Previous installments of This Week in Reading can be found here. This one is just about cookbooks, and not from this past week, which is cheating. There will be two more installments.
This list makes no attempt at being exhaustive, and is not ranked: these are the cookbooks I use most in my own kitchen, and recommend to others. Reading cookbooks is a glorious, glorious occupation. If you have only 15 spare minutes, there’s no point to picking up a novel, but a cookbook is gulpable in any time increment you may possess. Let’s talk about these, and then SHOWER US WITH YOUR OWN SUGGESTIONS in the comments. I have not used the Ottolenghi cookbooks yet, I’d love to hear your thoughts.
1. The Frankies Spuntino Kitchen Companion & Cooking Manual: The first thing I look at when I’m at a friend’s house is their cookbooks. If I find myself taking pictures of more than three recipes in a given book, I make myself purchase it, because STUMBLING TOWARDS ETHICS. I would have photographed everything in this one, so it had to come home with me. And now both my parents have their own, tomato-splattered copies in turn. This is fantastic low-drama Italian-American cooking, and you cannot possibly go wrong with it. It’s meaty, but the salad dressings and vegetable recipes leave plenty of scope for people who eat less meat than me (practically everyone.)
2. On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lure of the Kitchen: Well, yeah. Harold McGee, man. It’s not really a cookbook, though you will find in it many delightful things to cook, and will make your cooking immeasurably better. It’s a perfect host/hostess gift, but first make sure they don’t have it. If there are tomatoes in their fridge, they don’t have it yet. You can dip in and out at any time, you’ll entrance your friends with pithy details about sardines…honestly, you’ll just feel like a smarter and more together person. It doesn’t have all that preachy Pollan stuff either.
3. The Lodge Cast Iron Cookbook: A Treasury of Timeless, Delicious Recipes: I regret I have but one life to devote to evangelizing for cast iron cooking. It makes you feel like a chuckwagon cook. Cast iron is cheap as balls, heats evenly, lasts for the rest of your life, and can create the MOST gorgeous crustiness on things imaginable. And I love searing something in it and then finishing it in the oven without having another stupid pan to wash. Some of the recipes are for random pieces of equipment (stuff for camping and for burying in firepits and so on), but you’ll be able to muddle through most of them with a skillet.
4. Practical Paleo: A Customized Approach to Health and a Whole-Foods Lifestyle and Well Fed: Paleo Recipes for People Who Love to Eat: This is how I eat most of the time. I think the made-up stuff about our ancestors that comes with eating this way is aggravating, I just enjoy eating this way, and I’ve found it dovetails really well with being strong and getting all the things into my face. These cookbooks are definitely “paleo for dummies” in the best possible way, with lots of grocery lists and make-aheads and snacks and so on. If you’re ever trying the Whole30 (which I never have, because I eat cheese and stuff and DGAF), this will help. The good thing, I guess, about paleo-specific cookbooks, is that it’s turned the tide from horrible “low-carb” cookbooks that want you to stir xanthan gum into gravies into being more about cooking non-processed foods. My mother gets horribly ill from even trace amounts of gluten (THAT IS A REAL THING) and paleo cookbooks are great for doing workarounds.
5. My Bread: The Revolutionary No-Work, No-Knead Method: Oh, right. Sometimes you also want to make bread. I make a loaf of bread in my Dutch oven about once a week, and if we have guests, every few days in the winter. This bread, because you make a wetter dough and let it hang out for ages rising on its own, lives a little longer than most homemade bread, so it’s not a total stale brick on day two. It won’t last that long, though. Then tear up the rest and put it in your freezer for breadcrumbs. I’ve gotten similarly great recipes and tips from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day.
6. The Tucci Cookbook: Shut up. If Stanley Tucci put together a book about repairing vacuum cleaners, I would buy it and start showing up at strangers’ houses to break and then fix their vacuum cleaners. It’s also a lovely, lovely cookbook of family standards, mostly Italian in nature, and every page of it made me think of THE GREATEST FILM EVER MADE: Big Night. If you do not like Big Night, do not buy this or any cookbook, just sit in a small room chewing on marbles until death comes for you. And look at how handsome and kind he is. Remember him with Meryl Streep in Julie & Julia? Remember how he inspired your parenting choices in Easy A? Remember how you refused to watch The Lovely Bones and so have never had conflicted feelings about him? Remember how he somehow didn’t punch Elisabeth Hasselbeck in the face?
