Two years ago, I bought a cookbook by the chef of Restaurant Omiya in Asakusa, Tokyo. It soon occurred to me that if all I wanted was to eat the chef’s cooking, it would have been faster to just go to the restaurant.
So why buy the book? Because I imagined making the same Japanese Hamburg steak (or Hambagu) myself at home, and seeing my children enjoy it. I realized that I bought the book not for the meal, but for the experience of cooking the meal for my family at home.