The forgotten cookbooks, a treasure of traditional recipes

Persian meatballs garnished with limp parsley

There’s a man who comes around our neighborhood and yells alte zachen in a reverberant baritone, a voice from the stomach and not the throat. It once sounded to me like a call to prayer, but it is altogether more grounded and mundane. The term is Yiddish for old stuff, a dying trade where a merchant buys off the decrepit, discarded and broken household items for a bargain price. I sometimes feel like the alte zahen man, but for outcast cookbooks.

They are the ones on the discount rack that are usually ignored for glossy coffee table editions with celebrity names. Their authors may be dedicated yet their books can’t compete. How can they compare with their unappetizing food snapshots and typo ridden text? Yet without the help of a food stylist, photographer, editor or graphic artist they brought their dream to reality and into the bookstores. I respect their perseverance. What these cookbook lack in aesthetics they compensate in preserving and sharing local culinary traditions. These are not created by recipes developers but are often a family’s recipes, be it Tunisian, Canadian, Polish and outback cooking of the USA. It is a classic case of “don’t judge a book by its cover”. Instead of smooth professionalism, there is something endearingly quirky and more personal about many of the homey editions.

In my collection Cee Dub, author of Dutch Oven and other camp cookin’, dispenses the best advice of any cookbook. He writes (in bold)“ Don’t criticize the cook…It’s not written in the scriptures, nor is it part of the Ten Commandments, but criticizing the cook or the food borders on the unpardonable”. Now that should hang from a plaque in every kitchen as a warning since, as he says “revenge do belongeth to the cook”.

Often these books are immensely personal and not molded to become mass sellers. The authors write in deep nostalgia for their mother’s or grandmother’s cooking and the way life used to be. One sadly is a tribute to a son, each recipe a way to preserve and honor his memory. Some of the larger books are collaborations, such as the Ladino cookbook, Gizar kon gozo (edited by Matilda Koen-Sarano), with contributions from women across the Sephardic world.

Newfoundland’s Household Almanac and Cookbook contains one of most outlandish recipes I have ever seen combining lime and lemon Jello, crushed pineapple, mayonnaise and cottage cheese. Next to the menagerie of recipes are trivia tidbits and quotes. “Intuition is what causes a wife to correct her husband before he has a chance to say anything” is written right next to Mary Russell’s (nee Ash, Come by Chance, Newfoundland) recipe for broccoli and cauliflower salad.

The author of an Egyptian cookbook shares the food culture of her native country, with description of mlouhkia (Jew’s mallow), Egyptian broad beans and koshary, not often known to those outside its borders. Tiny bear meatballs in sherry sauce can only be found in the Cooking in Alaska cookbook. The chances of finding moose, reindeer, seal and bidarkis (which is an ingredient I have never heard of) are close to nil outside the land of the midnight sun.

And the pictures! They break every rule in the food photographer’s book with a style of their own. While the food is usually in focus, the fax machine or wastepaper basket can be distinguished in the background. Every dish is garnished with limp parsley and sweet pepper rings (even dessert) in a sincere effort to add a bit of color to the photographs. But this is being harsh, writing a cookbook is a formidable task even with the aid of experts. Doing it alone is a feat not many would consider let alone achieve.

While it’s easy to appreciate beautiful cookbooks, the underdogs of culinary literature should not be ignored. Some of them offer fascinating incite on local food traditions.

Persian meat patties with cilantro, cumin and chickpea flour

This recipe was adopted from the English and Persian bilingual cookbook, Iranian Cuisine (kosher) by Leevim Vida of Tel-Monde, Israel. She was born in Tehran in 1963 and immigrated to Israel when she was twenty-two.

600 grams ground beef or lamb

Small bunch parsley, chopped

Small bunch coriander leaves, chopped

1 onion, grated

Zest of one lemon, finely minced or grated

1 teaspoon cumin

1 teaspoon salt

¼ teaspoon black pepper

½ teaspoon turmeric

½ cup roasted chickpea flour

2 eggs

Vegetable oil for frying such as Canola

Combine all the ingredients and knead until combined. Heat 2-3 cm of oil in a large pan, preferably cast iron. When the oil is hot, form small patties, using about two tablespoons of the mixture. Fry until golden and then flip to fry the opposite side. Transfer to a paper towel lined plate to absorb excess oil.

A photograph to brighten up the winter months- a rose named Rothschild photographed at Ramat Hanadiv. 

Rose named after Rothschild