7. Vegetables Every Day: This is the best possible thing you can buy (used copies are like five bucks) to help you avoid having things turn brown and die in your crisper. Now, most vegetables are perfect roasted in olive oil and sea salt, but this book will turn you on to a multitude of variations and tips. When I’m at my mom’s house in the sticks, like now, people are constantly showing up with bunches of greenish things and dirty round things and presenting them to you, and, with this book, I can say “why, thank you!” and not just wait out the clock to compost them.
8. Flour: Spectacular Recipes from Boston’s Flour Bakery + Cafe: These are not always the easiest desserts. But, then, the easiest dessert is a spoon and a pint of Ben and Jerry’s “Everything But The…” so you don’t need super-easy dessert cookbooks, do you? Some are! There is a chocolate dessert in here that is so easy and spectacular as to inspire you to invite people over, but some of the things are more fiddly. Worth it, of course. Very much so. This is a great cookbook if you want to really start upping your game. Now, please pay attention to what she has to say about ingredients, and PLEASE get yourself a wee food scale. Baking by weight is a game-changer.
9. Nigella Express: 130 Recipes for Good Food, Fast: I’m a Nigella person. And I’ve never had great success with her baking cookbooks, for whatever reason (I’m at a pretty high altitude, so it can get complicated), but her more everyday books are complete delights. She’s marvelous, too, on cooking for yourself. So many of the cooking-for-one things are dreary, and Nigella understands that coming home and making something perfect and then eating it sloppily in bed with a book is one of life’s great treasures. Bless her, everyone.
10. Madhur Jaffrey Indian Cooking: This is the cookbook I remember most from childhood, although it’s been updated. My father has been cooking Madhur Jaffrey recipes for decades, and as a result I grew up eating a lot of homemade samosas and keema. I’m sure there are more accessible Indian cookbooks or more fusion-y Indian cookbooks, but this will always be my favourite.
Tags: cookbooks, food, reading with nicole, this week in reading
I would also add to this list: anything in the Moosewood family of cookbooks and “How to Cook Everything” by Mark Bittman. Also, I have this great one by America’s Test Kitchen called “Cooking for Two” which is pretty awesome, especially for small households.
Yes! I have two of those Cooking for Two books and I love them.
yes, moosewood! i got their Cooking for Health from the library, and i renewed it the maximum number of times and made so many things that i just got my own copy. vegetarian but without complicated or weird tofu things, just lots of veggies and beans and grains. the spanish stew is incredible for lunches.
Moosewood are the books of my childhood – my mum’s copies have all the little sketches coloured in (and are coverless, because of decades of use)
My favorite Moosewood is their Simple Suppers book, because it has yummy fish recipes and because you can make everything, you know, simply.
I have How to Cook Everything in both hardcover and the iPhone app and I love it.
Oh man, I might have to pick up that Indian cooking cookbook. I love Indian food but I’ve always been too timid to make it, partly because the Indian grocery isn’t particularly close to me and partly because I am lazy.
My very favorite cookbook in the world is Baking With Julia (http://www.amazon.com/Baking-Julia-Savor-Americas-Bakers/dp/0688146570). Her recipes aren’t for wimps, but they’re easy to read and understand. I bake my family Finnish pulla every Christmas and they love it. The copy of this cookbook at my house was literally falling apart and had flour and/or butter caked to every page, so my family got a new copy for themselves and I got to keep the old one, which has character.
I enjoy the New York Times cookbook for the anecdotes and it makes a very nice gift. It also spawned the most hipster situation I have ever been in: a bearded guy from Queens and a guy from Brooklyn with a shaved head having a fight about the best way to make lentil soup. Precious memories.
As a Minnesotan, the very best cookbooks are always from various Lutheran churches, though different families favor different editions.
Has anyone used the Splendid Table cookbook(s)? Love the show, not sure if I want the cookbooks.
I really love the New York Times cookbook as well! It contains restaurant-quality versions of pretty much anything (American-ish) you want to make and the anecdotes make it enjoyably readable.
church lady cookbooks are often very reliable – they’re staking their reputation on those cookies! (i like them best for baked goods, i find the casseroles are very heavy)
in nova scotia, it’s commonly the united church ladies’ auxiliary that has the best ones, i’ve found. i always buy them at yard sales.
