Not Alone

At last I have found an addict - Jane Kramer of the New Yorker - with a cookery book jones worse than mine.

I read cookbooks. I am addicted to them. I keep a pile on the floor of my study in New York, knowing that if I manage to write a couple of decent pages I can treat myself to a $4.50 Chinese lunch special in the company of Richard Olney or Jasper White or Ruth Rogers and Rose Gray, thinking of all the succulent things I would cook for dinner if I didn�t have to go back to work in the afternoon. I keep another pile on my bedside table, knowing that if I wake in the middle of the night I can pick one up and drift off into a soothing dream of Jo�l Robuchon�s mashed potatoes or Claudia Roden�s pumpkin dumplings or Marcella Hazan�s red-and-green polenta torta, with a layer of onions, pine nuts, and ground pork between the spinach and the tomato. ... read on ...