California Cooking from Sunset Cookbooks

I know some food snobs don't take Sunset cookbooks seriously. I'm not a food snob, and over time, I have learned a lot from Sunset! Above are two books that I found very useful when I bought them in the 1970s. My favorite recipes from the Mexican cookbook were Picadillo Turnovers and Bread Pudding:

You can see by the markings that it's a favorite!

I don't know if I ever made Green Goddess Salad from the salad book, though I made quite a few others. I'm including it because it seems very vintage.

First Sunset Cookbook
from Google

Sunset magazine published its first cookbook in 1933. The magazine, always focused on the West, had already existed for decades by then. From the beginning and up to the present, it included not only food, but also travel, do-it-yourself projects (most famously, a back-yard adobe oven), and Western architecture articles. I grew to love reading it while living in California at various times. My introduction to Mexican and Asian flavors and foodways was through ethnic restaurants in California, and my introduction to cooking them was Sunset, both the cookbooks and the magazine.

When a new Sunset cookbook with 1000 recipes was published in 2010 the New York Times reviewer wrote:

"Before Alice Waters picked her first Little Gem lettuce and Wolfgang Puck draped smoked salmon across a pizza, California cuisine meant something else. The other California cuisine was being served on a million patios in the Golden State by relaxed cooks who grilled thick cuts of beef called tri-tip and built salads from avocado and oranges. They used red chili sauce like roux, ate abalone and oysters, and whipped sticky dates into milkshakes. It was the food of the gold rush and of immigrants, of orchards and sunshine. ... 

"There to chronicle it — and help create it — was Sunset magazine, the stalwart regional publication that Southern Pacific Railroad executives began in 1898 to lure Easterners to the untamed West." (Source: "The Original California Cuisine, Courtesy of Sunset Magazine" by Kim Severson)

Sunset magazine still publishes a magazine of Western food, home styling, architecture, travel, and various activities. Their website is http://www.sunset.com/.

More of my vintage Sunset cookbooks -- back then "Oriental" was an ok word. I guess.

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see Louise's Blog!