How to Actually Use Your Cookbooks

plus cream-baked radicchio and white beans

At some point in 2024 I cancelled my New York Times subscription, which included digital access to “the paper,” plus “Games” and the mega-resource that has become NYT Cooking. I was mostly cancelling for political reasons: since October 2023, the Times has been manufacturing consent for an ongoing genocide in Gaza; since well before that, it has been “just asking questions” about trans kids in a way that I find both deeply evil and generally yucky. The list goes on. (Remember Tom Cotton?) My deep outrage regarding the paper’s warmongering was twisted by the daily serotonin hits I got from Games (which was taking up far too much time and mental capacity—I was spending hours clicking on letters instead of actually writing) and my ongoing reliance on Cooking. Both came to feel like they existed for the sole purpose of reputation laundering. Who could get mad at the institution that has fed us such pleasure-bombs as shallot pasta and Wordle?

Unhooking myself from the culinary feeding tube that is NYT Cooking also served a tertiary goal: to actually use the hundred-plus cookbooks that line my living room. I love cookbooks, I told myself; I am intellectually invested in the project of the cookbook! And yet! My books sat untouched by the same fingers that typed collard greens into the NYT Cooking search bar.

A few months after unsubscribing, I still wasn’t using my cookbooks as much as I thought I’d be. There were just too many of them. I have probably 15 cookbooks that I look at a few times a month, because I know they are likely to feed me a reliable dinner. But there are so many books I find fascinating that I rarely touch. So this summer, I finally signed up for Eat Your Books, an online database that lets you index your cookbooks and search within them. (The website won’t show you the actual recipe, but it will give you a page number and ingredient list.) I have been slowly incorporating it into my cooking life, professionally and otherwise. I’ve been working on two different cookbooks this fall, and it’s been incredibly helpful to search gumbo or caramel sauce or vanilla syrup and create a short list of reference titles for the afternoon. This is a much less overwhelming and more reliable process than Googling “vanilla syrup” and being bombarded with recipes from SEO blogs¹ I don’t know if I can trust. Looking through three books and comparing gumbo recipes feels like looking at a map, while picking through Google results feels a little more like trying to make visual sense of a chasm.

And for weeknight dinners, it serves the same function as that NYT cooking search bar. It’s a big relief on days when I’ve received my bimonthly CSA share, or when I’ve had a head of collards sitting in the back of my fridge for weeks. (I went for Cajun-Style Braised Collard Greens from Jessica B. Harris’ new Braided Heritage.) A glut of dates led me to bookmark Amy Thielen’s sticky date olive oil cake from Company, which I wrote about last year. Dipping into these books has the pleasant drive-by effect of cruising past the Medieval Art section of the Met to dip in and quickly out of a temporary exhibit after paying my $1 entry. I am quickly dunked into the world of the book, and the printed world of the recipe—headnote, sidebar, image, the little note at the bottom. I’ve written before about how much I dislike recipes that try to strip the form of its context; this new habit feels like intentionally picking up some linty context with each new quest.

this is technically a double batch but I really dk if you need all that unless it’s a thanksgiving type thing

I’m sure that there are people who are already using their cookbooks this way, and to them I say congratulations². I feel the same about my art books, which I only whip out when I can physically feel the need for something beautiful on a page in front of me, which is I suppose frequent but not as frequent as I’d like.

Last week I had two big honking heads of radicchio wilting on the fridge shelf, and so there I was, paging through search results for first “radicchio” and then “chicory” and then “radicchio” again. There were so many salads but I knew I want something cooked that would quell the bitterness; the temperature had finally dipped and I was itching to turn on my oven. The simplest result I found was Marcella Hazan’s baked radicchio, which is simply roasted in olive oil and salt. I did not so much make this recipe as use it as permission to do something slightly less simple. I thought of the cream in my fridge, and I wished for a shake of protein, and so there I was tucking the quartered radicchio into a baking dish and tipping in some beans and a lot of cream. It felt like something Rebecca May Johnson might make—every time I see her use cream to bake or braise I think I should do that, and now that I finally had all this cream in my fridge from recipe testing; I was ready to use it to tame the bitterness of the radicchio. I was quite pleased with what came out of the oven, and have tweaked it into a slightly better and more manageable recipe, in case you are also looking for a way to eat a lot of radicchio without enduring a punishing level of bitterness. I’m sure this would also be good with anything cruciferous: kale and cauliflower both sound particularly appealing.

for those wondering that’s strawberry syrup in the corner

Creamed radicchio with beans

Creamed Radicchio With Beans

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1 large or 2 medium heads radicchio
1 can white beans, drained and rinsed
3 cloves garlic, grated
1 lemon
1 cup cream
3-4 tablespoons olive oil
Salt and pepper, lots
Aleppo pepper
Lemon
Arugula
Vinegar
Flaky Salt

Preheat the oven to 400°F. Combine the beans and grated garlic in a baking dish, and add the zest of the lemon. Toss to combine.

Halve or quarter, then core, the radicchio. Place atop the bean mixture. Cover with a few big pinches of salt and pepper. Pour over the cream and olive oil.

Roast for 25 to 30 minutes, until the radicchio is slouchy and has begun to take on a bit of color. Halve the zested lemon, and squeeze over the juice of one half.

Toss some arugula with fancy vinegar and serve this atop the radicchio, the way California Pizza Kitchen puts salads on their pizza.

Serve with flaky salt and the remaining lemon.

1. I enjoyed reading the Embedded interview with Sally’s Baking Addiction last week…did not go as deep as I’d like into the recipe blog sausage factory but it’s always fascinating to hear from these people. Woks of Life is still my #1 !!!

2. I’m also reminded of a newsletter from Paula Forbes a few years ago, where she wrote about the three-ring binder where she collects print-outs/scans of recipes she really loves. I’ve always found this system appealing but I am pretty sure I’d never follow through on it.