Cookbook Club Profile: JONI

For a few years now, I have attended meetings of a monthly cookbook club, and Joni is our able facilitator. She is so soft-spoken, but also good-humored, diplomatic and easily directive, that she is a great person to have in that role. She does not often exert her opinion on the group, even when invited to by us. She lets whoever wants to be assertive any given month to sway the group into getting whichever book that person wants, and then she jumps right on board with the selection.

Her food is always fabulous. She roasts meats to perfection, her scones are, bar-none, the best, and all of her baked goods have the most perfect texture and balance of flavors. Joni tries out chocolate chip cookie recipes when she runs across a new one, ever on the quest for fine examples of that beguiling sweet.

Little did I know until last year that Joni is also a cookbook collector. She, Ann and I went to Kansas for what was my third trip down there to get books from my widowed friend's collection. What a fun time we had. With three of us on that third trip, we were able to really straighten up the boxes that were remaining there.

In the middle of our day there, as I was just opening a box I had not gone through before, Joni said, "Hey, if either of you finds Colorado Cache, I really want that one." It was unreal--just as she was saying that I stumbled upon it! Too funny. Her lucky day.

I asked Joni to answer the same questions I asked Ann, and here's what she said:

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

Joni: It was never intentional, I never thought "I'm going to collect cookbooks." One thing is that I never remember not cooking. I started cooking dinner at a young age. When the Time-Life Foods of the World series came out, I became fascinated by those books and foods from other cultures. I liked the Sunset cookbooks from back then, too. Then, my husband and I started to go to auctions and people would be auctioning off boxes of grandma's handwritten recipes and I would wonder, how could someone give them up? From collecting recipe boxes, I have been fascinated to see how recipes have changed over the 20th century.

Then, I went to work at Lee Booksellers in the early '90s and was around good cookbooks all the time. I started to pick them up here and there. The Joy of Cooking was an early one that I got, and the Smith and Hawken Gardeners' Community Cookbook, and Country Home Stay for Supper. Other early favorites were Weber's Art of the Grill. I much prefer cooking meat on the grill rather in the house. Also, I had the galley of the CIA's The Professional Chef and I like Marcel Desaulniers' Death by Chocolate. There's a chocolate-date cake recipe in there that is to die for.

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?

Joni: I have always been a book person. I like to own books, I like to have books in my hand. I like the technical part of baking, the science of baking, so technical explanations draw me to a book. Really, science draws me to a cookbook. I like Harold McGee's On Food and Cooking. I like to read about what goes well with other things. I like Shirley Corriher's BakeWise and I like Hervé This, Kitchen Mysteries.

Sue: Do you have favorites? Who are your favorite authors?

Joni: I like Rose Levy Beranbaum, Abigail Johnson Dodge, Shirley Corriher, Dorie Greenspan, Ina Garten, Marcel Desaulniers, Sherry Yard, Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything, Sheila Lukins and Julee Rosso. I also like Recipes by Susan Spungen, Big Sky Cooking, the Gourmet Cookbook, the Bon Appétit Cookbook, Elements of Cooking by Michael Ruhlman.

Sue: If you could have just one book, which one would it be?


Joni: That is a difficult one. What I have chosen is brand new. It's Ratio by Michael Ruhlman. The whole thing about it is, if you know your ratios, you can cook without recipes.

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.