[This entry is cross posted at ordinary-times.com]

My family gave me James May’s cookbook, Oh Cook! 60 Easy Recipes That Any Idiot Can Make, for Father’s Day.

“Hey!” you might be saying to yourself as you read this. “I know James May. He’s that English guy from Top Gear back when it was cool and producers got punched. He’s the one who wears those Jackson Pollock shirts and whose hair won’t let him be his age.” And you’d be right.

I’m a cookbook reader, by which I mean when I get a new cookbook, not always but usually, I start at the beginning and read all the non-instructional text. I do read the text of recipes before I eventually make them, but I like the stories and bits of history and trivia that pepper the pages enough to put up with the naturally sourced/sustainable/organic sanctimony (Jamie Oliver thinks he’s Food Jesus.) I’ve pored over Escoffier, Marcella Hazan (Her Name Be Praised), and again and again the books of M.F.K. Fisher. I don’t write this lightly:

Under the heading “A Note on Weights and Measures,” James May has written the most important paragraph ever to grace the pages of a cookbook.