A word of introduction on how I came into possession of the the collected writings of Mr. U. Arsenic (for those of you just now tuning in, here’s the first installation of On Eating at the Bar).

A friend works at a used book store in Berkeley, he’s a buyer, occasionally they get calls to buy whole estates, some old geezer just knocked off and the grandkids don’t know what to do with the four pallets of books Pops collected over the years. Anyway late one Saturday I get a text from Gary — need a favor, can you do a buy tomorrow, I'm not going to be able to make it — which I know from experience means Gary’s getting himself under the better half of a handle of Bacardi Limón and a twelver of Diet Coke and Sunday morning he’s not going anywhere.

Gary knows I know nothing about books, but I’ve joined him on these estate sale excursions in the past, I enjoy the voyeuristic deep dive, and he assures me I can just pay by the pound. So I drive out to North Beach and fight for parking, head up a tight creaky staircase to number 314. The place is pretty well cleaned out, the estate agents had already been through. I’m the first to get at the books though, ten or twelve wine boxes on the floor full of books, the naked shelves showing sun-bleached outlines of their former contents. “In vino veritas” reads the M&K wine shop label slapped on the re-purposed cases of Neuf de Pap.

I pay the grandson? nephew? by the case after assuring him I’ll take everything, carry the boxes down the three flights to the station wagon, then head home. I sort through the books, mostly fiction, some military history, 16 More Responses to the Ruy Lopez. What catches my attention though are a few dozen old cookbooks, all torn dust covers and swollen pages stuck together. I end up keeping these, packing up the others and dropping them off at Moe’s Books.

I forgot about the box for a couple weeks, a deadline at work kept me from doing the dishes much less digging through old cookbooks. Finally a lazy Sunday presented itself and I thought I’d make a lamb stew to last the week, so I start to thumb through some of the late Mr. Arsenic’s library in search of some much needed guidance. The real pearls I discover, though, aren’t the books themselves, but paper cocktail napkins, furiously scribbled upon in a barely legible scrawl. I could tell he’d fill up a side, then turn it over, write some more, then unfold, write some more, until all eight panels were covered so that the upside-down and right-to-left writing on the reverse would bleed through to the front.

The napkins themselves are undated, untitled. On each is self-contained essay on the act of eating, though curiously nothing on food itself, per se. One napkin will be a rant on the correct way to hold a fork, on another he’ll reflect on the simple power of a server’s smile.

In lieu of a proper McG, I’ve collected Mr. Arsenic’s napkins into a series that I, humbly, have entitled “On Eating at the Bar”. Next week we’ll pick up where we left off with installment number two, “Paying Attention”.

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Categories:	Cookbooks • On Eating at the Bar	3 Comments
Tags:	arsenic • Cookbooks • OEATB

I’ve mentioned my love of cookbooks before. Admittedly, I generally do not create many meals from their pages, but I often sit for hours perusing them for inspiration and oohing and aahing over their photos. I thought I would share a list of my personal favorites. Some of which I do cook from, some that I use as a starting point for my own dishes and some that I just drool over.

Which brings me to my first drool inducer: The French Laundry Cookbook by Thomas Keller. I love reading through this book as it always brings back such a pleasurable memory. For Valentine’s Day three years ago, Barnaby surprised me and took me to The French Laundry in Yountville (Napa Valley). It was the most exquisite culinary adventure I’ve ever experienced. Nine courses of perfection that left me crying, “Uncle!” but smiling and happily rubbing my belly. Keller makes his dishes approachable by giving them such names as “Chips and Dip,” which are truffled potato chips with a black truffle crème fraîche dip. His recipes are ambitious, but doable. Oh, how I love you, Mr. Keller!

The newest addition to my collection is Alice Water’s The Art of Simple Food. All of her cookbooks are wonderful, but this one is all encompassing and as the title states: simple. Going beyond recipes she includes lessons, menu planning, what to cook at what time of year, how you should stock your pantry and more. Her principles of good cooking lay not in the techniques and recipes but in the quality of ingredients, particularly locally grown and raised. Food just tastes better when it hasn’t traveled far, don’t you think?

In Seattle I had the opportunity one summer to work for James Beard award-winning chef Tom Douglas in his bakery and catering department. With six restaurants, including the bakery, Douglas successfully captures Seattle, rolls its flavors in his studied hands and presents his art on beckoning plates. His philosophy is: “Eat it when you’ve got it, enjoy the harvest when it’s here.” In Tom Douglas’ Seattle Kitchen he sets the stage with Pacific Northwestern staples such as salmon and Dungeness crab, while also infusing recipes with tastes from the city’s other multi-ethnic cultures. Tom’s Big Dinners: Big-Time Home Cooking For Family and Friends is also a favorite as well as a must for creating the whole Pac NW shebang!

