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So, it's back to basics, is it?

Joy of Cooking battles back in an era of iron chefs and 30-minute meals.

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published November 1, 2006

For years, Joy of Cooking was a household staple, an almost mandatory gift at weddings, graduations and housewarmings.
Especially during its 1970s heyday, Joy was the bible of the kitchen, its instructions covering everything from setting a table to boning a duck.

Then food became entertainment, and the map of the American kitchen was redrawn by celebrity chefs and glossy monthlies that turned food into sport. Books such as Joy started to feel quaint, if not dated.

Hoping to recapture its relevance, as well as celebrate its 75th anniversary, the Joy of Cooking is being relaunched with a new, even more comprehensive — and more worldly — edition this month. But in a world of Emeril and dozens of weighty cookbooks, can its folksy voice and encyclopedic approach still work?

The remaking of Irma Rombauer and Marion Rombauer Becker’s classic, a four-year project, was the work of many hands. The test kitchen went through more than half a ton of protein and 3,000 eggs. Testers reportedly gained an average of 7 pounds.

And though the 2006 edition covers new ground — fresh herb teas, breakfast bars, sushi — it also borrows much from the enduring 1975 edition, restoring the voices of Rombauer and Becker (it was Rombauer who offered the cheerful instruction: “Stand facing the stove.”).

Ethan Becker, son of Becker and grandson of Rombauer, says the new edition turns away from the cheflike ambitions of the sometimes-criticized 1997 edition and returns to a more inclusive approach by design.“The book is really back to being the one-stop friendly reference it was before,” he says. Rather than having the flavor of a restaurant kitchen, it has addressed modern trends by including more ethnic recipes, appealing to atavistic tastes (hearth cooking and game) and separating out quick meals in the index.

“It’s a quick food book, it’s an ethnic cuisine cookbook, a dictionary reference,” Becker said. “I always tell people, if you cook from the Joy for a year, follow every reference and read it, at the end of the year you will have gone to cooking school five minutes at a time.”

But Gourmet magazine editor Ruth Reichl wonders if the new Joy isn’t trying to do too much.

Retro recipes like “mystery cake” (a ’50s classic made with canned tomato soup) sit uneasily alongside directions for making tofu from scratch. “Do the same people really want all these things? I don’t think so,” says Reichl, who recently edited her magazine’s own comprehensive cookbook. Better, she thinks, to “let (cookbooks) live in their own time.”

Barbara Haber, culinary historian and former curator of Harvard’s Schlesinger Library, fondly recalls the wit and verve of Rombauer’s prose.

“Julia Child used to call her Mrs. Joy.”

But Haber says “people are making their claims in different ways” now, with cookbook memoirs like Madhur Jaffrey’s  and composite masterworks like those issued by cooking magazines.

Indeed, the field is cluttered with weighty contenders vying to supplant Joy. There’s Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything, with a simple but essential repertoire for novices. And Cook’s Illustrated’s The New Best Recipe, long on technique and exhaustively tested. Or Reichl’s multiethnic The Gourmet Cookbook and the built-for-comfort Bon Appetit Cookbook, both reader-tested and massive in scope.

As David Strymish, founder of Internet cookbook retailer ecookbooks.com , says: “It’s the modern world. Everyone’s learned to do everything.”

Yet Joy still can brag of assets the others lack. Its practice of listing ingredients within the recipe rather than before allows it to dominate with sheer numbers: 4,500 recipes rather than the more typical 1,000.

And it remains encyclopedic (durian, tobiko, texmati rice), with a muscular index and number-crunching weight and volume charts.

Reichl says, “I would be unhappy not to have one of (the versions).” If the voice can be a bit long-winded, it’s also “sort of foolproof, how it takes you step by step through recipes. It has a lot of basic information, how to soak beans, how to cook dried hominy, the kind of stuff no other book will give you.”

Strymish is looking forward to seeing how the showdown pans out. He suspects that, at least at the outset, Joy won’t approach the sales of the books from

Gourmet and Bon Appetit, at least in part because many people already own an earlier edition.

(Becker says advance sales have been good, selling 12,000 copies in six minutes at 7 on a Saturday morning on the QVC shopping channel, for example.)

Strymish says sales in the long term probably will be more revealing.

“Over time, it may catch up through slow and steady sales,” he says. “It absolutely has iconic status.”

Corn Bread, Muffins or Sticks
2 to 3 tablespoons melted butter, bacon drippings or vegetable oil
1¼ cups yellow or white cornmeal, preferably stone-ground
¾ cup all-purpose flour
2½ teaspoons baking powder
1 to 4 tablespoons sugar (by taste)
¾ teaspoon salt
1 or 2 large eggs, beaten (2 eggs produce a richer bread)
1 cup milk

• Have all ingredients at room temperature. Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Grease the pan or pans with butter, oil or bacon drippings. Place in the oven until sizzling hot.
• Whisk cornmeal, flour, baking powder, sugar and salt together in a large bowl.
• Add eggs and milk. Combine with a few rapid strokes. Scrape the batter into the hot pan or pans. Bake sticks about 12 minutes, corn bread and muffins 15 to 18 minutes, until nicely browned. Serve immediately.
• Makes one 8-inch square bread, about 15 muffins, or about 20 sticks.
Source: Joy of Cooking: 75th Anniversary Edition (Simon and Schuster, 2006, $30.)

Sauteed Boneless Chicken Breasts
4 boneless, skinless chicken breast halves (about 1½ pounds)
Salt and black pepper, to taste
¼ cup all-purpose flour
1½ tablespoons butter
1½ tablespoons olive oil

• Prepare the chicken breasts by trimming any fat around the edges. If you wish, remove the white tendon running through each tenderloin.
• Put flour and salt and pepper in a shallow dish. Coat the chicken on both sides with the flour; shake off the excess.
• Heat butter in a heavy 10- to 12-inch skillet over medium heat until fragrant and nut-brown. Add oil and swirl to combine.
• Saute the chicken for exactly 4 minutes. Using tongs, turn the chicken and cook until firm to the touch, 3 to 5 minutes more.
Serves 2 to 4.
Source: Joy of Cooking: 75th Anniversary Edition (Simon and Schuster, 2006, $30.)

Coconut Lime Salad
2 cups grated fresh coconut
1 cup seeded and grated cucumber
½ cup chopped fresh cilantro
Grated zest and juice of  1 lime
1 jalapeno pepper, seeded and minced
¾ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon black pepper
2 tablespoons olive oil

• Combine all ingredients in a large bowl.
• Let stand 15 minutes before serving.
Serves 5.
Source: Joy of Cooking: 75th Anniversary Edition (Simon and Schuster, 2006, $30.)
 

[Last modified October 31, 2006, 13:21:58]