The Tale of my Missing Cookbooks and How I Made Lemonade from Lemons

It all began about a year ago when I gave two peo­ple I had no rea­son to dis­trust full access to my large, fully-furnished house while I was away.

All went well for sev­eral months dur­ing which time I would visit the place occa­sion­ally to pick up mail and move items to my new place — mostly clothes, work-related stuff and some impor­tant papers.

The pride and joy of my for­mer abode was its cook­book library: a room I had specif­i­cally designed to hold the 1,200 or so cook­books I had accu­mu­lated dur­ing my almost 40 years as a mem­ber of Canada’s food media. Many of those — 18, to be exact — were spent as food editor/columnist for this country’s largest news­pa­per the Toronto Star where I received review copies of cook­books on a reg­u­lar basis.

With a yen to emu­late that boda­cious British TV cook Nigella Law­son, who often flips through books lan­guidly search­ing for recipes in her ele­gant room assigned specif­i­cally for this, I rel­ished the way I’d metic­u­lously orga­nized my library in sec­tions: by coun­try, region, eth­nic­ity, veg­e­tar­ian, sin­gle sub­jects, Jew­ish, vin­tage (an early edi­tion of Mrs. Bee­ton, four edi­tions of the Joy of Cook­ing etc.), grilling, TV chefs — and on it goes.

Let me explain how impor­tant cook­books are to me.

You know that ques­tion: If your house was on fire, what would you run back, brav­ing the life-threatening haz­ards that accom­pany such an event, to retrieve?

My answer is clear and requires no thought: My fam­ily pho­tos, many of which include pic­tures of my mother’s rel­a­tives mur­dered in East­ern Europe dur­ing the holo­caust; as many of my vin­tage coats and dresses as I could carry; the slim file folder con­tain­ing her favourite recipes given to me by my mother on my 21st birth­day, and trea­sured tomes like the two Julia Child cook­books signed for me by my dear late friend and mentor.

Luck­ily, I keep those two cher­ished books close to my side at all times along with 100 or so other “go-to” cook­books that reside in my kitchen.

Those few shelves also hold the three books I’ve penned: Best Recipes Under the Sun (from my stint as food edi­tor for the Toronto Sun dur­ing the ‘80s); The Best of Food (a col­lec­tion of favorite dishes from my years at the Toronto Star pub­lished in 1995), and Dish, a col­lec­tion of my most pop­u­lar Toronto Star columns and their accom­pa­ny­ing recipes. Only the lat­ter is still in print — see the home page of this site for details.

Also in my kitchen are books by local food maven Bon­nie Stern; the huge vol­ume of multi-tested recipes from Cook’s Illus­trated mag­a­zine called The New Best Recipe; books by Ina Garten (Bare­foot Con­tessa); The Bon Appetit Cook­book; Julia Child’s The Way to Cook; books by Giada de Lau­ren­tiis, Nigella Law­son, the folks at Chez Panisse, Mario Batali and the unstop­pable Jamie Oliver, among others.

‘Twas thanks to that gor­geous, Mockney-talking British TV chef and pro­lific pro­ducer of cook­books that I even­tu­ally twigged to the fact that some­thing was amiss with my cook­book library. Look­ing for an early Naked Chef book from his early days, I noticed it was miss­ing. And so the story of intrigue, sus­pense and betrayal began to unfold.

Mov­ing my library from one house to another was one mean feat as box upon box was brought to my new home. Unpacked on to shelves built by my man-friend Ross, the books had def­i­nitely dimin­ished. In a nut­shell, many of them were not there — absent, gone, miss­ing in action.

Among them: Jane Brody’s books on healthy eat­ing; Sheila Lukins’s books penned after her Sil­ver Palate days; bak­ing books by Rose Levey Beran­baum and Alice Medrich; Cana­dian books by the likes of Rose Mur­ray, Eliz­a­beth Baird, Anne Lind­say and Michael Smith.

My ini­tial reac­tion to this was con­fu­sion. When what had hap­pened sank in, that quickly mor­phed into rage. I soon dis­cov­ered that items of house­ware were also nowhere to be found — a stock­pot, food mill etc. etc.

I’ve calmed down now and am busy replac­ing key books with the help of Ali­son Fryer, my buddy and long­time man­ager of Toronto’s trusty Cook­book Store.

Mak­ing lemon­ade from lemons, I’ve learned a few valu­able lessons. Think before you com­mit what seems like a gen­er­ous act. Be care­ful whom you trust. Be business-like in deal­ings that involve your pos­ses­sions, espe­cially prized ones.

As for cook­books, I am in the process of stamp­ing my name in them. And there’s been a dis­cov­ery, that although even seem­ingly obscure books have come in handy for ref­er­ence dur­ing my long career as a food writer/broadcaster and still do, I may not need as many. In other words, this expe­ri­ence has made me assess how many and which books I really need.

For more on this, watch for an upcom­ing blog on my chat with Ali­son Fryer about all this.

Mean­while, here’s a recipe from an author whose books I was forced to replace and who appealed to someone’s sweet tooth!

Rose Levy Beranbaum’s Flaky Cream Cheese Pie Crust

New York ace baker and pro­lific cook­book author Rose Levy Beran­baum is a guru to those in her field. Pop­u­lar with pro­fes­sional chefs and home bak­ers alike, she is a stick­ler for detail. Bak­ing is one area of cook­ing where this is cru­cial — a table­spoon more of less of bak­ing pow­der can mean suc­cess or fail­ure. Talk­ing of which, she spec­i­fies “non-aluminium” bak­ing pow­der in her recipes (avail­able at some health food store) as she claims the reg­u­lar stuff gives a bit­ter taste. I used the stan­dard stuff for this, with fine results.

Ms. Beran­baum spec­i­fies that the but­ter be frozen. Mine was chilled (straight from the fridge) and worked well.

Beran­baum says this is her favourite pas­try recipe. I feel the need to add a warn­ing: It works like a charm and is won­drously easy to han­dle, then roll out. How­ever, when baked, it is del­i­cate — almost cakey — and will leak if a liq­uid fill­ing or raw fruit is used in the pie or tart. I have the burnt pan to prove it after using raw apples!

How­ever, this recipe is great for a free-form tart filled with roasted apples and a cus­tard layer between it and the fruit.

4 oz/125 g (¹⁄₂ cup) cold unsalted but­ter, cut in chunks
1 ¹⁄₃ cups unbleached all-purpose flour
¹⁄₈ tsp sea salt
¹⁄₈ tsp bak­ing pow­der
3 oz/85 g (¹⁄₃ cup) cream cheese
2 tbsp whip­ping (35%) cream
2 tsp cider vinegar

In food proces­sor, blend together flour, salt adn bak­ing pow­der. Add cream cheese; process until it resem­bles coarse crumbs. Add but­ter; pulse until peanut size. Add cream and vine­gar; pulse until mix­ture clumps to form dough.

Scrape dough on to lightly floured work sur­face; shape with hands into flat disc. Cover in plas­tic wrap; chill about 45 min­utes before using.

Makes enough for 1 large one-crust, deep-dish or free-form pie.