These are not your everyday cookbooks. When you’re tired of the same old thing for dinner, try one of these unconventional possibilities.
Kafka’s Soup: a complete history of world literature in 14 recipes by Mark Crick.
This guy is smart! Food + fiction = satisfaction. Raymond Chandler cooks lamb with dill sauce; “before I knew what I was doing a carrot lay in pieces on the slab.” Steinbeck’s mushrooms “lay dry and wrinkled, each slice twisted by thirst and the color of parched earth.” Harold Pinter turns cheese toast into a one-act play. Good stuff.
Manifold destiny: the one! the only! guide to cooking on your car engine by Chris Maynard and Bill Scheller. Originally published in 1989, now revised and updated to include such menu gems as “Hyundai Halibut with Fennel” and “Nifty NAFTA Nachos.” Includes recipes, cooking times and distances, with some funny commentary sandwiched in between.
Fierce food: the intrepid diner’s guide to the unusual, exotic and downright bizarre by Christa Weil. If you’ve had enough meatloaf and spaghetti for the rest of your life, find something new for dinner. Each food is handily described in categories like “revolting,” “has eyes” and “tastes like chicken.” Chicken’s foot, anyone? Or lichen for the vegetarian palate. You can really get your Euell Gibbons on with this one.
It must’ve been something I ate: the return of the man who ate everything by Jeffrey Steingarten. Forty deliciously entertaining chapters cover everything from the belly of the bluefin tuna to the story of gourmet salt. With recipes! Besides sensible advice and intriguing culinary tips, get a big serving of humor from Vogue food writer Steingarten.
Cuisines of the axis of evil and other irritating states by Chris Fair. In this dinner party approach to international relations, foreign affairs analyst Chris Fair offers an entertaining and provocative cookbook with fare from Iraq, North Korea, Cuba and the heart of the USA (BBQ, baby!). Includes dossiers of perfidy for each country. Funny, irreverent and mouth-watering.
Fried chicken: An American story by John Edge. Much more than a cookbook, this small volume is a delight of regional cuisine, history and lore. Edge has also written winningly of burgers and fries, donuts and apple pie. Now he tackles the all-American fowl. Put aside any fear of deep fat or calories and dig in to a big plate of the buttermilk-bathed bird, with biscuits. You’ll never again ask why the chicken crossed the road.
~Ellen F., Central Library
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