Contrary to our By The Book theme this month, I Love New York: Ingredients and Recipes is not a coffee-table book. And by that, I mean, a big, beautiful cookbook with recipes that are so difficult and involved that the book is better suited to adorn a table than become sauce splattered in the kitchen. In fact, authors Daniel Humm, chef of New York City’s famed Eleven Madison Park, and the restaurant’s general manager Will Guidara, state this claim explicitly, “When we were writing our first book, Eleven Madison Park: The Cookbook, we asked ourselves whether or not people would cook from it. And as it turned out, there was no simple answer: Plenty of people did cook from it with persistence and well-stocked kitchens. But plenty of others lovingly placed it on their coffee tables. With this book, though, we wanted the answer to be an emphatic yes.”
With nearly 150 recipes, Humm and Guidara are right; this book can actually be used to cook. There’s even a “basic recipes” section in the back with staples like chicken stock and beef broth.
From apples to oysters to walnuts, I Love New York is arranged by 55 ingredients grown in the region. Each ingredient comes several recipes along with a biography of one of the region’s farms where the ingredients are produced.
Along with beautiful photos of ingredients and prepared dishes, recipes and stories, there are historical tidbits throughout the book like the background of the bloody mary and the Delmonico steak. (Did you know the legendary Delmonico’s restaurant in NYC opened in 1837 and was the first to have printed menus and a wine list?) Although this book is both informative and useful, it’s so pretty that if you’re into the look-but-don’t-touch category of cookbook buyers, no one would judge if your copy never made it to the kitchen.
Admit it; we all have “favorite” books that we have never actually read. I love the way my unfinished copy of Infinite Jest looks on my bookcase. What’s your favorite book that you’ve never actually read (cookbooks or any book)? Tell us about it in the comments section below for a chance to win a copy of I Love New York: Ingredients and Recipes. We’ll announce the winner in next week’s By the Book column. And now, we’d like to congratulate Colleen, whose comment on last week’s By the Book column has won a copy of Marque. Colleen, keep an eye out for an email from the Sauce crew!
This article appears in December 2013.