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May 21, 2013Professional Cookbook Reviews: An Inside Look + CookShelf App GiveawayI love toread a good book review, one that’s full of insights tinged with humor andsometimes, a bit of well deserved snark. T. Susan Chang is one of the fewprofessional cookbook reviewers in the United States. You may know her workfrom National Public Radio, the Boston Globe, or her website. She takes every book totask, testing recipes and evaluating the merits of each work on a variety of levels. Susan’s got twelve (12!) years of professional experience to back her up, plus a solid knowledge of cookbooks that goes back further yet.
You may notagree with Susan on all of her calls but you don’t have to. Like all excellent reviewers, she lays out her deep assessment so that you can form yours. Sherecently released a nifty phone app called CookShelf. It’s a cookbook ratingapp—available for iPhone and Android —that’s extremely thorough and handy for whether you're shopping or just catching up on what's out there.
I bought the $2.99 app, and after reading through a number of reviews (she addscontent regularly too so you’re buying into a lifetime subscription, of sorts),I had questions to ask Susan about the art and craft of reviewing cookbooks.Read on and if you’ve got an iPhone, enter the giveaway; sorry, there are noAndroid giveaway codes available.
There are zillions of recipesonline but we still buy cookbooks. Why?
Physicalcookbooks are famously robust sellers. I think I recently heard thatbiographies and cookbooks are the only growing categories in the publishingindustry. If that's the case, I'm not surprised. The act of cooking from arecipe is pretty physical and stressful, and it's helpful to work from aphysical book for many reasons: you can turn back and forth between pages, youcan browse through recipes and compare several at a time, you have intuitivestructure in the way the book's organized, so you know to go to the back forthe desserts or the front for the ingredient glossary—all things you can dodigitally, but it's harder. You can annotate easily, you can drop it on thefloor or spill stuff on it. Cookbooks are working books.
Even whenthey're not working, cookbooks make great physical gifts—buying someone a bunchof online recipes just wouldn't be the same. And many are terrific reads youcan take to a beach or pool and other places you don't necessarily want tosubject your device to.
That said,there's a good reason for the popularity of e-cookbooks, recipe apps, onlinerecipes. While there are some things they don't do as well as regularcookbooks, there are also things they can do better—video instruction, onlinesourcing, measuring conversion are examples. So, if it serves the reader for meto review online recipes and virtual cookbooks as well, I will. I'm expectingto be introducing e-cookbooks into my review process before too long. Where themarket goes, CookShelf will go too.
CookShelf’s rating system is morecomprehensive and complex than Amazon’s star system. How did you figure out afair rubric for judging the books?
The ratingsystem is the product of years of hair-pulling. From years of 10-best lists andcookbook reviews and roundups, I've had the opportunity to really ask myself whatmakes a great cookbook—not just for me but for other people too.
A ton offactors go into that assessment. Some affect how usable a cookbook is. Someaffect how interesting it is and how durable its appeal is. Some affect howgreat a gift it makes. Rather than try to condense all that into one star-basedrating, I decided to break out the information a bit so you can use it. Themost important qualities seemed to be how truly new the cookbook is, whether itmakes a good gift, what level of skill you need to use it, and how it lastsover time ("Keeper"). The only really subjective rating in CookShelfis the "Keeper" rating. That's where I go out on a limb and make anabsolute value judgment - this cookbook will serve you forever, this cookbookgoes out with the recycling.
But I alsoput a bunch of other key data points into each entry to help people weighthings they might care about—like how many recipes you get in the book, howhard it is to get the ingredients, how fast the recipes are and—a key one formany of us!—how tiny the type is.
Apps tend to entertain, inform,or inspire. What does CookShelf do best?
CookShelf'sprimary mission is informational. It's just plain hard to choose a cookbook,and my first job is to help. I try to make my reviews a bit like wine reviews:consistent, authoritative, and whenever possible, based on testing. Althoughyou may not always agree with me, you know there's a baseline for my judgment. Thatmay or may not be true when you're sifting through 100 user reviews on Amazon.
But it'salso important to me that CookShelf be a good read. My style is a personal one,and I hope you'll get some insights and some laughs from each review. Still, Itry very hard not to allow my affection for lively prose to lead me astray. There'sa real temptation to get snarky in the review business, so I make an effort toavoid that when I'm being critical.
As toinspiration—well, I do hope CookShelf inspires people to buy more cookbook. Eventhough, as my friend Jane says, that makes me an enabler. But come on! a goodcookbook can serve a family for 50 years! One cannot say the same for AngryBirds.
Who is the ideal CookShelf user?How would she or he use the app?
There arebasically 3 kinds of CookShelf users, and they overlap a bit:
Cooks. CookShelf is an indispensableapp for home cooks, the main users of cookbooks. It's a way of getting a bettersense of a cookbook you're considering before you commit, and it's also a wayof finding new cookbooks you might love. Whether cooking is your hobby or even yourjob, CookShelf helps ensure you find the "keepers" for yourcollection. $2.99 isn't much to get that kind of insight - and updated weeklyfor the foreseeable future! Food lovers. Sometimes we just like readingthe news about something we enjoy. For example, I like reading film reviewseven though I don't go to the movies more than 6 times a year. They're justinteresting. Same goes for cookbooks: don't you want to know how Deborah Madison'snew book is shaking out? Don't you want to know what's the big fuss about thelatest vegan bestseller? Don't you want to know if cupcakes are over . . . yet?That's the kind of perspective I try to provide. This kind of reader is mostlikely to go straight to the "Just added!" feature each week to seewhat's up.Shoppers. Some will turn to CookShelf forhelp buying a gift. For these readers, it's a particularly powerful toolbecause of the filtering system. For example, you can say "I need a Skill 2—that's fairly easy—book forvegetarians (or new cooks or fans of middle Eastern food)" and CookShelfwill generate a list for you to consider. Amazon won't do that for you. CookShelfis sort of like Zappos for cookbooks.
