The How Not to Cookbook: Lessons Learned the Hard Way
Learn what not to do in the kitchen from this hilarious collection of real advice by real people. Sometimes the best way to learn is to make mistakes. That’s the premise of this book—a sort of anti-cookbook. Fed up with our prevailing food culture of patronizing celebrity chefs with their rigid and often impossible instructions, Aleksandra Mir started a website to invite real people to send in their kitchen disaster stories, so that the rest of us could benefit from their experience. The...
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Learn what not to do in the kitchen from this hilarious collection of real advice by real people. Sometimes the best way to learn is to make mistakes. That’s the premise of this book—a sort of anti-cookbook. Fed up with our prevailing food culture of patronizing celebrity chefs with their rigid and often impossible instructions, Aleksandra Mir started a website to invite real people to send in their kitchen disaster stories, so that the rest of us could benefit from their experience. The result was a viral Internet phenomenon. Home cooks from around the world streamed in with advice. One thousand of their tips were then collected in this humorous and ultimately heartening and cathartic book. The packaging is as funny as the content too; it tricks you into thinking you’ve come across a vintage workhorse cookbook that’s seen its share of abuse. Don’t look here for recipes to be followed slavishly. Instead, this is a book to dip in and out of, choosing from among the wide variety of little gems that are always idiosyncratic, often opinionated, and never boring. Many will spark debate. Some may not be so practical but are wickedly funny. But the best part of the book is its reassurance that it’s okay to be human, to make mistakes.
“When you have accidentally added washing-up liquid to your salad instead of oil, do not attempt to wash it out and serve it to your children. They will be able to tell the difference. Even the teenagers.”\ \ “Do not salt your meat right before cooking it or else it will dry up. It will also take all the taste away.”\ \ “While boiling pasta do not start two parallel chats on Facebook.”\ \ “Never follow online recipes. You cannot trust the person writing them.”\ \ “Do not leave meat in the oven. Even if you turn the oven off, the meat will continue to cook.”\ \ “Never start cooking before you’ve had a glass of wine, but do not start cooking after you’ve had your second glass.”\ \ “Do not use colored string to tie up your meat when roasting. The dye will most likely run into the meat and turn it a funny color.”\ \ “Never season a salad while holding a cigarette.”\ \ “Do not look into a gas oven too fast after opening the door. Especially while wearing mascara—it will make your eyelashes glue together.”
