Cookbook indexing woes II

Here is the second instalment of my cookbook indexing woes. Back in 2011 I gave a talk as a member of ANZSI QLD about cookbook indexing. For those of you who don’t know what ANZSI is – it stands for Australian and New Zealand Society of Indexers. Like professional editors and their societies, we indexers also have our own, believe it not! For a bit of fun I brought along a few cookbooks that I owned and ones I had borrowed from the library. The night was a rowdy one, who knew that people felt so strongly about the usability of cookbook indexes! We discussed very passionately about the cookbooks we loved, and there was the odd disagreement about how we look up dishes, etc. Among some of the issues we discussed were the usability of ethnic food cookbooks, food memoir/cookbooks, and cookbooks that are published for one local market but what happens when you take it out of its local context.

How do we look up or refer to ethnic dishes that have no English equivalents? How over-indexed are some books? For example, instead of having an entry for ‘Sriracha chilli sauce’ – how about indexing an entry under ‘chilli’ or ‘sauce’ for those who don’t know that Sriracha is a type of Thai chilli sauce. It’s details like these that matter when one is cooking with foreign ingredients.

There are many books to discuss and look at but one of the cookbooks that I want to briefly discuss is the beautifully produced memoir/cookbook hybrid – Pauline Nguyen’s Secrets of the Red Lantern: Stories and Vietnamese Recipes From the Heart.

(a well-worn and thumbed through copy from the library!)

Sumptuous, mouthwatering-looking photographs of dishes feature throughout the book alongside with photographs of the author’s family – past and present. These photographs of people and place tell an important but sad story of displacement and an attempt by a family to hang onto one’s cultural integrity in a foreign land. What it does is it gives Red Lantern’s food an irresistible appeal given its context of the rags-to-riches Vietnamese migrant/refugee narrative and the difference food and culture can make in our lives. Each chapter opens with narrative and ends with recipes.

The index targets a Western/English-speaking audience. The index itself is not inadequate – in fact – it’s a good recipe index. What I find curious is while all the recipes have Vietnamese names and their English equivalents – only the English names are indexed. Perhaps economy of pages dictated this decision.

(Examples of the index from the book: simple and concise)

The memoir component is an interesting one – Pauline gives us her family history, talks about the fall of Saigon and its consequences, the rise of communism and the escape from political tyranny by boat to arrive in Thailand and their subsequent arrival in Australia, etc, (there’s a typo too with the spelling of Pilau Bidong – it should be ‘Pulau’). We’re taken through the social and cultural history of Cabramatta in the early 1980s when it was a place of migrants and refugees. She gives readers another perspective on life there as a migrant family, most of us would only know Cabramatta for its druggy reputation from the media.

Imagine my disappointment when I went to the index to look up Aunty Eight’s corn business – only to find that the entire memoir section is unindexed. I am not sure if this was a conscious decision – perhaps marketing decided that this is sold predominantly as a cookbook? Surely the backstory to Red Lantern is important too? There are plenty of interesting characters dotted throughout the book - don't they deserve a mention in the index? I’m sure many bought the book for its memoir component too? I think this lack of a separate general index for the memoir is a shame – it would have given the book more weight and it would have carried far more historical/social and cultural insight had there been an index. By not acknowledging the story in the index (and I'm sure this was not their intention), I think the publisher has diluted the effect of Pauline’s story - for me, that is disappointing. Not that the Nguyen’s family story is not fascinating enough – it is precisely that it is interesting that I want the option of looking certain aspects up! This could have been an important reference for the present and future generational Nguyen clan in search of family history and the events that have been so significant in their lives.

Those who are after an unconventional review for the book, I found this site, Syrup and Tang, which I only came across recently; it highlights some important publishing issues. It doesn't shy away from being really critical. The reviewer has a valid point: it's important for publishers to make books accessible to its readers; we value the integrity of good editing but we also want to allow the author’s authentic voice to come through the page. Interesting reading, indeed!

