Cookbook Club Profile: ANN

Ann Loves cookbooks. She owns maybe 1,000. I have known Ann since I met her at the first cookbook club meeting I attended, back in 2005, but I did not really get to know her until last year.

She may demur and disagree, but she is, in my opinion, the best cook in our club. Her selections are always spot-on in terms of seasonality, modernity and good taste. She executes each recipe expertly, making keen adjustments to seasonings, tweaking measurements and judiciously substituting ingredients as needed. Her food presentation is always gorgeous.

After a meeting last year, I told her that I was always so impressed with her food, and we got to talking beyond our usual reserved sort of meeting-type talk. I told her that I was getting ready to go down to Kansas a second time to get cookbooks from someone who was getting rid of a large collection (see post #1 for more on that). She replied, "Oh, I love cookbooks." Then, a second later, bringing her hand up to her eyebrow, as if to make clear that she was not bragging in any way, she said, "I have about a thousand." For real, my jaw dropped. I had the impression at that point that I might be the only cookbook collector in the group, and was pleased to discover that wasn't the case. Ann joined me on that second trip to Kansas and I learned more about her, and her cookbook collection, on that trip.

I called Ann recently and asked her to talk to me more about her collection, and here's what she said:

Sue: Why cookbooks, Ann? What about them makes you want to own a collection of them?

Ann: My first memory of being interested in recipes was from high school, from a collection of Gourmet magazines. I remember being fascinated by them. I was also interested in nutrition, but I really didn't like science, so I didn't end up going to school for that. My maternal grandmother and my mom were such fabulous cooks. I remember my grandmother, on weekends, making the best rye bread, and cherry-streusel coffee cake with yeast, and a braided yeast doughnut called a grebel which you dip in powdered sugar. And broda, a type of pot roast made of chuck roast and peeled potatoes basted with butter, and a dried red hot pepper. We also had homemade 'kraut runzas with a real, homemade yeasted dough. So good, and no comparison to the kind you get at the Runza chain here. We also had watermelon rindsicles which is a kind of sweet pickle that turned pink in the brine. So, really good food got me interested in cookbooks at first. My mom also liked cookbooks. My first cookbook was the Gourmet Garden Cookbook: A Broad and Beautiful Spectrum of Kansas City Cuisine, which I got when I was probably 25. After that, I started buying Junior League cookbooks whenever my husband and I traveled. I got the Joy of Cooking for my wedding from my mom, but it is honestly not my favorite book, though I use it for reference.

Sue: How do you decide you have found a book that you'd like to own? What about a book makes you want to have it?

Ann: I like books where the author personalizes the recipe. I look at the title and then I read the text underneath it. I like the author to tell me what's unique about it, or what memories does it bring back for the author? Pictures are also very important; the food must look good. Color in the pictures is important, and the food must look lively. I also select books because of the author. Sometimes I buy a book without even looking at it because I am familiar with the author.

Sue: Which are your favorite books? Who are your favorite authors?

Ann: I like Ina Garten, Nigella Lawson (I love the way she writes and I love to watch her cook), the Cook's Illustrated Test Kitchen series, Pam Anderson, Molly Wizenberg, the Williams-Sonoma series, Flo Braker, Dorie Greenspan. I am jealous of authors who can effortlessly entertain, just call eight people up and tell them to come over that night.

Sue: If you could only pick one book to cook from, which one would it be?

Ann: This is really hard. I should probably pick one that has meat temperatures and things like that, but I would have to say The Gourmet Cookbook: More Than 1,000 Recipes, Over 60 Years in the Making, edited by Ruth Reichl.