How often do you plan to updateCookShelf? I seem to get new content weekly.
That's myplan—to update weekly with at least a few new reviews. So many cookbooks areconstantly being published (I've heard a figure of 4000/year) that the only wayto stay current is to keep on top of it every week. I choose the books I thinkare most interesting (which usually include the ones I'm reviewing for the Boston Globe) and the ones that seem tobe the most popular, judging by the Amazon bestseller lists. I love the wayhaving my own app lets me respond very quickly to the newest titles.
I try tofinish writing my new material by Tuesday night, which is when I ask thedeveloper to refresh. CookShelf is like my own personal Wednesday food section!This way, people can simply update and read the latest when they're making therounds of the food pages Wednesday morning.
And, how many cookbooks do youown? How and where do you store them?
The answer,as it is for all of us, is "Too many!". I keep my cookbooks indexedon Eat Your Books, which tells me Ihave 919 cookbooks right now. That doesn't include the reference books or theones in my "Give Away" bookshelf (about 200 titles right there). Atleast 4 times a year I winnow the books, taking out the ones that are doingnothing for me to make room for more, until all the books are off the floor andon shelves. The goal is not to have to buy more bookshelves in a given year.
I keep astore of about 80 "favorite" cookbooks - Asian Tofu is one of them!—downstairs in the kitchen. The rest arestored on the second floor of our house. My former office is all cookbooks, andour library is about half cookbooks. The first few years we lived here, webought or made bookshelves every year. We haven't bought one in 2 years, butit's a constant battle. We live across the street from the town library, whichnow has the most up-to-date cookbook collection in Franklin County.
GIVEAWAY DETAILS
Want a free copy of Susan’s CookShelf cookbook rating app?It’s available for Android and Apple devices but the giveaway is only open to iOSusers; my apologies to Android folks. If you have an iPhone, iTouch, or iPad , youcan enter!
The ground rules for entering this giveaway:
Prize: CookShelf mobile app (4 winnerstotal)Who is eligible to enter: Despite the fact that theapp is a download, this giveaway is open to readers in the U.S. only. The appis for the iPhone, iTouch, or iPad so you should have one of these devices, orhave access to one in order to enter.How to enter: Simply leave a comment on this post about one ofthe following: What do you look for in a good cookbook? How manycookbooks do you own? Include your email address so that I can contact youdirectly if you win. Can you enter more thanonce? Yes, if you’re a fan of the VWKFacebook page, follow me on Twitter orhave joined me on Pinterest, you can enter an extra time foreach of those social media networks. If we’re buddies on all three, then shoot,you can enter 4 times. If you’re doing multiple entries, let me know who youare by including something like [FB], [Twitter], or [Pinterest] in yourcomment.Deadline to enter: Monday, June 27, noon (PST)Selection, notification,and claiming the app: The four winners will berandomly selected via Random.org and notified by email. The winners will beannounced next Tuesday, June 28. I’ll send the winners instructions on how toclaim the app from the iTunes App store. If you’d like more details, read the official giveaway rules.Good luck!
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Comments Professional Cookbook Reviews: An Inside Look + CookShelf App GiveawayI love toread a good book review, one that’s full of insights tinged with humor andsometimes, a bit of well deserved snark. T. Susan Chang is one of the fewprofessional cookbook reviewers in the United States. You may know her workfrom National Public Radio, the Boston Globe, or her website. She takes every book totask, testing recipes and evaluating the merits of each work on a variety of levels. Susan’s got twelve (12!) years of professional experience to back her up, plus a solid knowledge of cookbooks that goes back further yet.
You may notagree with Susan on all of her calls but you don’t have to. Like all excellent reviewers, she lays out her deep assessment so that you can form yours. Sherecently released a nifty phone app called CookShelf. It’s a cookbook ratingapp—available for iPhone and Android —that’s extremely thorough and handy for whether you're shopping or just catching up on what's out there.
I bought the $2.99 app, and after reading through a number of reviews (she addscontent regularly too so you’re buying into a lifetime subscription, of sorts),I had questions to ask Susan about the art and craft of reviewing cookbooks.Read on and if you’ve got an iPhone, enter the giveaway; sorry, there are noAndroid giveaway codes available.
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Asian Tofu in the News"A whole cookbook devoted to tofu? Yes, please."— Kate Williams, Serious Eats 2012 Favorite Cookbooks
"Cooking with Tofu (Are You Serious?!)"
— Michael Rulhman on his tofu conversion
"This book should be a priority for anyone with the slightest interest in Asian cuisines."
— Anne Mendelson, Taste & Travel
"The most gratifying part about cooking from Asian Tofu is that all the recipes work the way they’re written."
— T. Susan Chang, Boston Globe
Book info, reviews, radio & TV . . .Classes & Events1/2 day @Cakebreadwines, Rutherford
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