Kenny Shopsin (1942–2018)

I really love to cook but I hate certain things that come along with it. Like flatten your foot if you dropped it cookbooks that tout the same old same old rhetoric that your grandma's grandma was reading once upon a time. Which is a drawn out way of saying that this particular book is something I picked up a couple years back because everyone was saying how different it was from the above mentioned cookbook trojan horses I'd come across all too often. It's been sitting in my stack of cookbooks ever since because I was happy believing it was different without giving myself the chance to find out otherwise.

If it hadn't been for a certain challenge in a certain group (Read a book about cooking), it would still be lurking in the corner of my kitchen. Alas alack, it was picked up and read and I'm happy to say that the members of that "everyone" were pretty spot on and I should have read the damn thing a lot sooner. It's funny and it makes you hungry for things you could actually see yourself cooking, both necessary reqs in my mind for a cookbook.… (mehr)

I read the Trillin article on Shopsin's back in 2002, so I bought this as soon as I knew it existed. And it was pretty much what I expected, in a good way. There's the attitude, of course. And this seemed like a particularly good book for non-cooks -- it's all about throwing really random stuff together based on what's handy. Including leftovers. Nothing intimidating. Except for the burgers, I guess. I avoid cooking techniques that involve flame. Not sure chili and marinara cross as many boundaries as he thinks, but it's worth trying.… (mehr)