Butter is actually the perfect summer salad dressing

New techniques or reimagined concepts periodically sweep through the kitchen (think sous vide and crispy rice salad), and the last quarter century has radically expanded the average American’s access to ingredients. But most cooking is based on a long tradition. And that’s exactly what I love about it.

That’s also why I love old cookbooks and old recipes. And why I spent 5 years of my life working on a book that assembled 1,200 of the most noteworthy recipes from the New York Times’ archive, which dates to the 1850s. You can check it out here (or here for an independent seller). Or you can become a founding member of Homeward and I’ll send you a signed copy!

My cookbook collection consists of numerous vintages, some a few hundred years old, a robust batch from the 1990s when I reviewed cookbooks for the Times, as well as new books that arrive in a steady trickle. My shelves are full, so I’ve begun making stacks inside my son’s room, in my study, and next to the bookshelves in our entranceway.

While I was setting down a pile of t-shirts in that hallway, which doubles as a dumping ground for cardboard going to the recycling bin, unexciting-to-open boxes like the paper towels from Amazon, a tote filled with photos and video tapes that Tad likes to move from room to room in lieu of sorting through, and the aforementioned pile of my in-limbo cookbooks, I happened upon The Sunset Cookbook, gifted to me by a family friend.

Sunset Magazine, to its generations of fans, quintessentially captures the west coast lifestyle with design spreads of sun-filled living rooms and outdoor entertaining areas, travelogs of coastal hikes, and cooking features rife with lush produce. I have a fondness for Sunset in part because it was one of the first publications willing to accept my freelance story pitches. I wrote for them about date shakes in Indio in 1997. One reason we landed in Ojai was that its SoCal lifestyle has been so indelibly editorialized by Sunset.

During its 90 years in business, Sunset has also published dozens of books. The Sunset Cookbook came out in 1960 and contains playful illustrations by Earl Thollander. As I paged through, pausing on items like Bucati with Anchovy Sauce and Rice Griddle Cakes that I didn’t expect to find in a ‘60s cookbook, two recipes demanded that I make them at once. They’re below, along with videos of me testing them out! ...