I have Splendid Table Weekends and Splendid Table Suppers and I like both of them. There’s a nice range of recipes from like, how to make salad dressing, to crazy things that take all day to make. Plus they have cute little stories and facts and product recommendations.
Everything after “Tucci” was just a haze of clapping and squealing.
That book cover! I want to squeeze his cheeks and kiss him on the face!
Is the Tucci Cookbook just all pictures of him smiling at food with his sleeves rolled up? Because if so……..
To be fair, I pretty much always want to do that.
Also Vine Talk. I want to sit around drinking and talking about wine with Stanley Tucci. Or just anything with Stanely Tucci. I am not at all particular.
I was just given a copy of the Smitten Kitchen Cookbook a few weekends ago by my brother and I am super excited to start trying out some of the recipes; I’ve been a fan of Deb Perelman’s blog for years and have been wanting the book for ages so I’m excited.
I haven’t tried any of the recipes within, but the writing in Mastering the Art of French Cooking is superb, if you’re looking for a cookbook that is not only informative but is also absolutely riveting.
The cookbooks I rely most on thus far in my household are The New Best Recipe, which is full of the basics and pairs really well with the Joy of Cooking as a “here are all the things you will ever need to know” omnibus, and my mother-in-law gave me the Taste of Home Best Loved Recipes book and I’ve actually pulled quite a few recipes from that one that have been big hits with the husband.
I have wanted the Ottolenghi books for ages, but have yet to get my hands on them. They look like works of art!
(I tried to add links, but it didn’t let me… so I removed them all. They all show up if you put the titles in Amazon, though!)
Deb Perelman is absolutely the best at recommending one small change to basic recipes to take them over the top! Try her brown butter rice krispie treats first: a work of art! Also, her leek fritters. And her kale salad. Actually, the whole book is fantastic.
Leek fritters! During the winter we made them about once a week. The egg on top? Ugh, I want leek fritters right now!
Have you tried her cauliflower feta ones? With pomegranate on top? Fritter parties forever.
I have not tried the fritter, but I have done the roasted cauliflower as is and it is AMAZING. My husband hates cauliflower so it’s hard to justify fritters all for myself, but I think I will have to do it one day one he wants a bologna sandwich or something gross.
I went to the lake with some girlfriends last weekend and brought the SK browned butter rice krispie treats. My friends tasted them and were like, “You said these were rice krispie treats. You didn’t say that they’re the BEST RICE KRISPIE TREATS EVER. What did you DO to them?” Such a great recipe.
i love my copy of Joy of Cooking for those times when i don’t really need a recipe as much as a method – good for mac and cheese, that sort of thing, when you need a ratio for the roux, and how much cheese – but you’re using whatever’s in your fridge, not necessarily the exact recipe.
Yes Smitten Kitchen! The cucumber avocado sandwich things are sooooooo good. Also the Tomato biscuit deal that’s on the cover was super tasty and pretty easy to make.
Smitten Kitchen, even if you don’t follow the recipes exactly, is so good at encouraging alteration and exploration. She’s so up front about tweaking recipes herself it makes you feel like it’s an okay thing to do. A lot of people need the encouragement!
Everything that I make that gets STANDING OVATIONS from guests is from the Smitten Kitchen. Just somehow everything is good and delicious and feels COMPLETELY justified even if there are fussy parts. And bonus cute baby pictures.
Another vote for Smitten Kitchen, albeit late. Her Rushed Pizza Dough has become a staple at my house, along with the Baked French Toast (whaaaaaaaaat so good) and the not-in-the-cookbook Favorite Brownies. That’s basically the only recipe in my whole life I have memorized, and I make it at least once a weekmonth.
I second (seventh?) Smitten Kitchen. Everything I’ve made from it so far has been amazing. Some of her recipes can get a little fussy and/or time-consuming but they’re well worth it. For instance, the popcorn cookies are impossible to mix and they don’t keep well but they are AMAZING! And her voice is so charming, how could you resist?
MADHUR JAFFREY! I got that book for my eighteenth birthday, and my parents had copied out all the comments from their own edition into mine.
And I am Nigella unto death. Someone once said I looked like her and every time I’m feeling slightly fat I remind myself of it and do some good eating, because everybody loves Nigella.