Real Food Companion by Matthew Evans

The Real Food Companion by Matthew Evans

I had the pleasure of meeting Matthew Evans at his book launch earlier this year. His talk was informative and passionate. His attitude towards food and his frankness about not having a lot of agricultural knowledge to begin with provided me with motivation for learning more. Matthew Evan’s event was sponsored by Food Connect (a great organisation committed to farming sustainability and communities). I had much respect for Evans when he was a Sydney Morning Herald food reviewer and I have even more respect for him now that he’s championing the awareness of sustainable farming and opting for simpler eating and living. For those of you not so familiar with his written work, you may be more familiar with his television show, the SBS food documentary Gourmet Farmer.

I’m a big fan of Murdoch food books in general, but this tome is really a little bit special. Not only is the book beautifully made, from the rustic jacket to the photographs and text – a lot of care and love has gone into it. Evan’s prologue is especially touching. The publication of the book coincides with the birth of his first child. The prologue turns into a kind of ‘life’ letter, which I guess, is also a form of love letter to his first born. With this, Evans introduces his family and his food aspirations to his child. He sagely advises his child to “Dine in front of the television at your own peril. Keep your self-esteem intact and your front door open to visitors. Keep the pantry full and the larder enriched. Keep the invitations going to those who seek refuge, as well as those who come to bring joy. Be generous with the ladle and cavalier with the wine. Cook, my child, for hospitality is the glue that binds humanity together.” What lovely sentiments.

(the book with its scarecrow jacket on)

Evans’s life-changing journey starts with tasting real milk, which for him, is a driver for uncovering the real, core flavours of ingredients. He is not a fan of mediocrity, he supports ethical eating and like the title of the book suggests, he is interested in real food. Evans could’ve bleated on and on about sustainable eating, farming and the feelgood factor of buying and eating organic. Yes, he espouses all of these food philosophies but he doesn’t come across as greenly pious or shouts obnoxiously from his soapbox. He makes the reader aware of these issues gently; almost reminds us that we shouldn’t neglect the soil that nourishes our vegetables and the welfare of the animals that we depend on for food.

The chapters are well laid out and categories of ingredients are explained in simple, easy-to-understand language. The beauty of the Real Food Companion is that it is a personal collection of rustic, delicious recipes combined with introductions to individual farmers and their produce, and explanations of uses for ingredients. The dairy chapter sees recipes like baked nutmeg custard, goats’ milk latte cotto and labna. The flour chapter shows off the flexibility of wheat, whether for turning leftover crusts into a bread and butter pudding or dough being kneaded into silky pappardelle. The recipes are never overcomplicated or fussy. Traditionalists will delight in the English and French comfort foods like homemade bacon baked beans and coq au vin; and the multiculturalists will appreciate the taxi driver’s lamb curry and fattoush.

(Matthew Evans's homemade bacon baked beans)

And where would a good reference/cookbook be without a workable index? The index is broken up into two separate categories: Food and Topics. The food index is user-friendly and pretty thorough although some food entries could have been more practically thought through. For a book that is part reference and part cookbook, the level of indexing is spot on. The Topics section is easy to use but some entries seem to have been overlooked and locators are not all there. Overall, Real Food Companion is a heartwarming read and provides inspiration to all of us who are vying for a change of pace in our hectic lifestyles. This book makes me want to find time to nourish and grow something wonderful from a little patch of dirt.

Ducasse and his cookbook

Alain Ducasse
Spoon Food and Wine review

I am a big fan of books in general but have a very soft spot for food books and cook books. A post on Twitter recently by Barbara from winos and foodies on the unusability of some celebrity chef’s (he who shall be nameless!) recipes got me looking at cookbooks with a more critical eye. Sure, we’ve come across recipes that look good on paper but fail miserably even when you follow it to the tee. I think most of us have had that experience. Some recipes are perhaps inadequately tested in the kitchen, editors may have missed a typo in the amount of ingredients needed. A whole gamut of things can go wrong when dealing with recipes and cookbooks.

