Machane Yehuda is the pulse of culinary Jerusalem. I’m sure you’ve read that before if you’ve been reading my blog posts. Surrounding the two streets of the market itself are a number of stores that range from health food ingredients to kitchen utensils.

I was wandering through Machane Yehuda with some family late last night – late for the market, where only a few of the restaurants and shops remained open – and as I was leaving I spotted a row of ingredients on a shelf through the open door of a shop located just outside the market on Agrippas. Asian ingredients. Lots of them.

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More of a reference book than a cookbook, this 960-page tome has a wealth of information in it for anyone interested in Really Good Food. The book is rich in details, anecdotes and fact, and the accompanying pictures are as mouth-watering as the descriptions of the foods.

The book is organized into sections including Fruit, Vegetables, Dairy, Fish, Meats, Aromatics, Grain, Bakery and Confections, with an included glossary of epicurean terms. Each food entry is concise yet provides information on its history, flavor profile, health benefits, preparation, appellation, seasonality and more.

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Pretty soon readers in the States will be able to grab a kosher Gatorade after a long workout or ball game or while slaving away in a hot kitchen. That iconic quart of electrolyte-laden thirst-quenching ambrosia will soon slake the thirsts of parched Jews as they hastily mutter a shehakol before pounding one down. It’s the perfect drink to quickly replenish lost body fluids.

Or if you like drinking neon.

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There are a surfeit of cookbooks on the shelves, everything from pretty books that rattle off lists of ingredients whose duplication in the styled photos is next to impossible, to classic tomes that assume a complete apprenticeship to a master chef and years of professional experience.

I own both kinds.

Having cookbooks is a way to explore worldwide cuisine without leaving your reading chair. It mixes the exotic with the familiar and ignites the imagination. Cookbooks, for me, are a way to kick-start my creativity. I process kosher substitution in my head to see whether milk can be reasonably substituted or whether just plain water will do, or if veal or turkey can stand in for pork. It’s well past the point where I flip past a recipe simply because it’s not intrinsically kosher; anything can be kosherized. (more…)