I attended my first cookbook club meeting about a month ago. I had heard of cookbook clubs—groups that pick one cookbook from which all members make a recipe, then gather to share the results—but I’d never participated in one before. I was rather excited to be playing along.
The book was The Essential Cuisines of Mexico, by Diana Kennedy, which I bought ages ago (at the Big Book Sale) but have never used. I held off on claiming my dish, as I was going to be out of town the entire month of April and wasn’t sure what would sound appealing when I got back, just before the club was to meet.
When I came back I discovered I didn’t have the book (I have Regional Cooking of Mexico, not Essential). I had nothing in the fridge, and little time to track down unusual ingredients, or the book itself. I picked two recipes I found online, both on the easier side and not involving super esoteric ingredients. I planned to make mushroom tacos, but switched to pumpkin seed dip when I realized I didn’t have time to be deep frying. Also, deep frying scares me.
The pumpkin seed dip was a good pick: super easy, just toast the seeds and grind them in the food processor. This is when I discovered I had forgotten to purchase a green pepper, as needed for the recipe. When I was in the store I still thought I was making tacos. So I punted and tossed in a bit of chipotle pepper in adobo, which I keep in a glass jar in the fridge. It gave the dip a nice, smoky flavor. Then I raced to the cookbook club meeting, arriving quite late but with my contribution in hand.
And now a note about cookbook clubs: this is a brilliant idea.
Think about it—with a large enough group, you get to sample a good number of dishes without having to make them yourself. That ceviche, the one with raw fish that I never would have made myself, was amazing. There were these Mexican sweet breads that take something like forty-eight hours to make, and I got to taste them without having to sift and stir. And we all got to chat about the book and what we liked and didn’t like and where we had to go to find all the ingredients. It’s like being able to test-drive a good portion of the book without spending a week in front of the stove. I think it’s fantastic.
I mean, just look at this table. And this was after everyone had eaten and a few people had gone home. I should have grabbed a picture before we dug in, but as you can see, it was quite a spread.
And my plate.
And the forty-eight hour bread I never would have made.
Then we got to sit around on the back porch and chat and enjoy the sunshine. If you ask me, this cookbook club thing is genius—major payoff for limited investment. And incredibly nice people to boot. I’m a firm convert.
There was only one problem. A few people told me how much they liked the pumpkin seed dip, and how flavorful it had been compared to a lot of the other dishes. And here I feel like I must confess and admit that I added an uncalled for ingredient. The flavor all came from the chipotle in adobo. I don’t know what the real dish tastes like, which kind of defeats the point of test-driving the book at cookbook club. I think I probably broke the rules.
So this is me, fessing up to my unauthorized addition. If you find yourself going to a cookbook club, I strongly suggest that you stick to the recipe as written (do as I say, not as I do). But if you’re making them for yourself, do it my way. I think it’s tastier.
As for me, I hope the cookbook club forgives me (I might be on cookbook club probation for such an infraction). I’m crossing my fingers that they’ll invite me back anyway. I promise to play by the rules from here on out.
SIKIL P’AK Pumpkin Seed Dip
Adapted from Diana Kennedy’s Essential Cuisines of Mexico
This dip is an unusual flavor, but one that easily becomes addictive. With the chipotle it is smoky and earthy, a musky mix that goes well with corn tortillas. I can imagine it as an excellent sauce for chicken or mild-flavored fish. I’d certainly like some chicken tacos with the meat cooked in pumpkin seed sauce. This is also one of the easiest dips you could whip up, and lasts in the fridge for days.
1 ¼ cup hulled raw pumpkin seeds (unsalted)
1 habanero chile or any fresh, hot green chile, or chipotle in adobo to taste (start with 1/4 tsp, then add more as you desire)
1 ½ teaspoon salt, or to taste
12 oz cherry tomatoes, broiled
2/3 cup water
2 heaped tbs roughly chopped cilantro
2 heaped tbs roughly chopped chives
Toast the pumpkin seeds in a heavy frying pan over medium high heat. Stir continually until they are crisp and beginning to brown. If a few pop open, that is fine. Set aside to cool.
If using the green chile, roast it in the same dry hot pan until blistered. Place in a plastic or paper bag to cool. Make sure to close the bag tightly. Leave twenty minutes and then scrape off the charred skin and remove the seeds.
In the same pan, add the tomatoes and stir occasionally until blistered, wrinkled, and beginning to pop. You can also do this on a pan under the broiler.
Put the pumpkin seeds and salt into the bowl of a food processor and pulse until the mixture is ground and uniform. Add the tomatoes and chile or chipotle in adobo and blend until smooth. Add the water slowly, in a stream from the feeder tube of the food processor, stopping when you’ve reached the consistency you want (I was going for spreadable). Add the cilantro and chives and blend until smooth, adding additional water as desired.
