anyone really remember how long or on what temperature to cook the bird?

My favorite recipe, which is a hit with my family, is the Bourbon-Baked Ham.

Perhaps the best characteristic of this endearing cookbook is its simplicity. No complicated recipes here. Instructions are easy to understand and it's not loaded with requests for exotic spices or other gourmet ingredients. Just the basics.

Celeste Busk, staff reporter

Bono. Madonna. Joy.

What other cookbook has achieved single-name status in millions of American households, including mine?

Joy of Cooking (Scribner, $38) is iconic. As a kid, I remember the thick white book with red and blue lettering as an anchor on my mom's bookshelf.

Joy has gone through more than a half-dozen iterations since its 1931 introduction, not all of them well-received.

My copy, the 1997 version, happens to be the one that stirred the pot most. It had lost its charm, critics said. It was too esoteric.

My brother gave it to me for Christmas that year. The timing couldn't have been more perfect. I was finding my groove in the kitchen as a way to impress my boyfriend (I guess it worked -- he married me).

I didn't concern myself much with the book's backstory. I just started cooking my way through it -- or rather, portions of it. It is 1,136 pages, after all.

Joy saw me through my veal piccata and risotto phase. It was a huge help during my yeast bread phase. I still use the recipe for Basic Rolled Biscuits every time I make chicken pot pie.

It boasts an exhaustive reference section. The vegetable chapter includes storage and preparation notes that are enormously helpful when, say, you need confirmation on how to butcher a butternut squash or you're clueless about what the heck to do with sorrel.

Even my husband has discovered the joys of Joy. Smudges on the bolognese and steak pages tell me so.

I have other favorite cookbooks I consult when I'm in a certain mood. The Magnolia Bakery Cookbook (Simon & Schuster, $25) and Lora Brody's Basic Baking (William Morrow, $25) for homey desserts. For party food: The Gourmet Cookbook (Houghton Mifflin, $40), a greatest hits collection of the magazine's recipes.

But in my house -- and I bet in yours -- there is only one Joy.

Janet Rausa Fuller, food editor

Many of my friends have a special place in their hearts for Julia Child, who taught Americans to dream great culinary dreams, but the late, great Craig Claiborne was my cooking guru.

If Child was mille feuille, delectable but difficult, then Claiborne was lemon chess pie -- simple but elegant.

Claiborne was the longtime food editor for the New York Times, perhaps best loved for championing "exotic" cuisines at a time when Americans were wary of any spice except black pepper. But the Sunflower, Miss., native also loved regional American food and created virtually foolproof recipes for favorites from chili to clam chowder.

Every so often, Claiborne collected the recipes he featured in the Times in a cookbook. The one that got me going was Claiborne's New York Times Cookbook (William Morrow, $35), first published in 1961.

By the time I discovered the NYTC it was already a classic, a great book for the journeyman cook who wants to kick her repertoire up a notch.

My earliest foray with the NYTC was Pork Chops with Rye Bread Stuffing for perhaps my first dinner party ever. It was easy to make and a great hit with my guests.

At this time of year, I have my stained, coverless NYTC on the counter often for its great holiday recipes -- slow-roasted turkey stuffed with simple but spectacular New England dressing, brandied sweet potatoes and brussels sprouts with caraway seeds.

I often make Claiborne's waffles, hot fudge sauce, sour cream fudge cake, roast pork with thyme -- the list goes on and on. These dishes are home runs every time. I make them so often, I barely have to consult the old book.

Delia O'Hara, staff reporter

When I think about cooking a meal -- like many people -- my first inclination is to go Italian. And usually, the next step after that mangia moment kicks in, is to turn to my old friend Marcella Hazan.

Now, I don't really know the legendary cook, author and teacher, but like her legion of fans, I have the next best thing: several of her best-selling cookbooks.

A personal favorite -- well-worn and chock-a-block with Post-It notes marking some tried-and-true Hazan specialties -- is her Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking (Knopf, $30). Whether merely whipping up a simple meal for the two of us or planning an Italian feast for a crowd, this Hazan mainstay has never let me down.

While certainly a good guide for the highly experienced chef, Hazan's Essentials also is a wonderful cookbook for the kitchen novice. The book is organized traditionally, with recipes grouped by category -- appetizer, soup, pasta, fish and shellfish, veal, beef, lamb courses, etc. One of the best parts are her explanatory notes preceding each chapter.

Beyond that, this book is worth its price merely for all the wonderful information the author shares in her opening chapter on cooking fundamentals -- everything from how to buy spices to choosing and storing olive oil.

While there are many recipes in Hazan's book that are superb, a few of my favorites include the ones for sauteed early peas Florentine (with olive oil and prosciutto), shrimp with tomatoes and chili pepper and a hearty pot roast braised in Amarone wine.

But if I had to pick one recipe that has become one of my standbys, it would be Hazan's simple and delicious Bolognese meat sauce, which only gets better when reheated the next day -- or even weeks later, when defrosted and reheated.

It's a true winner.

Bill Zwecker, columnist

Having spent a decade as the Food editor, I have accumulated quite a collection of cookbooks.

Yet whenever I try something for the first time, or must refresh my memory on a technique, there's never a question as to which cookbook I'll use. I reach for my copy of the Good Housekeeping Cookbook (Good Housekeeping Books, 1973).

I received it as a gift the first Christmas I was living on my own. Back then it had a glossy cover over a deep red hardback.

Today, the glossy cover is long gone, as is the front and hard back. You can see the glue along the exposed spine. Pages have slipped out and are tucked inside.

The cookbook's condition surprises me because, as a rule, I am so careful with books. I guess this one is sort of like the bunny in The Velveteen Rabbit; it looks so worn because it is so beloved.

This is the book I used to teach myself to not only cook but to learn about food. I wasn't too hot in the kitchen when I first got it, but with this cookbook as my guide, that eventually changed.

I taught myself how to do everything with it propped up on my counter. Soups, stews, roasting whole chickens. Baked my first from-scratch cake using it. With its simple instructions, I mastered biscuits and perfected homemade mayonnaise. One winter, I made muffins out of it at least once a week.

This is what I used to figure out how much food to make for my first dinner parties. And here's where I learned the value of eating produce when it is in season.

Today many of the recipes seem a little dated. Yet it remains a trusted instructor whose advice and knowledge I understand and can adapt.

Sue Ontiveros,

deputy features editor