On cookbooks and chaos

My week has been spent knee-deep in a very particular kind of chaos: sorting through mountains of cookbooks. As I sold off the restaurants, I brought with me some of my dearest possessions, and my cookbook collection was one of them. What started as a practical “get these boxes out of my garage” situation turned into an unexpected trip down memory lane.

Here’s something I’ve learned about myself over the years: the bigger, flashier, and more expensive a cookbook is, the less likely I am to actually crack it open. Those gorgeous coffee table books from my fine dining days? Barely touched. Meanwhile, my beat-up encyclopedia of produce from when I was 17? USED

It got me thinking about what we actually use cookbooks for these days. Do you still buy them? Do you actually cook from them, or are they more like kitchen decoration?

My Four-Category System

After wrestling with this collection, I’ve landed on four types of books worth keeping as I am sorting through them:

The Nostalgic Keepers: Books with personal history – like the first Noma book (which changed everything, in my opinion), The El Bulli collection that eats up half my shelf space, but represents something important in culinary history, or something I was attached to.

The Actually Useful: Surprisingly few. Mostly bakery and pastry books when I need to look up a specific pie technique. Though let’s be honest, ChatGPT is probably taking over this category too, and the Modernist series is just enormous.

Friends’ Books: When fellow chefs brought signed copies to the restaurant, those personal dedications make them keepers. It’s the same courtesy I extended with my own cookbook (still available if anyone’s interested – just reach out! :-).

Books about cooking, not cookbooks: My personal favorites. Dense books about regional cooking, cultural history, and gastronomic traditions. Food systems, connections with agriculture, etc. Less Instagram-worthy, but the kind you actually sit down and study. They make you a smarter cook, and make you think about food differently, not just cook other recipes.

Weekend Question for You

I’m genuinely curious: Do you actually read your cookbooks? Which ones do you turn to, and why? And if you’re interested in my list of books that genuinely make you a better, smarter chef, let me know – I am planning to send out my favorites in those categories in the next couple of weeks.