Cookbook challenge

If you have read my book blog you will know that I am in the middle of a reading challenge. I recently made an inventory of my books and realised I had many cookbooks I had never tried as much as a single recipe from. While browsing these books I have often thought I should try this or that recipe, but more often than not I didn’t. When I realised how many cookbooks I had I got to thinking about my cooking habits and realised that in the last five years or so I have only tried maybe half a dozen new recipes a year, most of them found on the web. Before that, I used to try a couple of new recipes every month, many of them from cookbooks or my grandmother’s collection of newspaper recipe clippings.

I do think it’s okay to collect recipe books one never uses for anything other than reading or looking at the photos, but I still feel a little guilty for having them, because I originally bought them or was given them with the intent that they would be used. Therefore I think I would like to try a challenge that will not only justify my owning all these recipe books, but also get me into the kitchen to make something new every week.

I set myself these simple rules:
• To try at least one new recipe every week until I have tested at least one recipe from each of my recipe and cookery books. It can be for something as simple and quick as a cocktail, as time-consuming as a stew with 25+ ingredients, or as fiddly as sauce hollandaise, just as long as I like the look of the recipe.
• The recipe of the week must come from a different recipe book each time, but additional recipes can be from books I have used before.
• I will publish the results in a blog, complete with recipe(s), notes and recipe review(s).

That’s it.

Since this blog is supposed to be about Icelandic cooking, I’m starting a new cooking blog, Matarást . I will not stop posting to this one, but if you are a regular reader, you will know that my posting here is sporadic at best. I will not start until next week, as I will be away for the weekend.

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