The Gourmet Cookbook

For some mysterious reason, The Gourmet Cookbook, usually forty bucks, is on sale at Amazon for $16. It seems like a good time to tell you that this is one of my all-time favorite cookbooks.

The book is a collection of recipes from the entire history of Gourmet magazine, which is, I believe, now out of print. Each recipe is accompanied by a paragraph describing the recipe's source, history, or culinary setting. I'm as likely to read this book as I am to cook from it.

One of my favorite things about this book is the diversity of its contents. I've found some fantastic recipes that I use often (smoky black beans, p. 267), some that are interesting but which I will never try (chocolate orange dobostorte, p. 734, a cake that requires 4 hours of work), and others that are strange and consequently irresistible (watermelon, tomato, and feta salad, p. 145. I only made that once).

My parents gave me this for my birthday several years ago. More than once that winter, when Sam was a baby and I had long evenings at home, I answered phone calls from my brother that began, "What are you up to?" I replied, "Oh, reading a cookbook."

No, I am not getting paid for this review. But I probably should be.