I was excited when I found a book with Alain Ducasse’s recipes at the library. What was I expecting to see in a cookbook by the famous and very prolific French chef? Did I expect to see elements of haute cuisine reflected in the construction of text and photographs? Did I expect elegance and refinement reflected in the recipes? Monsieur Ducasse has many, many restaurants under his belt: his bars, restaurants and bistros litter the cities and countrysides of France, Monaco, Tokyo, America, Lebanon, Italy, England and Mauritius. Ducasse has a very impressive line up of eateries and yes, even more impressive that some of these restaurants have multiple Michelin stars. So what did I think of this cookbook?

The Spoon Food and Wine cookbook covers recipes from Ducasse’s Spoon franchise. In his introduction, he states that the book was conceived in the ‘spirit of exploration, analysis and iconoclasm.’ He continues, “Anyway, that is how this book was designed. You will see that there are no one-way streets, that you are not trapped on a ‘motorway’ of taste. It’s a case of ‘as you like it’. If you want to take a side turning, reverse, start again, no one will stop you. But, when it comes to stopping short – no way! …in this sense, the cooking of Spoon is instinctive: chew, munch, eat, drink. These ‘deconstructed’ dishes have all the adapatability of basic cooking. What I like about the ethos of Spoon is that it combines the simplest, most fundamental gesture – dipping a spoon into an earthenware bowl – with modern sophistication.’

I laughed at the motor highway metaphor for cooking styles and then I became confused over the description of the spoon being dipped into an earthenware bowl with utter modern sophisticated abandon. Wait a minute, my detection of pretension/wanker siren is going off! I know celebrities have great authority and say in a lot of things but when does an editor not edit or refine a clumsy introduction? It gets worse from here. The recipes seem relatively easy enough and aren’t overly too complicated but the problem with this book lies in its design elements. Surely you can have a well-designed book (think Murdoch Books’ plethora of beautiful and practical cookbooks) with good-looking visuals without the book looking like the contents of a dog’s breakfast.

The designer somehow has managed to turn a cookbook into a pseudo-people/fashion shoot and managed to talk the editor into agreeing to use the photos. Shots of attractive young things lounging in restaurants are interspersed throughout the book. Don’t get me wrong, the photographs in the book are beautifully and artistically shot.


What I would like to know is whether people find over-the-top design/photographic elements in a cookbook detract from the recipes and cooking techniques. I found my eyes roving across the pages, struggling to look for some semblance of ease of readability. Typographic inconsistencies rule on the page – recipe ingredients are condensed and line spacing reduced. The font used for the cooking instructions, on the other hand, is enlarged but printed ultra light with cooking steps in an extra bold red font. These red ‘steps’ punctuate the page too boldly and I found them very distracting because the actual instructions were so light therefore hard to read. Some of the choices of very busy background photographs render the ultra light font almost invisible.



By now you’re probably thinking ‘what a bloody nitpicker’ but I am after all, a professional book indexer and I tend to look at things in great detail. If you’re thinking that I can’t pick this book apart anymore, I haven’t even started on the index! Two thirds of the pages dedicated to the index are supplemented by very large photographs of Ducasse’s compotes and salsas in tumblers. What use is an index if you can’t use it or refer to it? (FYI, this link to a badly indexed book is quite hilarious)

If you think you want to look up chicken dishes – you’d look under C for chicken or P for poultry. Well, chicken is not under ‘chicken’ or ‘poultry’ surprise, surprise. It’s under ‘seared chicken fillets’. Seafood is nowhere to be found, instead you’ll find it also under ‘seared red mullet, etc’ Desserts? Ice creams? Try ‘The big meringue’.

Tomatoes? Forget it if you think it’s under ‘vegetables’ or ‘tomatoes’ – it’s under ‘stuffed tomatoes and potato straws’. I could go on and on but I won’t bore you. If there was ever a nomination for a bad index: this is it. This thoroughly inadequate index, is after all, a fitting end to a very superficial fashionable book about the way food should look and the kinds of people who aspire to eat at the Spoon establishment. There is no warmth or generosity depicted in any of the pictures – the images of food is gorgeous (yes) but clinical and exacting, devoid of any emotion or spontaneity. This book leaves me stone cold and I am glad I didn’t invest money indulging in something so inaccessible and unapproachable.