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Week of Eating In: A chance to dive into ‘Joy of Cooking’
File this one under Kitchen Confession: Until this past week, I hadn’t cooked from Irma Rombauer’s epic “Joy of Cooking.”
For a food writer, this is one of the ultimate sins (right up there with not owning Le Creuset cookware and refusing to cook with celery, both of which I’m also guilty of). I’m a “How to Cook Everything” girl myself, but Rombauer’s book is a classic, having been in print continuously since 1936 and sold more than 18 million copies.
I found an extra copy of “Joy” in the Statesman’s cookbook stash recently, and last week’s challenge to eat in for a week gave me the perfect excuse to start exploring.
As soon as I started flipping through the book, I realized why it was so important to so many people. Mark Bittman’s might claim to show you how to cook everything, but Rombauer’s is probably a little closer to the truth.
On Sunday, Julian and I made pancakes, or flapjacks, as he insisted after reading a book that called them that. Instead of making the pancakes from scratch (thank you, Hungry Man), I opted to make blueberry syrup from a recipe from “Joy” that called for lemon zest and cinnamon sticks. I added a few blackberries to the mix because we had some in the freezer.
Everyone loved the results so much that no one even reached for the regular syrup.
Blueberry syrup
1/4 cup water
1/4 cup syrup
1 cup blueberries (or any kind of berries)
1 1-inch piece of cinnamon stick
1/2 tsp. grated lemon zest
1 Tbsp. dark rum or port (optional)
Bring water and sugar to a boil in a small saucepan. Add blueberries, cinnamon stick, lemon zest and port. Reduce the heat to medium-low and simmer 10 minutes until thickened.
— From “Joy of Cooking” by Irma Rombauer
While digging around the bread-baking section, I saw a recipe for bread made with sprouted seeds, which lead me to an entire entry on all the kinds of seeds you can sprout.
Seed sprouting is considered as hippie as patchouli these days, but Rombauer must have known how tasty, easy-to-make and good-for-you sprouted beans and seeds can be. At her suggestion, I started sprouting mustard and fenugreek seeds that had been sitting in my spice cabinet and millet that has been gathering dust in my pantry.
After just two days, the fenugreek seeds had already sprouted and the mustard seeds were just starting to burst out.
It’s easy to find alfalfa and bean sprouts at the grocery store, and the sprouts you make at home, which of course cost a fraction of those in the store, can be used in the same way. I’ll be putting these sprouts on sandwiches, in stir frys and hopefully in a loaf of bread like Ms. Rombauer suggested.
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