Serve with chips or tortilla or masa cakes. Would also make an excellent sauce for chicken or fish.
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Well, as someone who may or may not have been shamed at book club for editing recipes, I’m on your side. Why not improve it if you can? Play! That’s how I use cookbooks when I cook from them, so that’s how I should use them for the club. I think.
If you’re ever inclined to start our own, improviser’s cookbook club, just let me know
Yes! We need a rogue cookbook club, for those of us who like to go off-road.
Ah, yes, this is real life. I like it. Thanks for sharing. I find it comforting.
It’s definitely my real life, alas!
What a fun book club idea, I want to join one! Once we settle somewhere, off to the races finding group members.
Do it! So much fun.
Oh yeah, that looks good. Plus I love, love, LOVE cilantro!
There were a few people there who don’t like cilantro. Woe to them!
What an awesome idea! I need to find (or start!) a cookbook club around here.
It’s so much fun—I hope you do it.
What fun! I guess I belong to a group like this too, it’s been going to something like 20 years, we’re the newest members. Four times a year, they pick a theme (often a cookbook / cuisine / chef), someone selects a menu from it, everyone signs up to bring that dish, enough for 35 to 40 people. Usually it’s someone like Julia Child but also Traditional Native American foods. As long as they’ve been doing it, they’ve covered some ground. (Which might explain why in May they did MY recipes. What fun THAT was!)
That is so great, Alanna. Twenty years is impressive!
A cookbook club! What a fabulous idea! I might have to try to get one going over here.
Love your story. Sounds exactly like something that would happen to me. I can never resist switching things up in a recipe anyway.
I hope you do! It’s a lot of fun.
I want to belong to a cookbook club! What fun. And I see nothing to put you in the clubhouse jail for what you did. Who cooks exactly as the recipe’s printed anyway? Good job! Looks wonderful.
Thanks, but I think I took a few liberties
. I also think you should consider starting your own club. It’s so much fun!
Cookbook club is all about breaking the rules. It’s about trying new recipes, yes, but it’s also about flexing your chops, changing things a bit to suit your tastes or knowing how to sub in an ingredient if you don’t have something. If you have chops in the kitchen, you know when a recipe won’t quite work the way it’s written and also how to fix it. Trust me, this has happened.
It’s also about having a great group of friends who don’t mind if you make mistakes with your recipe. Trust me on that, too. I’ve been there.
Ha, yes, it seemed a very understanding group. Even so, next time I plan to toe the line!
K said it better than I could have myself. No need to toe the (imaginary) line!
Is that an official pardon—’cause I’ll totally take it! Had so much fun. Thanks for including me!
I love the photo of the feet! Makes me smile on a grey SF night.
Thanks, Anne. It seemed so very companionable.
FANTASTICO idea! The soup swap, and now this–amazing party concepts. I’ve been wanting to do a soup swap for quite some time–and now I want to do a “cookbook club” party, too.
They are both great events, I hope you do! Neither of them are my great ideas, but I seem to be good about hanging out with clever foodie people. That’s the trick
I think it is great you still brought something ad-libbed or not.
Thanks, Kat. I did have a moment of wondering if I should just call in sick!
A cookbook club sounds such a great idea-I’ve never heard of one before, but its like a book club I guess, just with lush food added! Brilliant concept! And look forward to hearing more of your cookbook club adventures!
Thanks, Kate. I’m looking forward to it as well. Next meeting is in July. Picnic!
I wouldn’t kick yourself too hard for your rogue dip. I like to view cookbooks as a good blue print, a starting point for dishes to come. And who knows, maybe Ms. Kennedy went off the beaten path with her recipe, and you’ve reigned it back in to where it is more traditional. One can hope, right?
Definite hope, yes. And at least the dip was good, eh? It could have been much worse
Wow, what a great idea! I want to join a cookbook club!
We need a cookbook club movement—you can start your own and we’ll take it national!
I like this post for so many reasons, chief among them that I tasted my very first pumpkin seed dip in Austin just last week. It was great, though mild, and I kind of wish the chef had gone rogue like you. The dip could have used a kick in the pants, authentic or not.
i’m also suddenly VERY interested in Mexican food, so your post comes at the right time.
Also (and then I’ll shut up), I’m totally going to steal this cookbook club idea, too.
Redemption! Thank you very much. And I think you *should* steal the idea, it’s a good one.
I love the idea of a cook book club, but I think I would do what you did, If I see things in recipes I do not like I change it! And as you said that sort of defeats the purpose of trying the cookbook out.
