My Favorite Cookbook and I must have made at least 50 recipes from here over the years-all good although a lot of ingredients in most of them.What is your favorite cookbook?
Yes, I was dubious when he suggested this topic. I told him that most of the peopleI hang around with online are the hard-boiled types. Cooking is for sissies. But he insisted that men cook, women cook and most people collect cookbooks.
I told him I would probably only get a response or two and they'd all pick THE JOY OF COOKING or the Julia Child cookbook, But for better or worse, here it is. Show him you're well-rounded.
What is your favorite cookbook? It'll probably end up under the tree.
John McAuley has thought of a good tie-in to this subject and would like to encourage everyone to make a donation to their local food bank. Being from Michigan, we both are seeing the statistics of the number of people coming to them for help and it is alarming. Thank you, John, for thinking of this timely concern.
What is your favorite cookbook? It'll probably end up under the tree.
John McAuley has thought of a good tie-in to this subject and would like to encourage everyone to make a donation to their local food bank. Being from Michigan, we both are seeing the statistics of the number of people coming to them for help and it is alarming. Thank you, John, for thinking of this timely concern.
43 comments:
I love to cook and I cook every day; I have a kitchen full of cookbooks, plus some in storage. For a basic overview of a recipe, you can't beat The Joy of Cooking. TJOC is especially good the first time you try something (although I wouldn't go to them for any Asian/Indian recipes). For more elaborate/exotic variations, I like Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything. For vintage cooking, my husband and I use Vincent and Mary Price's book. It was published in 1965 and was a fixture in my husband's home when he was growing up; my mother-in-law found a copy for us in a UBS about 15 years ago. We've been cooking from it ever since. For stories to go along with the recipes, I like Laurie Colvin's two volumes of Home Cooking.
I could go on and on...
I like the Moosewood Cookbooks (I have two) and I also like Jamie Oliver, he's got things that are simple enough for me to make but seem quite fancy.
I also use a very simple cookbook called The Harrowsmith Cookbook in which most of the recepies were submitted by memebers of the UCW (United Church Women' group). Mmmm, comfort food ;)
I like to cook, but only do a few different meals. If I want to try something new and have no idea, I'll look it up online.
Sorry--the author of the Home Cooking books is Laurie Colwin.
Bobby Flay's Boy Meets Grill.
The Best recipe Cookbook, from the publishers of Cooks Illustrated. Both their massive tome and their yearly versions are excellent. Just don't take their advice when they tell you it's unnecessary to pierce the skin of potatoes you intend to bake -- Katrina and I thought we were being mortared as one by one they exploded...
I love to cook certain things. I don't really have a cookbook I like, though I have been known to note certain recipes by Mario Vitali or Emeril Lagasse.
I do collect chicken recipes and have had compliments on my chili, although I couldn't give you a recipe. I've made it so many times that I just put the ingredient amounts in without measuring.
How about the one I don't have, but want: Anthony Bourdain's Les Halle's cookbook: Classic Bistro cooking. I flipped through it once, but foolishly, didn't buy it. At the time, I remember thinking it was a great mixture of fairly simple recipes and commentary.
See, Patti? You got more answers from men than women so far. So, your husband was right. (Dont' you hate it when that happens in public?) Mine is the standard Betty Crocker, but I love to read cookbooks, even though I don't cook much. And, I still use an old cookbook my mother bought for me and my sister when we were young - Let's Start to Cook. It has the best recipe for chicken.
Lesa - http://www.lesasbookcritiques.blogspot.com
I'm going to be conventional here and say The Joy of Cooking, although I find most of the recipes I use now are ones I find on the web or in various magazines like Bon Apetit and Cooking Light, both of which are pretty good magazines in my opinion.
This is going to help me find a good Xmas present. We have both Moosewoods too, after a trip to Ithaca where we went to their restaurant. I love Colwin's HAPPY ALL THE TIME, which I should do for forgotten books. The Flay is great-he loves his Throwdowns. Although in Michigan the grilling season is about ten minutes. Still we have an inside grill. Love Cooks Illustrated so that's a great idea too. I loved Bourdain's book where he told you never to eat fish on Monday at a restaurant among other advice.
