Cookbook puts granny in your kitchen

One of the things I love about certain cookbooks and the recipes they contain is their sense of conversation. A recipe can be as much a story about the person writing it as it is about the cooking itself.

In general, this is less true today than it was a few decades ago, when recipes were written casually with imprecise measurements and steps left out because everyone knew what to do.

For example, these days we don't simply say "mix together."

Instead, we list each ingredient and then name each ingredient again in the instructions, direct the cook to put these ingredients into a specific type of container and use a certain type of implement to combine them. If a writer fails to include such detailed instructions, a copy editor will send it back with such questions as "what type of container?" or, more sarcastically, "where is the mixing done, in the air?"

I can hear all the great-aunts and great-grandmothers who cooked by instinct having a good laugh as they agree that "any fool knows what kind of bowl to use."

Yet such is the way of our food-obsessed culture: We have been told and so many of us believe that there are precise formulas that must be followed, with nothing left to instinct or common knowledge.

I spend much of my time writing these precise recipes, yet sometimes I long to wrap myself in the warm voices of decades long past, of the women who cooked together in big kitchens on family farms and passed along recipes like gossip. When this longing grows strong, I curl up with a book like one I received in the mail a few weeks ago, "Grandmother's Cookbook: A Collection of Delicious Old Fashioned Recipes Preserved For the Pleasure of Generations To Come By Granddaughter Carrie J. Gamble" (Carrie J. Gamble Inc., 2008, $19.95).

It is as sweet a little book as you'll find. Except for a typeset opening chapter entitled "A Family Love Letter," which includes photographs of the family and the farmhouse where Gamble's grandmother Elizabeth Rose von Hohen grew up, the entire book is handwritten and decorated with pretty drawings and watercolors of wildflowers that Elizabeth so loved.

When you grow tired of the modern world pressing down on you, a book such as this one is a magical escape. You may even emerge with some delicious new dishes in your repertoire.

When I was growing up, I don't recall ever seeing a clove of fresh garlic in my mother's kitchen. She used garlic powder and garlic salt. My step-grandfather grew garlic, though, and some of my earliest memories are of standing in his enormous vegetable garden nibbling raw cloves, which I found irresistible. This recipe, adapted from "Grandmother's Cookbook," is from an earlier time, before such convenience foods eclipsed natural flavors.

Shrimp with Garlic Rice

Makes 4 servings

-- Garlic Rice (recipe follows)

1 pound medium shrimp, preferably fresh and wild (not farmed)

¼ cup (½ stick) butter

3 to 4 garlic cloves, crushed and minced

2 teaspoons paprika

1 teaspoon kosher salt

3 tablespoons sherry

-- Juice of 1 lemon

First, make the rice.

While it cooks, prepare the shrimp. Remove the shells, devein as necessary. Pat dry with a tea towel and set on a baking sheet in a single layer.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Put the butter in a small saucepan set over low heat, and when it is melted, add the garlic and cook for 1 minute. Remove from the heat.

Sprinkle the paprika and salt over the shrimp and drizzle with the sherry and lemon juice. Pour the melted garlic butter on top and bake for just a few minutes, until the shrimp turn opaque. Do not overcook.

To serve, divide the garlic rice among individual plates, top with the shrimp and enjoy.

Garlic Rice

1 cup long grain white rice, rinsed

1 teaspoon kosher salt

¼ cup (½ stick) butter

2 to 3 garlic cloves, minced

-- Zest of 1 lemon

1 tablespoon minced fresh Italian parsley

Put the rice and salt in a medium saucepan, add 1» cups water and bring to a boil over high heat. Reduce the heat to very low, cover the pan and steam until the rice is tender, about 15 minutes.

While the rice cooks, put the butter in a small saucepan, add the garlic and cook for 1 minute. Remove from the heat.

When the rice is cooked, pour the garlic butter over it and fluff with a fork. Add the lemon zest and parsley and fluff again. Cover until ready to use.

Good German potato salad is irresistible. I've made a few changes in the original, published in "Grandmother's Cookbook," to reflect our use of olive oil instead of the generic salad oil common decades ago.

German Potato Salad

Makes 4 servings

5 medium red potatoes

-- Kosher salt

5 bacon slices, cut into ¼-inch slices

1 onion, diced

2 celery stalks, diced

¼ cup white vinegar

¼ cup mild olive oil

1 tablespoon sugar

-- Black pepper in mill

2 tablespoons minced Italian parsley

4 large leaves of butter lettuce

Put the potatoes in a medium saucepan, cover with water, add a generous tablespoon of salt, set over medium heat and cook until tender when pierced with a fork or bamboo skewer. Drain the potatoes. Peel and slice them while they are still warm and put them in a medium bowl.

While the potatoes cook, fry the bacon until it is crisp and then transfer it to absorbent paper.

Add the onion, celery, vinegar, olive oil and sugar to the warm potatoes and toss gently. Drizzle 2 tablespoons of the hot bacon fat over the salad, fluff with a fork, sprinkle with parsley and serve on lettuce leaves.

Anything named "French Love Cakes" has to be a bit irresistible, don't you think? These are indeed, especially if you enjoy them right out of the oven. These cookies, also from "Grandmother's Cookbook," were part of a 1918 Christmas dinner when Elizabeth Rose von Hohen, the grandmother of the title, was an 11-year-old girl.

French Love Cakes

½ cup (1 stick) butter, at room temperature

4 tablespoons sugar

2 cups all-purpose flour

-- Pinch of salt

½ teaspoon vanilla extract

1 cup chopped pecans

-- Powdered sugar

Preheat the oven to 300 degrees.

Put all of the ingredients into a bowl and mix together with your hands. Pinch off pieces of dough that are about the size of a walnut, set on a work surface and flatten slightly with your hand or a glass.

Set on a baking sheet and bake for about 30 minutes, or until golden brown. Remove from the oven, sprinkle with sifted powdered sugar and enjoy warm.