January 2014 Cookbooks

I love to look at cookbooks even though I will probably never have the time to try all the recipes I find.  Last year I started keeping track of the cookbooks I look at in addition to all the books I read.  Since you don't really "read" cookbooks the same way you read other books I wanted to keep them separate from the regular books I read.  I'm going to do my cookbook reviews on this blog the same way I do my other reviews by grouping them together by the month.  In January I only looked at one cookbook, so here's that review.

Eat Ink: Recipes, Stories, Tattoos by Birk O'Halloran

I love cookbooks and I love tattoos, but I wasn't impressed with this book. The premise is to showcase a "signature" recipe from a tattooed chef. Each chef has their bio and a little bit about why they are into tattoos or any significant tattoos they may have. I was surprised to see many of the chefs featured only have 1 or 2 tattoos. And of course with only 1 tattoo you are considered "tattooed," but I think of someone who is "tattooed" as someone with sleeves or multiple visible tattoos. I think it was kind of a stretch to create a book like this. I would have rather seen more of a photo book with just pictures of chefs with their tattoos and maybe a little bio and info about their tattoos. I also didn't even see one recipe I wanted to try. Overall, I was unimpressed. I think this idea just didn't really work out well in print.