YEEEES, Madhur Jaffrey. She is amazing.
Forgotten Skills of Cooking by Darina Allen is not yet mine, but will be soon. It has a recipe for apple cheese – apparently more intense, more solid apple butter. Apple cheese. Just the name is great.
I also love Nigella’s attitude to food and Madhur Jaffrey. The MJ book I have is Quick and Easy Indian Cooking, and they all take me about 3 times as long as they should, but still amazing. I love the slightly whiplash idea of making a mild vindaloo, and also of using french mustard in it.
And now I’m missing Kalustyan’s, the amazing spice shop I used to go to in NYC.
Quick and Easy Indian Cooking is so great! The stir-fried cabbage with fennel seeds? It’s out of this world. That cabbage with a fried egg on top is my go-to cheap delicious dinner when it’s cold outside.
My go-to is an old Best Recipe cookbook (maybe 2006? 2007? It has a creme caramel on the front). I love it because I am not an amazingly skilled cook, but somehow it makes me feel like a whiz when I get a perfectly fried egg or a gorgeous, juicy chicken breast or perfect, lump-free mashed potatoes (a potato ricer! who knew??) And the pages on pages of food science talk make my geeky heart really happy. The knowledge of all the experimenting with every possible option does occasionally produce utensil/recipe anxiety because it makes me feel like one little screw-up or difference in gear will lead to culinary disaster, but culinary disasters rarely manifest. Mostly I just feel like a domestic goddess without having to have all the food omnipotence in advance.
“I think the made-up stuff about our ancestors that comes with eating this way is aggravating, I just enjoy eating this way, and I’ve found it dovetails really well with being strong and getting all the things into my face.”
Amen! I started eating paleo-ish three months ago and I just feel so much better. Less sick, more energy, less bloated. I am so happy and will eat a carb or some cheese on occasion and it’s really just fine and dandy. I don’t talk about it much, because who besides me cares what I eat, but I will when pressed and it’s crazy how much people love to pick apart the anthropological argument. I have to be all “I agree with you, the anthropological argument is total BS! Just try it anyway!” to a hostile audience. I really think this Paleolithic man shtick is turning people off of a way of eating that could really work for them.
Nigel Slater! Anything, but Real Fast Food was the book I learned to cook from. My whole family are total domestic goddesses where cooking is concerned and I was really intimidated by that as a kid, so didn’t even start thinking about learning to cook until I was at university. Nigel took the fear away! Real Fast Food is everything under 30 minutes (and it actually is), proper novice-friendly instructions and lovely results.
OOOohh, “The Kitchen Diaries” is lovely, by him, too. Great for seasonal stuff.
His autobiography is really great, also.
Yes! He’s great.
I have Tender and it’s incredible. I use it regularly.
Tender is the best! And just for reading it is fab fab fab. I bought it for a non-cook friend just because it is so lovely and makes you want to start a garden.
Thanks for the rec! I’ve just ordered it and can’t wait.
I can’t claim to have browsed a ton of cookbooks, but Into the Vietnamese Kitchen is one of the most beautiful and thorough cookbooks I’ve come across. I think (it’s been a little while since I’ve popped it open) her family is originally North Vietnamese, so the recipes may seem a little different then what you’re used to at your local Vietnamese restaurant, depending on where the owners are originally from. But! The recipes are clear and the pictures are very pretty.
I also appreciate having recipes at all because any time I try to get them from my mother, my conversations go like this:
Mom: Well, I use my brown glass bowl and fill it up until where the flowers start on the outside.
Me: Mom, I don’t have that glass bowl.
Mom: Well.. maybe a third of the way then? And then you put enough garlic in so when you put in water and stir it, it blooms.
Me: …
OMG me too.
Mum: As much flour as is needed.
Me: BUT HOW MUCH FLOUR IS NEEDED.
Mum: Then knead the dough until it feels right.
Me: It looks like a plucked uncooked chicken. Is that what you mean by ‘feels right?’
Our mothers both went to the “I don’t know, it just looks right” school of cooking! AHHHHHH
As goes bread dough, so go our conversations about life, in fact.
Simply in Season! Always trust a Mennonite to know the best way to use up garden extras (and organize a cookbook into four seasonal chapters).
Has anyone used The Flavor Bible? (http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/flavor-bible-karen-page/1100163990?ean=9780316118408)
It sounds intriguing and potentially very educational. True/false?