I hope that you are finding a new normal in your life after the passing of your friend and I thank you for sharing your stories with blogland. (Sorry to be a downer and ask after your peppy post)
Thanks, Elizabeth–not a downer at all for those who are living with it, it’s actually sweet that someone remembers.
I am the only one in my group of friends who cooks so I will live through for this (and find the cookbook at the library). Any more, I always change recipes I find to make. I make them more to my and my families taste, allergy requirements, or texture requirements (some things I do not eat because of texture). Go ahead and experiment. I would have been excited at the party to know how you had changed the recipe.
You’re the only cook in your friend group? Wow. They must all LOVE you—and I bet you get to make all the menu decisions!
I like the idea of a cookbook club. Also I have never heard or tried a pumpkin seed dip. It sounds fascinating Tea.
Love the cookbook club idea! Sounds like a wonderful dip. Love the idea of chipotle in adobo – I have never used that in a dip before and it sounds amazing!
Hi Tea!
Love the idea of a cookbook club, especially if you are planning to review a particular book. Regarding the dip, just this last weekend when I was in Austin TX for IACP, I attended an even catered by El Naranjo, a Oaxacan taco truck. There was a huge bowl of a dip that I couldn’t stop eating, made with roasted pumpkin seeds, habaneros and something green, perhaps cilantro or some green onion. WOW, was this good. And now to see your recipe! I’m going to have to experiment with this, it was so so so good.
Cookbook club! What a brilliant idea. And I love anything pumpkin, so the dip I will certainly have to try. Thanks!
You inspired me, yet again! This looked like so much fun that I organized my own cookbook club event coming up in a few weeks. Our first book will be “Around my French Table”. I can’t wait! Thank you so much for the idea!
I’ve been in a traditional book club for several years now, and have dreamed about expanding the horizons of it this way! So fun to read about your experience, and again, I feel inspired to encourage my group to try something like this.
When you process the ingredients, I assume you add the chipotle and tomatoes at the same time. I think you left that addition out of the instructions. Sounds perfect for summer. Thanks!
Yes! Sorry for the oversight. Thanks for pointing it out—I will make the correction.
I think I’m going to see if I can get a cookbook club going here!
How much fun would that be?
BTW, I ALWAYS tweak a little!!!
tweaking totally counts.
and now i am craving your “cheat”.
Heh, as long as everyone knows how you fixed the dip (and Miss Kennedy doesn’t find out…I hear she’s a bit…um difficult), I say tweaking is fair game. Love the photo of the feet. I swear, you Seattle chicks know how to get together!
OH man, I’d love to find a cookbook club in the South Bay. Years ago a group of us cooked our way through The Frugal Gourmets Immigrant Ancestor Cookbook. You were right about some folks taking days to prepare a dish (alas, I was one of those that usually didn’t). I tried so many things I never would have tried to cook on my own.
We used to have a bookclub and when we met we would bring food. Initially we met in a coffee shop but later decided to rotate using member’s homes as the meeting place and then it evolved into a potluck. It was fun to see what everyone would bring. Once everyone brought brownies – 8 different types of brownies for us to nibble on with tea while discussing a new book. A cookbook club sounds like fun – and I love the feet picture.
I’ve never heard of a cookbook club but its genius! I love the look of the pumpkin seed dip – everything looks so fresh and tasty
I also like the cute blue ballet flats in the feet pic
Wow and Wtf! How the heck does one hull a pumpkin seed?
I guess I could use the seeds from any fresh squash then… and is there a trick to hulling them?
Hulled pumpkin seeds are the green ones, unhulled are larger and white–the way they come out of the squash. One of the Diana Kennedy recipes called for 1 cup hulled and 1/4 cup unhulled, but comments on this recipe by some people who made it said they didn’t like the texture, so I went with all hulled (and purchased them already hulled). Also, if you don’t have a squash, the unhulled white seeds are hard to come by. You can sometimes find them in ethnic shops.
I’ve never hulled them myself, I suspect it would be painstaking. Also, for more than a cup of hulled seeds, you would probably need several pumpkins. I don’t know about other squash and their seeds. If you experiment, I’d love to hear back!
A cookbook club – what a great great idea – Any thoughts on how to start or find one in Portland Oregon?
I agree with anyone above who might have said you’re in the clear with your cookbook club (as far as improvisation goes) as long as you ‘fess up to the group re: any changes you made to the recipe!
i so need to start a rogue cookbook club…especially since i have NEVER followed a recipe. i always have to give it a little something of my own. i will be trying this recipe…and only altering it a wee bit.
You have my full approval–for a rogue cookbook club and any recipe altering!