Jimihatt teams up with Bibliolife and local chefs for new cookbook series

Jimihatt, founder of the Charleston underground dining experience Guerrilla Cuisine, collaborated with a few important locals to create the "Old School" cooking series.

The first volume is the start of an unusual series.

"Basically it's a tour of eating history," jimihatt said. "We are taking all the books that have obtained public domain status, and we are breeding a new life. Virtually all the books are public domain. They are books that have been written by someone else."

The first of six books in the "Old School" series is titled "Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine," and it explores the medieval era and its long culinary past. The original book, by William Carew Hazlitt, was published in 1902 and includes recipes that really start from scratch, meaning retrieving the eggs out of the chicken coop.

The idea of creating the cookbook series started with Mitchell Davis, president of Bibliolife. The company digitizes out-of-print books and then allows for them to be printed on demand. The BiblioLife Network addresses challenges facing book preservationists and seeks to digitalize out-of-date books in libraries.

Davis called jimihatt and expressed the thought of using Bibliolife's 7,000 public-domain cookbooks as the foundation of this project.

Jimihatt was thrilled and immediately invited others to get on board. He contacted history-savvy chef Matt Bolus, an instructor at the Art Institute, and asked if he would foreword Hazlitt's cookbook. Bolus, the former chef at Red Sky on Johns Island, studied cuisine in Europe and happily agreed to take on the task.

Bolus added history pieces and guidelines to help understand the old recipes in Hazlitt's book. In his intro, he says: "No matter how off-the-wall they seem, the recipes have worked out brilliantly and pleased all my guests."

Not only does the book recognize the importance of cuisine history, it links the past and the present.

"The importance of this book is that it's on demand. People can click a button and get this book. Guerilla Cuisine is an umbrella under which a series of books will come back to life," jimihatt said.

On Tuesdays throughout the summer, jimihatt will sign copies of the first volume in the series.

The signings, like jimihatt's Guerilla Cuisine, will not be conventional.

"We will have live musicians set up in the corner, just like in our food events. And I'm not just signing. There will be wine to drink, cheese to eat. There will be art to look at. It's not an all-day event. I say I am going to be there at 6 p.m. and I get there at 5:59 p.m.. I am going to be walking around and talking. It's just going to be a relaxed atmosphere," jimihatt said.

The book signings are going to take place at local spots.

For information on the series, visit bibliolife.com/cookbooks.