Cookbooks as chronicles of one’s history

This Week’s Winner

Ramoncita V. Reyes is the managing partner of Suarez and Reyes Law Offices, specializing in corporate law practice. She is a founding member of the International Wine & Food Society Manila ladies branch and a member of the board of trustees of the Jose P. Rizal Resource Foundation Inc. She loves to cook, bake, entrain and sometimes sells her desserts when friends order. She is also an avid traveler.

I read cookbooks in bed. I have a cookbook library in my kitchen, but there is something about cookbooks that make me want to take them upstairs to my bedroom and read them before I go to sleep. Perhaps it’s because it relaxes me and takes my mind away from work. Or, maybe because I wish to dream of the numerous dishes and desserts I would like to make but haven’t gotten around to doing.

I love cookbooks. I crave them like a pregnant woman would crave peanut butter and sauerkraut. So, if you ask me what my favorite books are, I would definitely say cookbooks. Not just one, but all kinds. I have several of them: hardbound, softbound, spiral-bound, some with beautiful pictures, some with no pictures at all, French, Italian, Spanish, Filipino, Thai, Japanese, Chinese, Mexican, North American, Australian, from coffeetable books to pocketbooks. I even have restaurant-theme cookbooks: Harry’s Bar, Moosewood, Fiddlehead, Serendipity’s; and movie-theme cookbooks: Babe, Bridges of Madison County, Forrest Gump, The Big Night. I have fiction cookbooks (stories with recipes interwoven in them) and also non-fiction cookbooks (travels and food essays with recipes). Every time I enter the bookstore, even if I’m looking for something else, I always find myself in the cookbook section. It takes a lot of willpower for me to leave the bookstore without buying a new cookbook.

A cookbook stirs my imagination and all my five senses. By just reading a recipe, I can imagine the pungent aroma of garlic sautéed in olive oil, the smoothness of a pastry dough made from scratch, the hollow sound of a freshly baked bread when tapped for doneness, the tangy flavor of a pomodoro sauce simmering for hours, and the look and presentation of a main dish. It is a wonderful feeling!

I do not have one favorite cookbook, but I do have a list of cookbooks I keep coming back to every so often. The Joy of Cooking is a must-have for everyone who loves to cook or wishes to learn how to cook. I have both the "mother" edition (Irma S. Rombauer) and the newer "son" edition (with Ethan Becker). The former has a good "know your ingredients" chapter, and the latter has added several ethnic foods in its original glossary of recipes. For those who would like to venture into French cuisine, Madeleine Kamman’s When French Women Cook is a superb introductory to French home cooking. For more intense understanding of this cuisine, there is, of course, the late grand dame herself, Julia Child and her collaborative classic, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Vols. I and II. For Spanish dishes, I am partial to Penelope Casas’ The Food and Wine of Spain, and for Italian dishes, I simply adore Marcella Hazan’s The Italian Cookbook series. But who can resist Giuliano Bugialli’s The Taste of Italy? It is such a beautiful book – you can almost feel and taste the heart and soul of this popular cuisine in each of its pages.

If you love to entertain like I do, Ina Garten’s Barefoot Contessa series, Myrna Segismundo’s The Party Cookbook, and Beth Romualdez’s Cooking Lessons are invaluable sources of easy-to-prepare dishes (and I have used several of their recipes for my parties). My maids learned the art of folding table napkins from Lisa Alvendia’s Creative Catering and Entertaining. For great desserts, I highly recommend Spago Chocolate compiled by Wolfgang Puck’s pastry chef, Mary Bergin, with its easy step-by-step recipes, and the old reliable Maida Heatter for cakes, pies and cookies.

Ironically, the first cookbook I ever read was not even a book, but my mom’s notebook. It was one of those old elementary notebooks bound by a string, and on the blue lines of each page were her hand-written recipes of chocolate cake, butter cookies, dinuguan, roast chicken, etc.

I remember that when I was about seven years old, I was begging her to make a chocolate cake, and she said to me, "If you know how to read, then you can cook and bake anything." Then she handed me her string-bound notebook like I was being passed on the torch. And that was the start of my cookbook addiction!

Nowadays, if you are looking for a particular recipe, you may find and download it from the Internet. Everything now is instant: instant recipes, instant information, instant messaging and instant gratification. In spite of our instant society, for me, nothing compares to the thrill of stumbling into an interesting recipe in one of your old cookbooks and trying it out. If it turns out to be a good one, then it becomes a legacy because a good recipe gets passed on from one generation to another. In a way, cookbooks are chronicles of one’s history, taste and culture.

I will never tire of cookbooks! There will always be new recipes to experiment, and old recipes to come back to again and again. That said, I will keep on reading cookbooks in bed!