If I wanted a recipe for India's gobi Manchurian, Korean kimchi jjigae, Mexican goat birria or Thai massaman curry, where would I look?
In the same place that I would find banana bread, pancakes, meatloaf and chicken noodle soup--the brand new edition of "Joy of Cooking."
This massive book, loaded with more than 4,000 recipes, has gone heavily into ethnic foods to reflect the way Americans cook today. New immigration has changed the population, introducing dishes not known when the first "Joy" appeared in 1931.
If Irma S. Rombauer, who self-published that initial book, were alive now, this is the sort of book she would write, tailored to the needs and interests of contemporary home cooks.
The 2019 revision was produced by her great grandson, John Becker, and his wife, Megan Scott (above). On the book cover and title page, their names follow those who built "Joy" into an American classic--Rombauer, her daughter, Marion Rombauer Becker, and Ethan Becker, Marion's son and John's father.
The index to my 1943 edition of "Joy" is 60 pages long. I thought that was impressive until I counted the index pages in the 2019 edition. There are 76, because this book covers everything you can think of, all types of food preparation, basic recipes, new ingredients unknown to Rombauer, new equipment and techniques such as sous vide.
The canned soups that she introduced in 1943 are gone, except for timeless oldies such as the green bean casserole made with canned cream of mushroom soup and canned fried onions and the tomato soup cake, also known as "mystery cake."
The index lists 93 Rombauer classics that have been in "Joy" since 1936. Like the chocolate cake known as the "Rombauer Special" (above), they've been tweaked and revised to bring them up to date.
You could, for example, substitute homemade creamed mushrooms and crispy fried shallots for the canned soup and canned onions in the green bean casserole.
When Becker and Scott presented recipes from the book at Melissa's Produce, they included just one of the classics, beef pot roast (above). This, too, has been revised (the salt pork and bacon suggested for larding in my book have been dropped, along with other changes).
Instead, they showed new dishes such as the Syrian red pepper and walnut dip muhammara (above). In the book it is made with fresh red bell peppers. For the lunch, Melissa's chefs substituted jarred fire-roasted red peppers, an ingredient that Rombauer might have used if it had been available.
Alongside the dip were olive oil flatbread crackers (above), laced with pepitas.
Rachel's kale and lentil salad (above) contained radicchio and hazelnuts. For the lunch it was made with boxed steamed lentils, another product not known to Rombauer. Following the book, you would cook the lentils from scratch, the way she did.
Roasted cauliflower soup (above) was simple and comforting.
The ease of making the mushroom ragout shown above would have appealed to Rombauer. "She wanted to be a friend in the kitchen to her reader," Megan Scott said. "Her biggest goal--was to get out of the kitchen as soon as possible."
A new style dessert was yogurt and honey panna cotta (above), topped with fruit sauce.
Scott then showed how to make an olive oil cake (above), an "incredibly quick, easy recipe," she said. This too would have pleased Rombauer. "She loved baking cakes," Becker said.
Here, he kibbitzes as Scott pours the cake batter into a baking pan.
Producing the revision took years of "incredibly hard work," he said. The goal was to "make everything better."
The result is a new "Joy" that still speaks with the voice of the family. It doesn't cover every base (I didn't find any Filipino recipes), but it's so exhaustive that it you had only one cookbook in your kitchen, this should be it.
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