Local Flavor

FOR ALMOST A CENTURY, Tri-Village residents have been dedicated to the art of cooking – and the proof is in the prevalence of local cookbooks. Offerings range from self-published books to well-seasoned books from the early 20th Century to artistic tomes worth thousands of dollars.

Here are a handful of the recipe collections the TriVillage area has to offer.

Antique Ambrosia

Local cookbooks date back as far as 1916, when the Ladies Aid Society published Recipes: Grandview Congregational Church. We were unable to locate this volume, but the historical society archives turned up two cookbooks from the first half of the 20th Century.

The first, Order of the Eastern Star Relief Fund Cookbook, appears to be from the First World War, based on the ingredients and instructions used in the recipes. The second, published in 1927 – after Grandview Congregational Church became First Community Church in 1919 – is titled The Community Book of Recipes and Home Suggestions.

Patrick Mooney, editor of the historical society newsletter, told us a little bit about the 1916 cookbook. “It’s very typical of the period,” Mooney says. “There are all kinds of recipes, and with each recipe there’s the name of the lady who donated it.”

The recipes in these older cookbooks are laid out differently than modern recipes, and sometimes the writers assume cooking knowledge that readers don’t have. A recipe for “Escalloped Meat” calls for alternating layers of cooked rice and dried beef, topped with a white sauce (no directions included), bread crumbs, grated cheese and butter. “Bake in oven until brown,” the recipe concludes – without offering a temperature or approximate baking time.

The cookbooks are not available to be checked out, but may be viewed upon request in the historical society archives within the Grandview Heights Public Library.

Cookbooks offer a juicy glimpse into Tri-Village kitchens past and present

Palate Pals

One of the newest local cookbooks is the self-published book Just a Small Gathering, Volume I by Upper Arlingtonarea residents Scott Boles and David Kershner, released in January. The friends met during a cooking class sponsored by the Upper Arlington Parks and Recreation department and –with Boles’ background as a professional chef and restaurant owner, and Kershner’s as a technical writer – decided to collaborate on a book about hosting dinner parties at home. It took almost two years to complete from the time they started working on it in earnest, Kershner says.

The first half of the book is all about the basics of entertaining, and the second half includes 12 complete menus. The majority of the recipes were penned by Boles, who has a long history of restaurant entrepreneurship. Boles is the owner of Yabo’s Tacos in Westerville, and is currently in the process of opening a second Yabo’s in Upper Arlington’s Kingsdale shopping center.

“These are good, solid recipes,” Boles says of the Volume I menus. “About 80 percent of those recipes are easy recipes. … We want to make it easy on you to create the party and have it come off without a hitch.”

Kershner added a handful of his own recipes – and cooked all of the ones contributed by Boles to test them and take photographs for the book.

The book retails for $22.50 on amazon.com and a digital version is slated for publication as early as July. Volume II is expected to be released this fall, Kershner says, with two additional volumes to follow.

Artful Appetite

Take the cost of that cookbook and multiply it by 100, and you still wouldn’t have enough to purchase Such Sensations: Food and Philosophical Reflections of Chef Hubert Seifert, an art cookbook written by Louisa Bertch Green and designed by Robert Tauber. It was produced in a limited run of 26 books. Only two remain for sale – at a cost of $2,600 each, says Tauber, book arts specialist at The Ohio State University’s

Logan Elm Press, housed in the Library Tech Center on Kinnear Road.

The price doesn’t seem too great when you realize the amount of work that went into each tome. Tauber came up with the idea for the book in 1994, and Green spent almost a year working with Seifert, head chef and owner of Spagio in Grandview, following him around in his kitchen with a tape recorder.

Budget cuts forced Tauber’s press to shut down in 1995, so the book remained unwritten until the press opened again in 2005. Green transcribed her tapes and Tauber began the design process, including commissioning calligraphy from Ann Alaïa Woods and removable menu monoprints from artist Anthony H. Rice. Each color included in the book required a fresh press run, Tauber says.

“The initial letters (calligraphied by Rice) are hand-drawn in each copy,” he says.

Even the paper on which the books are printed was handmade. When the books were finished, they were handbound with a special process by Book

Lab II in Texas to allow space in the binding for the insertion of each menu.

The run was limited to 26 because each copy comes in a handmade box, inlaid with one of the copper plates that created the monoprints. The books were completed in 2010, and Tauber was just notified this March that Such Sensations won the Hertzog Award for Excellence in Book Design from the University of Texas at El Paso.

“It came out differently than I thought it would,” Tauber says, explaining that the book is a unique work of art, and, as such, was never going to fit a pre-determined template.

Discontinued Dishes

If $2,600 is slightly out of your price range for a book of local recipes, you could always try the Upper Arlington Public Library. From 1970 through 2010, the library published a free holiday cookbook of staff-submitted recipes. Though budget constraints forced the library to cease publishing the Holiday Happiness Cookbook a few years ago, the 2005-2008 editions are available as PDF files online at ualibrary.org/holiday.php#cookbooks.

“We don’t know which staff (started it) and there’s nobody here at the library that was here in the 70s for us to ask about it,” says Community Relations Manager Ruth McNeil. She knows a little more about the cookbooks’ demise, however.

“It was an economics issue,” McNeil says. “The last one that we actually printed was in 2008 and then they became available online.”

Printed copies were distributed for free at the library. They were very popular and were frequently given as gifts or stocking stuffers. “It was the library’s holiday gift to the community,” McNeil says. “Patrons still ask us for them.”

In the mid-2000s, the library’s internal graphic designer compiled the books and created the bold, colorful covers for which they became known. Unfortunately, the manpower needed to create the cookbook eventually became its downfall.

“When the economy tanked and the library had to cut back, that was one of the things that we had to cut back on,” McNeil says. In 2009 and 2010, the books were available electronically, but the cookbook was discontinued in 2011 and there are no current plans to revive it.

“It would be great at some point if we would be able to bring them back in some format,” McNeil says.

Lisa Aurand is editor of Tri-Village Magazine. Feedback welcome at laurand@pubgroupltd.com.