Betty Crocker was the first cookbook I owned and I still turn to it for any basic recipe. Easy to read and understand and I usually have the ingredients.
Randy-He is basically a go by the instinct cook, too although he likes to read cookbooks.
We get Cooking Light and Bon Appetite too but often go to Epicurious or Food Network online.
I wish I could say I handled the baking. Neither of us can bake--probably because our mothers, both anorexic, did not.
I do all the cooking, my wife does the baking. Our only cookbook use comes from an old Betty Crocker book kept above the stove and that's only for the table of measurements and conversions in the back.
Most of our knowledge comes from trail and error, the wisdom of the older women in our families and, oddly enough, Esquire.
There was one that Delia Smith did for idiots and it told you how to boil an egg and things like that. I liked that but it was a little tricky for me.
I remember her from the year we lived there. Also I remember Gary Rhodes. Is he still around? Always like the idea of going to different places.
Betty Crocker taught me how to cook. But my favorite cook book is for baked goods. It's called "Country Fair Cookbook" edited by Elise W. Manning and published by Farm Journal in 1975. I've baked nearly every recipe in the book and many of them are still family favorites.
I don't own a copy yet but when I stumbled upon The Wise Guy Cookbook: My Favorite Recipes From My Life as a Goodfella to Cooking on the Run by Henry Hill (he's the guy that the movie Goodfellas was about-- Ray Liotta's character) I added it to my must have list.
Now THAT is a cookbook for us more hardboiled types.
We rely upon two "cookbooks" in our house. We either check the instructions on the microwaveable dinners or make selections from one of the take-out menus stuffed in our kitchen drawer. We have reached the comfortable world of retirement where the word "cook" is a four-letter word in our house.
My favorite is "To Serve Man"
I think it was written by Damon Knight.
Bill Khemski
The Road Kill Cookbook. It's not comprehensive, no sauteed squirrel or Hummer -grilled goose, but it's an easy read. And given the economy,[ especially here in Michigan] it could well be a holiday season best seller at used book stores everywhere.
[Seriously folks, please consider supporting your local food bank. Thanks Patti:)]
John McAuley
Bill- I remember it well. Wasn't it used on Alfred Hitchcock or Twilight Zone?
Thanks again, John.
I learned three things "at my mother's knee" as the saying goes: reading, gardening and cooking. I love all three to this day. I have a lot of cookbooks, and JOY is the first place I go for overviews and instructions. When hunting for a specific type of recipe, I have four favorites: all old, most out of print but findable:
THE BLUEBERRY HILL COOKBOOK by Elsie Masterson (Thomas Crowell & Co. 1959) - Masterson and her husband ran Blueberry Hill, a kind of B&B farm in Vermont.
HELEN CORBETT'S COOKBOOK by Helen Corbett (Houghton Mifflin, 1957) - Corbett ran the kitchens at Neiman Marcus.
THE MARGRET RUDKIN PEPPERIDGE FARM COOKBOOK (Athenium, 1963) - Rudkin founded Pepperidge Farms. Wonderful illustrations.
A BOWL OF RED by Frank Tolbert (Doubleday, 1972) - more a history than a cookbook, but there are many recipes.
I had both Julia Childs' cookbooks, but found them impractical and sold them. For quick reference I have MCCALLS, CROCKER and GOOD HOUSEKEEPING, which I think of as - along with JOY as "the usual suspects".
Wow. And I thought George and my husband were good fits but you even match him with the gardening. I haven't heard of any of these but will look for them.
I learned to cook with Better Crocker, too, Patti. But if I wanted a cookbook under my tree at Christmas, I'd hope to find the TOP CHEF: QUICKFIRE COOKBOOK.
That's the one, George.
Kevin, Eli, Jennifer, Brian or Michael.
I choose Kevin.
