"Through Cooking"

Recognizing cooks who have been making every dish in challenging cookbooks and are sharing their efforts with the foodie world

In the outdoor realm, "through hiking" refers to a long-distance trail done end to end. A person who does it is called a "through hiker." The Appalachian Trail (did you read Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods?), the Continental Divide Trail, the Pacific Crest Trail and in this state, the Colorado Trail lend themselves to through hiking.

To me, the culinary corollary is "through cooking" -- that is, finding a complicated cookbook and making every single recipe. The first "through cook" I encountered was Julie Powell, who cooked her way through every recipe in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking, I and blogged about it. Her blog caught the attention of foodies and a high-powered editor, and eventually netted her a book contract. The result: an enchanting, engaging and entertaining book called Julie and Julia. Nora Ephron is adapting it for the screen, with Meryl Streep playing Julia Child and Amy Adams playing Julie Powell. Powell herself is now blogging about the filming of her book. Good stuff.

When I found a Denver blogger named Mike who is cooking his way through Thomas Keller's Bouchon and named his blog Cooking Bouchon, the idea of "through cooking" was implanted in my head. However, I never did anything about it until today. I just found a blog by Carol Blymire called Carol Cooks Keller, an online through-cooking journey into the magical world of the French Laundry Cookbook by Thomas Keller. Her blog led me to a Wall Street Journal feature called "Cook-Through Blogging" that cites Carol Cooks Keller and other similar blogs. I suppose I should be pleased that I thought of this independently of the esteemed WSJ, but I wish I had acted on the concept sooner.

Here are the blogs the WSJ found: Ryan Adams's Nose to Tail at Home from The Whole Beast: Nose to Tail Eating (strong stomach required; a no-go for vegetarians); Teena Gerhardt's The Gourmet Project from Ruth Reichl's Gourmet Cookbook (744 recipes blogged as of May 26 did not even get her through 60 percent of this heavy-duty book); another blog also called The Gourmet Project by Canada's Kevin Casey on the same book (13.1 percent of what he figured at a thousand or so recipes completed to date); still another blog on the same topic, this one titled Cooking Gourmet by Melissa Palladino, a private chef who claims an even more daunting 1,300 recipes; Laurie Woodward's Tuesdays With Dorie on Dorie Greenspan's Baking: From My Home To Yours; Cathy Irish's My Little Kitchen on Maida Heatter's Cookies (and many other topics); and Mark Pearson's Mexican Everyday Recipes Reviews on Rick Bayless' book by that name.

Much to the credit of these bloggers, they reference the recipes but do not include them in their posts. Instead, there is commentary on the ingredients and the process, as well as a lot of terrific photos. For my part, I don't have this kind of stick-to-it-iveness but prefer to hop around my shelves of cookbooks, my clipped recipes, online recipes and my propensity to combine and adapt recipes.

"Through Cooking"