I use it fairly often! I’d recommend it for fellow tweakers: people with a pretty strong base knowledge of cooking methods, but who can’t follow straight recipes without getting bored or adding new ingredients for fun.
Don’t expect recipes though; I use it when I feel like something is missing from a sauce or a salad, and they always have the best suggestions to add new, great dimensions and flavors.
My absolute favorite (which I somehow don’t own, but have checked out from the library probably upwards of two dozen times) is “A Blessing of Bread” by Maggie Glezer, which is all about breads from the Jewish tradition. This may sound super-niche but hear me out!
1. Recipes are stellar. Glezer’s expertise is breads (cf. “Artisan Baking”) so she knows her stuff.
2. So many challahs. Do you have enough challah recipes? No, you probably do not. Two words: pumpkin challah. Also, like a dozen pages dedicated solely to different challah braids.
3. But also non-challahs. There are recipes for flatbreads, sweet breads, savory breads, and even non-breads (the recipe for skhug in this book is dynamite).
Everything I have tried from this book has been wonderful, and the range of recipes is really impressive.
Oooh, pumpkin challah.
My favorite library bread book is The Great Moon Book of Bread. The authors like to add wet ingredients to all of the flour, which is ridiculous, but if you just add dry to wet like a sensible person their recipes are amazing. They have this delicious buttery raisin bread…
My best cookbooks, currently:
the Polpo cookbook, which is just beautiful (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Polpo-Venetian-Cookbook-Russell-Norman/dp/1408816792),
and I’m lusting after Florence Knight’s One: A Cook And Her Cupboard (http://www.amazon.co.uk/One-A-Cook-Her-Cupboard/dp/1444734857),
and I just got Ginette Mathiot’s I Know How To Cook (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Know-How-Cook-Ginette-Mathiot/dp/0714848042) for my birthday, which has the most gorgeous illustrations and everything from tripe to chestnut cookies.
Jerusalem is my new favorite cookbook, but I really just came down here to tell everyone to make the Oreos from Flour! Also, if you are into desserts (as I am) try making homemade vanilla bean (BEAN!) ice cream and then crumbling your homemade oreos into them and then die because nothing will ever taste as good.
Just to be shallow on the Ottolenghi front, he is super cute in his Channel 4 series Mediterranean Feast.
When my mum went to work at night stacking shelves my dad learnt to cook using the Madhur Jaffrey cookbook! This was the 80s in Suffolk, England, so he had to order in some of the spices specially from a mail order company as they didn’t sell that stuff at ASDA.
Until now, I never knew I wanted Stanley Tucci to come over and cook for me.
It’s not exactly a cookbook, per se, but Laurie Colwin? Home Cooking (and More Home Cooking) is fabulous; her writing is delightful and so evocative, and while I can’t say I’ve tried actually *making* any of the recipes, many of them sound very good. (Many also sound very weird, but that’s part of the beauty of her books—I feel less weird about my own food peccadillos after reading about Colwin’s.)
Oh, damn, I just said this downthread. READ FIRST, DAISYMAP. They’re the best, aren’t they! She tells you how to cook and also, how to be a cook. I make her stuff, particularly her black bean soup, but also a lot of other ones. I make them in tribute to how much I love those books partly, but also because they’re great.
Ahhh, this is perfect today as I just finished making soup (red lentil, from Orangette) and drafting a column for this local food website I write for occasionally.
I am currently bewitched by the gorgeous Folio Society edition of Italian Cooking by Elizabeth David that I recently snapped up at my bookstore job. Beautifully illustrated, and Elizabeth David writes in the loveliest, most assured voice about food, and is generally full of useful knowledge and midcentury delight.
I find I cook most regularly from the internet (Smitten Kitchen, Orangette, Joy the Baker, Eat Make Read), but I do keep a shelf of cookbooks, and I love to dip into Seasonal Canadian Cookbook by Lucy Waverman, The Moosewood Cookbook, How to Peel a Peach, which is full of useful food knowledge, and this tiny weird bean cookbook from the El Paso Bean company that I bought for six bucks at Housing Works on my last trip to New York that contains my favourite beans and rice recipe of all time.
Also, super excited you wrote about that cooking science book, Nicole, because I am almost certain I saw it years ago in a Montreal bookstore and forgot to write down the title and have completely failed to find via google.
