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It is not so much Deb Perelman’s kitchen ingenuity—which is impressive enough—that intrigues, but her popularity.
By all accounts, Perelman is the food blogger of the moment. Her Smitten Kitchen recipes/cooking blog routinely attracts hundreds of comments under each entry, and millions of monthly page views. She’s been around since 2006, an eon in blog-years, and seven years of bi-weekly blogging has yielded hundreds of recipes in a searchable index at her site.
She seems to have found the formula. She comes across in the blog as personable, making self-deprecating comments about her weight and her truly tiny New York kitchen. The photos, so important to a cooking blog, are all taken by Perelman herself; they’ll make you hungry, and eager to cook. It’s not so much that she’s a skilled photographer as that becoming a food blogger means that one must become a passable food photographer. (Hint for amateur food photographers: use natural sunlight, not flash, whenever possible.)
The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook, like the blog, has proven immensely popular. A second book tour for the same cookbook will bring Perelman to our Downtown Left Bank Books tomorrow.
So, why the tempest over Perelman (right) and her blog?
Her recipes, like those of most food bloggers, are not overly complicated. People trust to her to point out a brand of classy simplicity they can recreate at home, communicated in the language of a joyous omnivore.
Her specialties are the indulgent courses, breakfast and dessert. The book offers mouthwatering photos and recipes for dishes like plum and sour cream pancakes, chocolate-chip brioche pretzels, cheddar-swirl breakfast buns, and a New York Breakfast Casserole that uses cubed bagels, cream cheese, red onion, tomatoes, and eggs as the basis for a baked dish. Rhubarb hamantaschen, chocolate-raspberry rugelach, peach dumplings with bourbon hard sauce, and grapefruit-olive oil pound cake all look superb. A chocolate-hazelnut crepe cake looks like a jar of Nutella’s dream of heaven.
Her gooey cinnamon squares are a shout-out to St. Louis, and an inspired combo of gooey butter cake and Snickerdoodles, as well as an adaptation (left) of what should be a familiar-looking local classic.
But, but, but – these aren’t her recipes. Not exactly. According to this, “Nearly all of smittenkitchen .com's recipes are gleaned from Deb's mother's home cooking repertoire, old issues of Gourmet magazine, The New York Times magazine and food section, and favorite cookbook authors such as Martha Stewart, Peter Reinhardt, and Mario Batali.”
Perelman freely admits where she cribbed these recipes from in her cookbook and online, and she often tweaks them to suit her personal taste. She is essentially doing what each of us does when we cook: gathering information, trying different recipes, and settling eventually on the “winners.”
But each of us doesn’t boast a cottage industry built on the process. Isn’t there something a bit disingenuous about it all? It’s seldom emphasized in the press, but Perelman’s oeuvre, like a certain kind of rapper, is heavy on the sampling. For most, this seems to matter not a whit. But some may wonder just what of her own ingenuity she’s bringing to the table, as it were.
Much as America’s Test Kitchen touts its use of trial-and-error in bringing you a superior recipe, the untrained Perelman has carved an enviable niche for herself as a sort of “cookbook tester.” It’s not such a strange idea for a food blogger. But when a food blogger gets a $400,000 advance on a book deal, it might be worth noting that in the cookbook world, times are officially changing.
To quote the noted philosopher Eric Clapton, “It’s in the way that you use it,” and it is Perelman’s personality, as expressed in her writing, just south of mild but way north of obnoxious, that seems to have become faddish amongst home cooks. People – women especially – seem to feel they could befriend her in real life. The blogger’s subtle, unspectacular charm (she’s no Fabio Viviani) has somehow served as the linchpin for a cult. Perelman herself often joins the discussion under the meat of each blog entry, and the interactivity reinforces her image as a humble gal happy to chat with anyone, just like her presumptive readers.
We’ll gladly boil up a bucket of the Smitten egg salad with pickled celery and coarse Dijon (right), and plenty of other goodies she’s developed. But Perelman is, quite simply, not the only game in town. She just seems, to some of us, like a very lucky lottery winner who got to quit her day job, and now gets to cook other people’s recipes at home all day.
Deb Perelman
Signing “The Smitten Kitchen”
Friday, March 1
7 p.m.
Left Bank Books - Downtown
321 N. Tenth St.
314-367-6731
All food photo images courtesy of smittenkitchen.com
