A Cook Not a Chef

94 cookbooks rest within arm’s reach of my writing table. Hundreds more are stored in boxes in the next room. What do you do with them once your cooking technique moves beyond recipes?

Last year I donated several hundred cookbooks to Goodwill. I bought each one for a reason. Those reasons became obsolete. As a result, there are more cookbooks for disposition among what remains. (I sorted this cookbook thing out previously).

Obsession with cookbook recipes is not what I’m getting at when I write, “A cook not a chef.” It is a cook’s job to prepare food and get it on the table. Increasingly, if I use a recipe at all, it is the springboard for making something recognizable and nutritious for dinner. A cook’s work does not rely on an understanding of flavor, technique, or any of the fancy stuff of being a chef. A cook is the quotidian day worker in our lives preparing simple fare for plain folks. I am a cook, not a chef.

What brought all this up? I need more bookshelf space where I write and cookbooks seem like they are taking too much of it. Maybe I could get rid of some of them. It is pretty hopeless, however. I went through the shelves and found Colorado Collage by the Junior League of Denver. I scanned through it and determined almost every recipe could be a springboard for some other dish, yet none of them fit into the wheel house of my cookery. I put the book in the passenger car seat and will drop it off at the public library either to be put in their stacks or sold at the annual used book sale. My review sums up the situation:

For a community cookbook, this has high production values. It would be a fun book to use when developing a new dish, but it’s use would be to modify their recipes to fit the culinary culture of the cook. This was not a good fit for me.

Will be donating my copy to the public library.

93 remaining for disposition.