Can we talk about Joy the Baker’s Lasagna Grilled Cheese? Not exactly A Recipe, but omg, I ate that sandwich A LOT during the first trimester of this pregnancy when nothing else sounded good. It’s like I just needed permission to put ricotta and mozzarella and basil and tomatoes on bread and now I want nothing else in the world.
My great great (great?) grandmother published one of the classic southern cookbooks ( http://amzn.to/17En1Mh ) and it is kind of great in a sublimely unhelpful way. “Put in fast oven and cook until done.” WHAT. Also it has recipes for, like, possums and brains, but the fried chicken is to die for.
ETA Oh my god I just looked it up on Google Books & it has sections entitled “Invalid Meals” and “Glorified Wieners.”
Who doesn’t want a glorified wiener, really?
Lodge cast iron forever! The little corn shaped corn bread pan is one of my favorite kitchen things.
I have to shill for the ReBar Cookbook as my go to vegetarian book. http://www.amazon.ca/Rebar-Modern-Cookbook-Audrey…. It’s a great mix of simple meals and really elaborate project dishes. And every recipe can be done vegan! I’m saying that it is hands down the best with the authority of my abandoned Master’s degree in cookbooks.
Home Cooking. Then More Home Cooking. Those are basically the Ones. BLACK BEAN SOUP. This is a very emotive subject, I realise as I start to think about it. I could go on, but really, Home Cooking.
My copy of More Home Cooking falls open straight to the chocolate-smudged page for Flourless Chocolate Cake.
That’s pretty much how I judge my cookbooks: by whether and where they fall open. To be fair, that’s for baking recipes; most of my other cooking is intuitive or adaptive, so I don’t have a cookbook open in front of me getting spattered with tomato or black beans or red wine.
TUCCI
For baking, the Martha Stewart cookie cook book. It has a really good mix of easy and just a little out of my comfort zone recipes, and the ones I have tried have always come out good. There is a pumpkin cookie with brown butter icing, and a banana walnut chocolate chip cookie. Just those two recipes made it worth it to buy the book.
Would you recommend the Lodge Cast Iron cookbook for someone who has the same type of gluten problems your Mom has? The bf’s dad loves cast iron but his intestines hate gluten.
Two of the easiest and most helpful gluten-free cookbooks I’ve found for me are The Gluten-free Nutrition Guide by Tricia Thompson (about half nutrition stuff, half recipes) and 250 Gluten-Free Favorites by Donna Washburn & Heather Butt.
I almost don’t want to buy the Frankie’s cookbook, because Frankie’s is our date-night standby, and I kind of don’t want to ruin the mystique. But holy crap, is their food delicious.
I will bookmark this thread for heavy future reference! Thanks, fellow Toasts.
And now I feel like Pinteresting kitchens like crazy. Mostly because the kitchen in my apartment is disgusting and my goal is to transform it into a cozy den of cheffery. However I have almost no spending money and thus am thwarted. So sad.
The Ottolenghi cookbooks are amazing. I have them all & they are my absolute favourites, along with Al Brown’s Stoked (which is definitely not for vegetarians) & Angela Redfern’s Ripe cookbooks (which would definitely appeal to vegetarians though it’s not a vegetarian book per se)
Of the three Ottolenghi books, Jerusalem is definitely my favourite. Even though we are usually time-poor and it takes 4.5 hours, the lamb shwarma recipe is so amazing that we have made it four times in the past four months. The falafel is divine. We make the hummus every couple of weeks. The roasted beetroot puréed with goat’s cheese & hazelnuts is outstanding. IT IS JUST ALL SO GOOD YOU GUYS!!!
I don’t have any of these, and I just requested half of them from the library. I live alone and have been trying to motivate myself to cook actual meals instead of only omelettes, so hopefully I will be inspired by these new recipes!
Also, I have never seen Big Night but it’s at the top of my netflix queue now, so thank you for that too.
I feel the need to plug my high school friend’s cookbook here – Great Food Starts Fresh, by Nathan Lyon. Great recipes, organized by season so you can find a lot of the ingredients at local farmers markets (unless, like me, you live in New England where there’s very little local in winter but leftover yams and apples).
My favorite is The Ex-Boyfriend Cookbook. I bought it on a whim because I thought it was a cute concept but every single recipe I’ve made from there has been amazing.
