The Cookbook

There’s a peculiar ritual that plays out in middle-class kitchens up and down the land. An annual pilgrimage to Waterstones (or, for the truly lazy, a one-click Amazon splurge) to procure the latest must-have cookbook. These hefty tomes, often adorned with smugly grinning chefs and artful arrangements of ingredients no one actually owns, are then ceremoniously plonked on the kitchen counter before being flicked through exactly once, never to be touched again. Less a cookbook, more an aspirational paperweight.

Take Ottolenghi, for example. A man who has single-handedly kept the sumac and pomegranate molasses industries afloat. His books are a joy to behold. Pages dripping with Middle Eastern sunshine and garnished with just the right amount of food-stylist nonchalance. But let’s be honest. No one has the patience to track down Persian barberries on a wet Tuesday evening. His recipes are read wistfully, bookmarked optimistically, and then abandoned in favour of beans on toast.

Nigella, meanwhile, is the siren of the seductive snack. Her books promise effortless indulgence, but somehow, in the cold light of day, an evening of whipping up a "cheeky little something" invariably gives way to eating crisps straight from the bag while standing over the sink. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall is another culprit, luring unsuspecting home cooks into believing they’ll suddenly develop the wherewithal to forage for wild garlic and ferment their own butter. Two weeks later, the book is wedged under a wobbly table leg and normal service is resumed.

Then there’s the Christmas influx. Every year, without fail, Jamie Oliver or Gordon Ramsay will churn out a festive doorstop promising to revolutionise your roast. It will be unwrapped with enthusiasm, skimmed through while digesting a third helping of turkey, and then unceremoniously shoved onto an already overstuffed shelf alongside its predecessors. Because, despite the best intentions, Christmas dinner will always be made the same way your mother did it, because that’s how Christmas dinner works.

But not all chefs are guilty. Nigel Slater, bless him, gets it right. No unnecessary flourishes. No demands for obscure herbs that sound like a skin condition. Just proper food, simply made, with ingredients you might actually have knocking about in the fridge. His books don’t sit gathering dust. They’re splattered, dog-eared, and genuinely useful. Proof that not every cookbook has to be an exercise in overambition and self-delusion.

The grandest joke of all? The sheer volume of cookbooks bought by people who never cook. Entire bookshelves dedicated to the culinary arts, yet the oven is used exclusively for storing frying pans. It’s performance literature. A way to signal one’s cultural sophistication without the inconvenience of actually doing anything. A pristine copy of "The Nordic Baking Bible"? Clearly, this is a person of taste, even if their idea of home baking is defrosting a Tesco’s croissant.

So the cycle continues. The cookbooks keep rolling in, their spines barely cracked, their recipes untested. But no matter. When the next beautifully photographed collection of unfeasibly complicated dishes lands in the shops, we’ll all fall for it again. And that, my friends, is the true secret ingredient of the publishing industry. Blind, unwavering optimism.