This Is the Winter for Grandma Cookbooks (You Know Which Ones I Mean)
With the dreariest days of winter ahead and so many dirty dishes in our rearview, cooking has become, for me anyway, nothing more than a domestic necessity. I may do it well or poorly, but it must be done either way. The one thing that’s saved me from complete apathy? My grandma cookbooks.
Grandma cookbooks are not cookbooks that actual grandmas use. Actual grandmas do not use recipes, with the exception of the occasional handwritten notecard. When they can be convinced to write a recipe down, their instructions consist of “throw two handfuls of tomatoes and a pinch of salt in; stir until it smells right.” Grandma cookbooks instead exemplify the unfussy yet encyclopedic knowledge of a cuisine passed down by individual grandmas, in book form. In other words, Grandma cookbooks are intended for people who have to put dinner on the table, but cannot abide either the preciousness of celebrity chef cookbooks or the callow, unmoored wiz-bang of 365: No Repeats.
Many Grandma cookbooks are collaborations between adult children and the older generation; some are written by grandmas who happen to be talented writers. Often, they are written by immigrants seeking to preserve their cuisine for their American children, while sharing it with the world. All grandma cookbooks know good cooking for the domestic drudgery it is and are here to help you, oh soft American child, feed your people, well.
When Kian Lam Kho moved to the United States from Singapore, he couldn’t find a decent Chinese cookbook in English. So he began to write home, relying on an assortment of aunties and other relatives to compile the grandma cookbook he needed. Many years later, he brought that same spirit to Phoenix Claws and Jade Trees, giving the American home cook an invaluable reference work for the backbone of technique undergirding the many and varied forms of Chinese regional cuisine. With an entire chapter on “The Making of Hearty Soups,” Phoenix Claws—and the aunties and grandmas on whose shoulders it stands—has your back until spring.
Desserts can feel like one load of dishes too far right now. But especially if you have kids, you need a low-stakes dessert sometimes, and you need it not always to be the cookie on the back of the chocolate chip bag. This cookbook is an absolutely exhaustive exploration of cookies. The recipes hold up to Greenspan’s reputation of perfection and simply do not fail, which gets me through the angst of prepping something new at 5 p.m. on a Thursday with a five-year-old in tow.
In Bibi’s Kitchen isn’t a record of a single cuisine like others on this list, but it’s a literal grandma cookbook (“Bibi” is the Swahili word for “grandma”). It includes extensive interviews with no-nonsense elders from the “eight African countries that touch the Indian Ocean,” plus a few recipes from each, like Mbowa (leafy greens in coconut sauce) from Mozambique, or Shiro (ground chickpea stew) from Eritrea. In Bibi’s Kitchen might not teach you how to cook a comprehensive set of dishes like a grandma, but it will teach you how to approach cooking like one.
I misplaced this chief contender for the WASP Bible some years ago, and I have to tell you—I miss it. I’ve been wanting to make a Dutch Baby for weeks, and I clearly remember this book having a recipe for one, along with a slump, a buckle, and a brown betty. Joy of Cooking is simply a useful encyclopedia of French-American food, with no compromises on butterfat, salt, or flavor.
Aromas of Aleppo is one of two recent English-language cookbooks documenting the cuisine of Syrian Jews. It will teach you how to make grape leaves, stuffed eggplant, and the best tabbouleh you’ve ever had. And while the recipes are not all easy-breezy, the book is never persnickety without reason—stuffed zucchini and kibbeh, for instance, require attention to detail for the tastiest results. Fair warning: Dweck’s quantities can occasionally be off—for instance, as far as I can tell there’s not nearly enough water in her mujadrah (lentils and rice with caramelized onions) recipe—but you will cook through this book so often you won’t mind writing the correct quantities in the book’s margins.
I can make at least seven different pasta dishes from memory and I firmly believe that salad comes at the end of the meal. Still, I turn to Hazan’s classic whenever I want to pinpoint how to fix a dish I remember my grandfather cooking for us regularly, like Sicilian-style stuffed artichokes. It’s comforting and rigorous, with plenty of easy to source ingredients and substitutions (it was written before Italian grocers were widely established in the U.S.). This book will see you and your family through until we are all vaccinated.
I know at least two Iranian-American friends who received this cookbook at their wedding, from their grandmas. It is a doorstop and absolutely indispensable if you want to cook solid Iranian food, which trust me, you do. The sheer quantities of saffron, pistachios, herbs, and rosewater in many recipes can seem daunting (and expensive) to source. However, Batmanglij consistently offers substitutions and tricks so you can adapt the recipes to your liking—and your budget.