Wait, why shouldn’t we have tomatoes in the fridge? I’m such a n00b to cooking.
The cold basically murders the flavor and texture, turning them into bland mealy balls. Keep them on the counter when they’re in season and stick to canned tomatoes when they’re not.
Huh. Thank you, I didn’t know that!
I don’t cook from recipe books much (that’s what the internet is for!), but I love reading them. One of my favourites is the 1980 Good Housekeeping Salad recipe books. Before the main recipe section it has all these themed two page colour spreads including such joys as salads in aspic, cooking with brains, and making your own vinegar.
How to Cook Everything!! Mark Bittman is kind of snooty but the book is wonderful and really covers like everything you could want to cook.
I also love A Platter of Figs and Heart of the Artichoke by David Tanis. He’s an older gay man who spends half of the year cooking at Chez Panisse and half the year living in Paris cooking for private dinner parties AND I’M IN LOVE WITH HIM. Plus beautiful pictures.
This is a nice round list. Lately I’ve been feeling as though too many of my cookbooks are filled with rich party food. I love Smitten Kitchen as much as the next person, but how does Deb Perelman eat that way and not die? That said, everything I’ve made from that cookbook has been excellent.
For entertaining my go-to is the Barefoot in Paris, which is mostly streamlined French classics. Ina Garten may be dead behind her eyes but her recipes are consistently easy and always a little bit special. For everyday, I’ve been cooking a lot from Gwyneth Paltrow’s new cookbook. Obviously I am ashamed to even own it but the recipes are excellent! (Would it be weird to draw a mustache on all her pics? There are so many.) Also, Everyday Mexican by Rick Bayless is an old favorite. It has some amazing salad dressings and awesome fruit desserts.
In terms of pure reading enjoyment, my favorite cookbook of all time is Faviken. There’s tons of text and very little instruction, so it’s sort of like reading a really weird fairy tale. I doubt I’ll ever cook anything in it but the photos are really pretty.
Everything I’ve made from Gwyneth Paltrow’s cookbook has been amazing, and I am not a good cook.
One of my favorites is a cookbook I got from a tiny museum in Dallas TX that was printed solely for them. It’s titled International Cookbook, with recipes from all over the world and is a pretty substantial book. For someone who hates long prep time on meals, most of them are fairly easy. Yet delicious.
Ahhh okay, I am in thread heaven! Reading cookbooks is one of my favorite things to do!
In addition to the NYT cookbook edited by Amanda Hesser, which has been mentioned a few times upthread, I like the yellow and green Gourmet cookbooks (one of them, can’t remember which, has a chili recipe that calls for coffee, bacon, AND chocolate). For sweets, Dorie Greenspan’s Baking: From My Home to Yours or anything by David Lebovitz (his blog is a great resource; look for the ginger cake).
For reading, Momofuku is pretty good, but I’ve never actually made anything from it. I also like the America’s Test Kitchen Family Cookbook because you get to read all the little ready-made dramas about finding the perfect recipe while flaunting traditional methods, &c.
OK–a few of my favorites for your consideration:
1) Suvir Saran “Indian Home Cooking.” Has revolutionized my pantry and my legume and vegetable consumption. It was one of those library books that you check out five times, rack up $7.75 in fines, and then buy three times (once for self, once each for brothers). Also highly entertaining prose.
2) Williams Sonoma Best of the Kitchen Library. Specifically “Holiday Favorites,” “Meats and Poultry” and “Italian Favorites.” Holiday Favorites in particular contains the best pecan pie, best sugar cookies, best gingerbread cookies, best macaroons, and best biscotti. They are all the recipes to beat for my sweet-toothed family.
3) Beth Hensperger’s “Beth’s Basic Bread Book” was the bread book I grew up with, and I’ve never seen one better. It’s a short stack of outstanding recipes (she also published a collection of, like, 500 breads, but the 20-some in this book is a more manageable number, IMO.) It’s perfect for a beginner, as all the steps are completely spelled out, but like I said, it’s full of winners and there’s no reason to stop cooking from it (mumble) years later.
I also need to thank Nicole–the Tilapia Thing she shared on the Pin, I made three times before the weather turned hot and the oven was sent into summer hibernation. A vote of confidence for Nicole’s kitchen collection!
