No chefs in my kitchen (and not much lamb offal, either)

Did you see Marcella Hazan's op-ed piece in the times yesterday, No Chefs in My Kitchen? Thank you.

Coinkydink, I've been thinking of Ms. Hazaan for a week or two, since Lorishki dove in to thin out the collection of cookbooks and magazines and recipes we've been gathering for the last nesarly 25 years. There's a lot of them. A couple hundred books, looks to me. There's 30 in the give-away pile.

Anyway, I've been thinking about M.H. because I (pretty uncharacteristically - must be the new age) asked myself, If I were going to pare it down to 5 books, which five would they be? I surprised myself by getting it down very quickly to 3 plus 1.

1. Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything (1998);
2. Deborah Madison's Vegitarian Cooking for Everybody (1997);
3. Marcella Hazaan's The Classic Italian Cookbook (1973; my copy is the 1990 18th printing).

And the plus 1 is

• James Beard's amazing and frightening American Cookery (1972).

That last one I don't think I've ever cooked from, but I pick it up now and then and read from it like an epic novel. Oh, man, I wonder what happens to a Lamb Offal next!? (Page 396, in my copy.)