“I’ve got a great idea for a cookbook,” I told my agent. “It’s called “Don’t Let Your Meat Loaf” and it’s 50 different meatloaf recipes!”
“I love it,” he said. “Let’s shop it.”
2004 was coming to a close, and I was just finishing up my latest project, a year-long photo-diary of everything that I ate, aptly called (though some said facilely) “Everything I Ate.” The publisher, Chronicle Books, was happy with the project and wanted to do a follow-up.
“Nice idea,” said my editor at Chronicle. “But we already have a meatloaf cookbook in the works.”
“OK, then, how about this idea,” I offered. “‘Lush.’ It’s all recipes made with booze.”
“Maybe not,” was the answer. “But we’ve been thinking, we’d love to do a cookbook for guys. Can you give us a proposal?”
A few weeks later I came at them with a blueprint for a young men’s cookbook called “Dude, What’s for Dinner?”
Back and forth, forth and back, and before you know it the concept expanded into “Gentlemen, Start Your Ovens,” a cookbook for men of all ages. ( for a few recipes from the book.)
My premise was simple: A man who can cook is a better man. This book would help men learn how.
And so, way back then in 2004, I started assembling recipes in earnest.
I decided that the point of the book wouldn’t be to teach complicated techniques or cover all the basic bases of Cooking 101. I’m not a chef, so I’d hardly be qualified to do that anyway.
No, the point of this book would be to provide road maps for dishes that I already knew how to cook, dishes that I’d cooked for myself and my friends, dishes that I knew were delicious. Huevos rancheros sandwiches. Chicken and sausage stew. Butterscotch bars.
I was still living in my scrappy little fourth-floor walk-up in downtown New York then, and the manuscript, which I finally finished almost two years ago, reflects my life back then.
I spent many months lugging sacks of groceries from Balducci’s grocery and Western Beef supermarket up to my tiny, bare-bones, one-cabinet, dishwasherless kitchen with only 3 square feet of counter space (I measured) and cooking for anyone willing to follow me up the four flights of stairs: French toast, baked ziti, meatballs, chocolate birthday cake. These were dishes I’d cooked a thousand times – my challenge now was to codify them into recipes.
Ultimately, the package took shape, and after a few more months (and a few back-and-forths with the editors) we finalized the copy, chose 25 to 30 of the recipes to photograph, and settled on a concept for the design.
At about the same time, I moved to Denver. Shortly thereafter, the manuscript and photos were “sent to the printer,” a mysterious, far-off wizard’s den where the electronic words and images are transformed into bound paper and ink.
For months I never heard about, and barely thought about, “Gentlemen, Start Your Ovens.” It was only a memory, and hazy at that.
But a few weeks ago, I received an advance copy and I took another long look at “Gentlemen, Start Your Ovens.” I saw that, even though my life has changed profoundly since I wrote it, and even though my tastes have evolved and I have, I think, become a better cook since then, I’m proud of the collection of recipes in the book.
And I hope, for better or worse, that “Gentlemen, Start Your Ovens” inspires a few more people – gentlemen or otherwise – to get into the kitchen.
Dining critic Tucker Shaw can be reached at 303-954-1958 or at dining@denverpost.com.
