The Vital Ingredient

The Age

Tuesday March 4, 2008

Jacqui Taffel

Would-be cookbook writers need passion, and more, to make it into print. By Jacqui Taffel.

WHEN Maureen McKeon first saw the cover design of her book Crave: A Passion For Chocolate, she got goosebumps. "I thought, well, it's really happening." She couldn't quite believe it.

McKeon is a respected food photography stylist with 40 years' experience, specialising in chocolate, but she hardly has the star-power of cookbook authors with famous faces and a solid reputation, such as Kylie Kwong and Bill Granger, or Vue De Monde's Shannon Bennett.

Instead she is one of a crowd of cookbook debutantes who, against all odds, have found a way to get their recipes into print.

McKeon's chocoholia began in childhood, sparked by the home-cooked delights of an aunt who lived in the country. "It was my first taste of hedgehog that really impressed me," she remembers. She worked on other people's books and developed recipes for commercial chocolate companies but had never written a book herself. Yet she had a dream - a cardboard box stuffed with chocolate recipes collected over the years. They were nearly published 10 years ago but McKeon said no to a demand that the book be sponsored by a certain chocolate brand. If her book couldn't recommend using the best quality couverture chocolate, it wasn't worth doing.

She also had some interesting rejections, including one "hilarious" letter from the US saying she was too much like Nigella Lawson, and an Australian publisher who told her: "Maureen, you're not a Stephanie Alexander."

But every so often, she would revisit her recipe stash. "I'd get them out, look at them, re-sort them, make a few things, then back into the box. I thought that box would probably go to the tip." Then a publisher called, having noticed McKeon's chocolate work in the portfolio of a freelance photographer, and wanted to talk.

"This was an unusual case," says Kaye Scarlett, Murdoch Books' publishing director. "We had already decided we needed to make a generic chocolate cookbook."

When the photographer mentioned he had been trying to help McKeon get a similar idea off the ground, to no avail, Scarlett was all ears. She soon realised that McKeon was an enormously qualified chocolatier, despite never having worked as one professionally.

"The important thing for us was she'd done it all in a domestic setting so she didn't have the benefit of a shop or a professional kitchen behind her."

McKeon's lack of celebrity status was not an issue. "We really enjoy working with that celebrity end of the market," Scarlett says. "But, just as important to us, is very interesting and reliable content that can come, more often in many cases, from people who are really experienced home cooks and recipe writers."

All the same, she says most people who think their recipes should be published have little to offer. "I have to reject those kinds of books every day," she says. "My criterion, in a nutshell, is that the author proposing a book has to be contributing something unique."

Catherine Retter, publisher at Citrus Press, instantly fell in love with the concept of Once Upon A Time In The Kitchen, a children's recipe book by Carol Odell.

Now in her 70s, Odell began writing popular children's fiction in 1960. Her latest book wasn't really aimed at teaching children how to cook, she says. "I wanted to do something to make children read those lovely old classics we loved so much."

Each page has a food-related extract accompanied by a simple recipe, such as the Queen of Hearts' Jam Tarts from Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, or Blinky Bill's Peppermint Sweets.

Odell trawled through hundreds of books to find appropriate food references, then faced the problem of getting permission to republish the extracts. She paid for the rights herself. "With children's books, unless you're writing Harry Potter, don't expect to make a great deal,'' she says.

Citrus Press publishes only about a dozen books a year and Retter acknowledges Odell's probably wouldn't have happened if the author hadn't underwritten it. A children's cookbook was new territory for Citrus, though Retter says that is not a barrier as long as she recognises a good idea. The book has done well since it was published two years ago.

"We do get bombarded with lots of ideas and sadly most of them are pretty awful, which is probably why it's so hard for writers to get looked at by publishers," she says. "There are just so many that aren't up to publishing standard and it's a non-productive time for publishers to go through these submissions you get every day."

Dr Pietro Demaio couldn't get anyone interested in Preserving The Italian Way, his book about traditional Italian preserving methods, including how to make tuna in oil, olives in brine or thistles in vinegar.

Demaio, a Melbourne GP who runs a busy medical centre, began collecting recipes 20 years ago when he took his family to live in Italy to reconnect with their heritage. His parents, who emigrated to Australia before he was born, always made their own food at home, including salami, tomato sauce, bread and wine. "Mum used to make her own soap from pork fat."

Demaio loved finocchiona, the Florentine salami made with fennel seeds, and scoured bookshops in Italy for a recipe book so he could make it himself. He searched in vain. "Every time I went in and asked, I would end up getting three or four recipes and the story about how their grandfather used to make them but stopped, and they don't know how to do it any more."

He found the same thing back in Australia. "Their kids want to know but they can't tell them." So he decided to write his own recipe book, which he sees as a basic manual. "It doesn't replace your parents or heritage but this is what they would have done and this is how you do it."

One publisher told him the style was too technical but Demaio was determined, it was what it was. For 20 years, the standing joke with his friends was: "When's the bloody book coming out?"

Meanwhile, sculptor Arnold Bonnet, who works across the road from Demaio's medical centre, asked the doctor if he'd pose for him, half an hour, every Tuesday. They got talking and Demaio mentioned his recipes. Bonnet's day job is publishing education journals but he also produces self-published memoirs. For $4500, he could edit, photograph, design and arrange printing for 200 copies of Demaio's "bloody book".

Published last November, Preserving The Italian Way has sold 4000 copies and is now in its third reprint. In the self-publishing business, Bonnet says, "when it exceeds 100 we reckon it's a success".

Demaio started by selling his book at work but now has copies stocked in Books for Cooks in Fitzroy and Dymocks stores.

Bonnet admits he was surprised by the response. "I thought to myself, 'who is really interested these days in preserving food? It's a thing of the past'. But apparently there's quite a community of people, the slow-food movement."

Demaio sees the book, which is full of personal anecdotes, as a tribute to his parents but most of his sales have been to non-Italians, such as the stockbroker in Double Bay who wanted to know where she could buy a still to make her own grappa.

He wrote his book for his own satisfaction and has no desire to publish anything else. "If I had set out to do this as a commercial venture, I think it would have failed,'' he admits. ''I think the success is the passion."

SO YOU'RE A FINE-DINING STAR . . .

That, according to Kaye Scarlett of Murdoch Books, doesn't guarantee you a publishing deal. "When we are approached by higher-profile chef-trained potential authors, who are quite cavalier in their attitude and just say, 'I've got a high profile and this fabulous restaurant and my marketing people tell me it's time I did a book', I generally run a mile."

Her question is always: what is it giving the customer? "I'd urge them to go and self-publish, if what they're looking for is a marketing tool. They need to remember why they're doing it and I think that's the difference between celebrity chefs whose books really work and those that don't."