Nicole, have you seen this though?? Barnes and noble won’t stock it because they have a competing song of ice and fire cookbook, but this one is the real deal. The bacon lattice on the beef and bacon pie almost caused a grease fire in my apartment and it was totally worth it.
http://www.amazon.com/Feast-Ice-Fire-Official-Com…
Bacon lattice.
Bacon lattice?
BACON LATTICE?!?!??!?!?!
A (vegetarian) view from London – these are all amazing and I use them all the time: River Cottage Veg Every Day, Madhur Jaffrey’s World Vegetarian, Plenty (Ottolenghi), Smitten Kitchen, Nigel Slater’s Real Fast Food.
I could go on, but it’s 10.30am here and I’m already thinking about lunch now.
Seconding Jerusalem; not only has everything I’ve cooked from it been uber-yummy, but the photos are pure food porn. Probably my favorite cookbook these days, though, is Melissa Clark’s “Cook This Now.” She is the queen of umami.
When I first started cooking as an adult and living on my own (ish), my parents bought me the Better Homes and Gardens cookbook, and I still swear by some of the dessert/bread recipes in there. As I’ve gotten older and more confident, I really really love Smitten Kitchen, the first Everyday Italian cookbook, and Alice Waters’ Simple Food. However, I also pick and choose recipes from the internet incessantly, partially because the husband works for a recipe website and partially because I just want all my cookbooks digitized and filed in an easily searchable database.
(I have been canning like crazy recently, so today I just got the Food in Jars cookbook and it’s just lovely and delicious. A bit more contemporary than the Ball canning book, which I also recommend when you’re starting.)
Thirding (fourthing?) Jerusalem. There’s this dish in there that’s pasta with a sauce made of pureed peas, yogurt, and garlic that is to die for. It’s the most delicious 20-minute meal I’ve ever made, and it’s even better the next day. Plenty is amazing too: the brussels sprouts with tofu is the best sprouts recipe ever, and the fresh polenta with eggplant sauce is out of this world. I’ve made it once a week for the last two months, and I’ll keep going until eggplant is out of season.
Sunday Suppers at Lucques is my cookbook that’s most stained and falling apart. I’ve never made anything from there that wasn’t restaurant-quality delicious. There are no bad recipes, but the corned beef and cabbage (made with chiles!) and the port-braised short ribs with potato puree are standouts.
I like Nigella Express a lot too (the mirin-glazed salmon, served with rice and steamed broccoli, takes ten minutes to make and is mouth-wateringly good), but my favorite Nigella book is Feast. It’s divided into menus for different holidays and celebrations and her prose is always a pleasure to read. I make the lemon meringue cake every Easter, and the quadruple chocolate loaf cake is dark, dense, and amazing. I like to spread slices of it with creme fraiche.
The Zuni Cafe Cookbook is another one I could read for the prose alone, but the recipes are beautiful too. I have the Hesser NYT Cookbook and I think I’ve read the whole thing because I love her writing, but I haven’t cooked much from it yet.
I second the rec for Flour; the pecan brioche sticky buns are my Christmas morning standby now. I think Flour, Too is even better. That’s her new cookbook of the bakery’s savory recipes: soups, sandwiches, things like that. I’ve been using it a lot. There’s a steak salad with tomatoes, blue cheese, and Worcestershire vinaigrette that’s genius. I have the stuff in my fridge right now for the braised chickpeas and vegetables with couscous, harissa yogurt, and soft eggs and I can’t wait for dinner tonight.
Love Jerusalem and Plenty! Also Laurie Colwin. Get The Breakfast Book by Marion Cunningham. Best pancakes ever.
Love also Cafe Beaujolais. I have made the Banana cake and coffee cake and chicken stuffed under the skin hundreds of times.
Not a cookbook, but I’ve learned a ton about food and chemistry from reading Cook’s Magazine. The recipes are suuuper fussy and nerdy because they test them a million different ways– their whole thing is finding the optimum way to prepare classic dishes. But it’s really, really interesting and appealing if you have OCD tendencies. They also have great tips and product reviews.
Baseball to the NFL lockout on Sunday afternoon kicking off the cheap jerseys Week
Three matchup with the St. O show in Buffalo was his lone Pro Bowl season of 1981.
Ali Hussein Lopez May 5, 2012, 10:08am EST Defense and then wide receiver would
be my priorities if I were Buffalo.
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