I salivate over Gourmet magazine and they kindly compiled over 1,000 recipes for us in their Bible-thick cookbook aptly named The Gourmet Cookbook. While it’s not a basic cookbook per se, one can, with not an insignificant amount of effort, feel confident in producing a dish from this book. You can find everything in this must-have kitchen reference. Over 200 dessert recipes, more than 100 hors d’oeuvres, sauces, soups, vegetables, brunch menus…you name it.

There are many more that I could go on about but I’ll spare you with a very short list:

The Produce Bible by Leanne Kitchen (what a great name for a culinary enthusiast!)
Sauces and Fish & Shellfish by James Peterson
The Way to Cook by Julia Child

Check out 101 Cookbooks for great reading, beautiful pictures and delicious recipes.

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Categories:	Cookbooks • Cooking tips • Restaurants	Leave a Comment
Tags:	Cookbooks

I love all types of books. I guess you could classify me as a voracious reader. I also tend to buy books faster than I can read them (darn you, Amazon.com 1-Click!). There is one type of book, however, that I consistently, almost obsessively, purchase and almost never read – cookbooks. I’m addicted to them: their beautiful glossy pages, perfectly stylized photographs of succulent creations, dishes I’d love to be able to whip up after a long day at the office and look as though nary a sweat was broken. But, alas, I’m a flipper. I tend to only turn each page slowly and sigh, knowing the only pleasure I will ever produce from the book is the thought that maybe someday…

My tennis coach used to tell me, “If you want to become a better tennis player then play with someone better than you.” So today I thought, “Yes, I will start to cook with cooks better than me!” I will bring those beautiful cookbooks down from their shelves, crack open their formerly only-once-or-twice-cracked spines and commence the next level of my education. Not that I’m a bad cook, by any means, I simply want to broaden my culinary horizons. Greatly. So tonight I have decided on Alice Water’s Long- Cooked Lamb Shoulder. Except I’m going to change it to Sheri’s Short-Cooked Lamb Shoulder and do it in the pressure cooker, because really, we do work during the day. But I promise I’ll adhere to the rest of the recipe.

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Categories:	Cookbooks • Meat & Poultry	Leave a Comment
Tags:	Cookbooks • lamb

I love old cookbooks. They seem like such an interesting window into the daily lives of our ancestors. Some of my favorites are from my grandmother’s collection of food literature. Here’s an example of a fascinating recipe from my of my most cherished little cookery tomes:

THE WHOLE ART of CURING, PICKLING, AND SMOKING MEAT AND FISH, BOTH IN THE BRITISH AND FOREIGN MODES; WITH MANY USEFUL MISCELLANEOUS RECEIPTS, AND FULL DIRECTIONS FOR THE CONSTRUCTION OF AN ECONOMICAL DRYING-CHIMNEY AND APPARATUS, ON AN ETIRELY ORIRGINAL PLAN.

BY

JAMES ROBINSON, EIGHTEEN YEARS A PRACTICAL CURER.

The book is filled with recipes that range from interesting and delicious sounding, to a bit horrifying. For example, I doubt many of us will be running out to the Home Depot anytime soon to get the extra ingredients needed for this one:

KIPPERED HERRINGS.

Wash the fish well in strong salt and water, and put next them in a strong pickle for twenty-four hours; then take them out, put them on the rods, and smoke them six hours, after which wipe each fish with spirits of terpentine, as they hang on the rods, and smoke them until become of a bright dark brown colour. When cold, and perfectly firm, put them into a clean calico bag, sew it up at the mouth, and let them lie a month in new sawdust of pitch pine; they will then be fit for use.

Fit for use indeed! though I’m not sure for what. A few observations…first, that entire recipe is one long sentence. Second, it does not follow the formatting conventions we have today for recipes. That said, some of the receipts (aka recipes) in the book do, mostly as it relates to the uses of spices. Below is a scan of the section of book I took it from and the opposite page lists out ingredients and quantities.

Here are a couple of other interesting sites that talk about old cookbooks:

Oldcookbooks

Old Swedish Cookbook

53 Year Old Cookbook

Heritage Recipes

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Categories:	Fish & Seafood • Seasoning & Spices	1 Comment
Tags:	Cookbooks • Food • foodista • Kippered Herring • Old Cookbook • recipe • recipes • Turpentine