What’s So Special About How To Cookbooks?

For more than 15 years I have wanted to create a project like this. In the early days of my vision, the internet was an infant and I didn’t even think of making the cookbooks digital downloads for sale.

Years ago my sister and I joked about writing a cookbook called “Recipes I stole from other people.” We knew so many amazing cooks, and come from a background of bakers so cooking was in our blood. Add to that our Jewish heritage and you have food on the brain almost 24 hours a day.

Every significant event in our lives took place around a table filled with food. Okay, almost every significant event, but even the ones that didn’t usually were fooled by a food fest.

In the course of my adult life many wonderful friends from very different backgrounds than my own came into my life. One of the people who changed the way I cook forever is my partner. We met almost 20 years ago, and since he is was born in Morocco, but grew up in Israel, me cooking like an average American just didn’t cut it for him. The solution was for me to learn to cook like a Moroccan, even though I am not one. Hence the title concept for our cookbooks featuring authentic ethnic cuisine.

It is so frustrating for me to see someone present a dish on a cooking show as authentic when you know it is a faux version at best. Even on websites that are reputable and regarded as authorities when it comes to food often to the “copy cat” version of traditional ethnic dishes.

Over the years we met people who owned a Chinese restaurant. One day we were asked by the owner if we wanted to order from the regular menu or the one the Chinese diners ordered from. The food on the authentic menu was 180 degrees from what we were used to eating in Chinese restaurants prior to that. Even in cities that have a Chinatown food has become americanized.

As a Jewish person I also had pounded into my head the value of keeping heritage alive. For my family that heritage was food most of the time.

My maternal granmother ALWAYS hade a pot of soup on the stove. My maternal grandfather had a poultry farm in Rogers, Arkansas from the 1920s to the 1940s.They also had a poultry market in St. Louis so it was not uncommon to see a pot of chicken or turkey soup bubbling on Gran’s stove 365 days of the year.

Growing up we heard stories of my mother and her three sisters scribbling onto paper treasured recipes from our Uncle Jake who had been a baker in Holland before his emigration. He would not give copies of his recipes. If you wanted to learn how he made something you had to sit and watch him and hope that as he crafted another masterpice you didn’t miss that one key ingredient.

Each sister had her treasure trove of cherished recipes and each one guarded that treasure like it was Fort Knox or the Hope Diamond.

Living in New Orleans for 18 years I had that “food is our heritage” concept imbedded even more deeply in my subconscious. If it’s Monday the average New Orleanian is eating Red Beans and Rice for dinner. Thanksgiving dinner in a New Orleans home means there is a plate of Merliton stuffing on the table.

And there’s another food connection for you. Merlitons in New Orleans cuisine connect to chayote in hispanic cuisine. Different name and different preparations but it’s the same main ingredient. Something no doubt also brought to New Orleans by the Spanish settlers.

Since so many of our friends are first generation immigrants they still cook their traditional foods each day. That has given me the great privelege of experiencing cultures from around the world by simply accepting an invitation to dinner or a family celebration.

I’ve travelled to many corners of the world in person, and those I have not visited I have sampled at the dinner table of our friends.

All of that brought me to this project. So many of our families have these treasured recipes and traditions. Too many families today only enjoy them on holidays. For many families when the matriarch or patriarch leaves this earth their recipes will go with them.

It is my heartfelt wish to keep those memories, traditions, and cultures alive every day not just on holidays. The internet makes that possible on an even greater scale than I envisioned for this project 15 years ago.

What makes http://howtocookbooks.com special is that we will not be presenting and preserving just one ethnic cuisine, like many websites do. We will be covering every corner of the world as we expand. We will be teaching you how to make the recipes in our cookbooks the same way my mother learned how to make Uncle Jake’s Mocha Checkerboard Cake and his Yeast Waffles, except you won’t have to scribble it down as we cook. you’ll have everything you need laid out in easy to follow instructions with photographs of each step in the recipe and when we’re in the mood perhaps even a little tale of how we learned a particular recipe or favorite memories that go with it.

How to cook like you are from …, when you are not

Our vision for this website is to share our authentic recipes from our diverse ethnic backgrounds with people all over the word.

When I write “our diverse ethnic backgrounds” I do mean exactly that. We come from all corners of the world. Authentic means just that, these are not cookbooks and recipes from people who have tried to recreate a flavor or recipe these are people who were born and raised in every corner of the world and carry their traditions to the dining room every day in our own homes.

So what will you find on our site? We have contributors from the following countries and backgrounds, listed in no particular order, as we begin the project:

Argentina

Costa Rica

Morocco

Germany

Lithuania

Mexico

Dominican Republic

Yemen

Israel

New Orleans, Louisiana

Interlaced into those backgrounds we have Ashkenazim and Sephardic Jews, vegetarians, healthy bakers, and scratch bakers. We are the United Nations of cooks.

We have a wine aficionado too, who will be providing a wine guide offering pairings and suggesting little known vintners and guidance on why certain wines work better with certain courses or ingredients.

We have contributors with special knowledge of the healing properties of certain foods, herbs, and spices. Interlaced on the website and in the cookbooks will be information about the healing properties of certain foods, herbs, and spices which will help you to live a healthier life with no more effort than cooking breakfast, lunch, or dinner.

We even have a tea aficionado who will offer a guide to creating a sensational “tea party”. Our tea aficionado is also one of herb gurus.

As a group we are like a casserole, many diverse ingredients mixed together to make a single delicious end result.

http://howtocookbooks.com is a joint venture of cooking enthusiasts who, as one of our contributors put it “cook like a painter paints”. Now what the heck does that mean, you may be asking. What it means is that we cook from the heart, or in other terms are open handed cooks. We start with a blank canvas and we add color until we are pleased with the outcome. In the case of cooking that means we add ingredients, spices, and herbs without following an official recipe.

That is the most challenging aspect of taking our recipes and making them into cookbooks that someone else can follow, and duplicate the recipe.

Ultimately our goals with this project and our cookbooks are to help people keep their ethnic traditions alive, introduce people to new cultures and cultural traditions, renew “family dinner” and face-to-face dinner conversation, encourage people to eat in a more healthy way, save money, and improve their lives and relationships.

While some may consider those goals lofty and perhaps even quixotic, we are passionate people who have never thrown up our hands in despair in the face of challenge.

Please join us on this cultural journey and take your place at our table.