When my wife's mother died, we inherited her recipe boxes with recipes from people in the family from farther back. We put all that into a family cookbook, printed POD, as can be done very inexpensively now, with a spiral binding so they can be opened to each recipe. We will be giving them to family members this Christmas.
This is off-topic, but close enough that there might be others who want to consider the same idea in their families in other years.
Joe, what a good idea! I'll be stealing that one this holiday season.
Patti, my favorite cookbook is a simple spiral-bound book I've cobbled together myself over the years, only putting in recipes that I've tried and KNOW I will use again and again. If I come across a recipe that hasn't been done in two or three years, I rip it out and dispose of it.
My favorite cookbooks tend to be the ones that are produced by church groups and non-profits. They focus on quick, easy, tasty, rather than complicated, expensive, and potentially disastrous.
That is such a great idea, Joe. My mother had no recipes. She hated to cook and didn't even have a cookbook. This isn't to say she wasn't a wonderful mother. My grandmother had one or two. I know her recipe for beef burgundy. Pour a bottle of burgundy over a piece of meat and let it cook. See what I mean. I do have my grandfather;s recipe for fudge, but the same recipe is on any package of chocolate. He just added marshmellow. The closest I can come is a cookbook I have from the Pennsylvania Dutch which has recipes like father's sisters made. My husband's family was similar. Poor us and lucky you.
I do love those church and PTA cookbooks and we have one made in my husband's hometown in the fifties. Amazing how many recipes in it used soup in some fashion. Last year, someone tried to do a chain recipe collection on facebook but it petered out pretty quickly. That could have been fun if it worked.
I forget to mention, but thought of it when I saw George's comment, that Alton Brown has a new GOOD EATS cookbook available. It's on my Christmas list.
I draw upon my family's cookbook. My mother was an accomplished and elegant cook and I have occasionally sampled her wares--such as gorgeous quiches. But my heart belongs to chili, which I produce by the gallon in cold months.
I picked Kevin as a force to be reckoned with after the first episode of TOP CHEF, Patti. But the competition is stiff right now. Any mistake could be fatal. We'll have to see how the Finale plays out.
Good Eats, huh?
And I bet your recipe is very different from ours, Richard.
My daughter keeps telling me you never can tell with TOP CHEF. But as virgin watchers, we don't believe her.
As a somewhat schlumphy literary man, I feel that I should pay close attention to anything (vegetarian, at least) that Padma Lakshmi is cooking. But video in this case, going back at least to her MELTING POT days, is superior to anything on paper.
SHOOTING STARS's parody of Nigella Lawson has a certain charm, as well. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L57BcmGB-E0
I have my grandmothers hand printed recipe cards. the only cookbook I have ever used.
I don't have the heart to show my husband the Nigella video.
The other chef is unfamiliar to me.
Megan is right about the uncertainty of the FINALE of TOP CHEF. Some crazy things have happened in previous seasons to upset the "favorite" to produce an unlikely winner.
Padma Lakshmi--among other things, the ex-wife of Salman Rushdie (hence the schlumphy lit-guy reference). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Padma_Lakshmi
Patti, My mother didn't cook either. She was a wonderful mother, but a terrible cook. We ate out almost every night. I remember when we first got our microwave. My mom decided to do short chicken legs. She didn't think they browned enough, so she zapped them until they were a beautiful golden brown. They were like rubber. Inedible. After that, my mom only used the microwave to boil a cup of water for tea or instant soup.
I had a friend who's mother had no stove of any kind. They ate out every night of her childhood-mostly at inexpensive places but still...
Guess what, her mother was a writer.
Your husband is spot on: Men cook.
At least mine does (fortunately), and I am the wife so what do I know about cook books?
I think his favourite cook book may be the one with the beer recipes (Irish stew and such).
I love his food, though!
Mrs Beaton's Cookbook.
And some old recipes from 'Mrs.Dale's Diary' - aaah! a Forgotten Book. Sheesh! I must do that one.
Also, I like to experiment 'cos I love to cook.
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