As a rough estimate, I’d say I have about 200 cookbooks at home.
Also as a rough estimate, I’d say I make a total of about 201 recipes from them.
I don’t understand myself.
It’s one thing to have favorites. Children have their favorite toys. Parents have their favorite children. It’s human nature.
So it would make sense if I tried, say, 50 recipes from a cookbook, or even 75, and only then, after a period of contemplation and judgment, picked the recipes that I enjoy most — or that offer the most culinary pleasure per unit of effort.
But that’s apparently not how I work. Apparently, what I do is excitedly open my new cookbook, turn to a random page, decide to cook the recipe that looks best on that page and, if it is good, never cook anything else from that book ever again.
Sometimes, I don’t even look at the rest of the cookbook. Why should I, when I have already picked a recipe I like?
This is literally true: I was looking at a cookbook the other day and was startled, absolutely startled, to see it had a whole section devoted to quick breads. I love quick breads (they are breads that do not use yeast to rise). I could have been making the quick breads detailed in the cookbook for the past 10 years or so.
But I did not know those recipes existed. Evidently, I was too busy making the Skillet-Roasted Tarragon Chicken to even look to see if this book also happened to have quick-bread recipes. Most cookbooks do not.
What I was not making from this book, incidentally, was devil’s food cake. The recipe for that classic dessert is crossed out with a big X and a notation in my wife’s handwriting that we had tried it in November 2012 and found it dry and not sweet enough. The word “DRY” was written in all capital letters, so it must have been throat-parchingly dry.
Was the mistake ours? Did we accidentally leave out the sour cream, or perhaps use only 1 cup of boiling water instead of 1 1/4 cups?
It doesn’t matter whose fault it was, we were not going to risk making a dry devil’s food cake again. Especially when it is not sweet enough.
So we tried at least two recipes from that book, which I look upon as a major accomplishment of some sort. And we are discriminating enough not to return to a recipe we did not like.
But who knows how many other untapped treasures lie in my shelves of cookbooks? Each book could hold a world of exciting recipes, from Belgian Waffles to Marinated Black Sea Bass With Pickled Aji Dulce Peppers.
The possibilities are essentially limitless. There is a whole world out there of braised short ribs to try, Mediterranean roasted artichokes to explore, chocolate pots de crème to savor.
It’s inspiring. It’s empowering. It’s even liberating.
Tonight I’m going to try a new recipe.
And then that will be the only one from that cookbook that I make.
