s/d: cookbooks!

have wanted larousse gastronomique for ages...

in terms of actually practicality i find nigel slater's books really good, other books i've bought are nice to read but i seldom cook the stuff in them.

robuchon's book is good tho also.

My stack of cookbooks is probably twice as tall as i am.

also v interested in books pertaining to: caribbean food

For the basics, you can't really go too far wrong with the Naparima Girls' High School Cookbook. I don't know how easy it is to get hold of, though. Sweet Hands by Ramin Ganeshram is pretty good.

I haven't really cooked anything from it yet but Creole by Babette de Rozieres is beautiful.

OTTOLENGHI - PLENTY

Any recommendations for a singleton pescetarian?

Ottolenghi's Plenty doesn't have any fish but there's lots of vegetarian stuff that can be scaled down for single servings.

My stack of cookbooks is probably twice as tall as i am.

Because i'm a massive loser, i actually checked this - and it is.

http://i.imgur.com/ha5ie.jpg?1

I Know How To Cook is a winner; I learned about it recently when in France & friends were talking up the classic French edition as being the standard cookbook every French family keeps at home for basics. The English translation seems good to me.

in terms of actually practicality i find nigel slater's books really good, other books i've bought are nice to read but i seldom cook the stuff in them.

I have the opposite feeling about Slater - I always enjoy reading his books (I have Tender 1, Real Fast Food and Thirst I think) and I do get ideas from them but I rarely actually make any of the recipes.

Paula Wolfert - Moroccan Cuisine

Most of the books in my list are well-known but I think this one is super-slept-upon...I've made ~70% of the recipes in it and every single one has turned out amazing.

I'll have to pick up the Wolfert one.

I gave my aunt a copy of Roden's Jewish Food last year and she's been raving about it ever since. She has bought at least two people copies of their own. I don't think i've given it as much attention as i should. Roden's a great writer.

"The Book of Jewish Food" is a fantastic read even before you make any of the recipes.

My favorites:

Les Halles Cookbook - Bourdain
Mastering The Art of French Cooking - Julia
Zuni Cafe Cookbook - Judy Rodgers
Naked Chef/Happy Days w Naked Chef - Jamie Oliver
A Cook's Companion - Stephanie Alexander
Baking Illustrated - America's Test Kitchen etc
California Rancho Cooking - Jaqueline Higuera McMahan (worth it just for the cornbread recipe)

I know there was a lot of Bittman-repping ITT but I much vouch for How To Cook Everything Vegetarian, a really awesome and open-ended cookbook. P great for when you have some daikon or whatevs you're not sure what to do with, he'll have 30 easy/tasty ideas for it.

I bought this:

http://www.amazon.com/Cultural-Revolution-Cookbook-Sasha-Gong/dp/9881998468

and it's okay but I found out that the author is also a far-right republican :(

everyone needs to have 660 curries, i have made like 100 of them now

Oh shit - Charmaine Solomon's Complete Asian Cookbook is the greatest thing ever

I have plenty of room in my life for good food and for cooking. I can't seem to find enough room in my life for more than a dozen cookbooks. I've got about fifty or sixty basic stand-by dishes I cook. Beyond these, all the new dishes I see seem either to be minimal variations on the same themes I already knwo, or MUCH too complicated and time-consuming, or too reliant on exotic and/or expensive ingredients.

However, I did recently pick up a copy of James Beard's Theory and Practise of Good Cooking for $10, wherein he attempts to teach a generation of American cooks taught in high school home-ec classes how to forget about slavishly following recipes and learn to cook. It provided me with a couple of hours of sensible tutorial on various useful techniques.

Excited to have a website selling all the molecular gastronomy things. Obviously, in a London domestic kitchen, it's not going to be some synthesis of Ferran and Heston, but there's a couple of things I want to try - a jelly with cream, served with a truffle, which will actually be solidified fish and paprika stew with ailoi and the truffle being a ball of salmon flakes rolled in crushed almonds and baked. Probably be vile, but always fun to give these things a go.

Creamsupplies is excellent. They often have short-dated molecular gastronomy things on sale for pennies so i have a kitchen full of iota carrageenan and carboxymethyl cellulose to work out what to do with.

Have you managed to make anything that actually works? That was the site I was looking at, after Googling Xantana.

everything i've made from claudia roden's middle eastern book has been great. i'm thinking of getting her spain book from last year. i also got nigel slater's tender at xmas but haven't made anything from it yet because i was occupied with 660 curries. i think i'll pull it out and look at it now!

xp, nothing too ambitious yet. I've used a few things for improving the texture of ice cream and milkshakes and messed around with gelification and spherification.

I attempted to make a hot strawberry gel foam using carrageen and a nitrous whip but that didn't really work that well. Fun though!

i forgot to recommend silk road cooking by najmieh batmanglij. i think i'm gonna order a couple cookbooks because of this thread :(

i have carol field's the italian baker out from the library. trying to improve my baking skills. (according to my chef-instructor, i need to spend more time with the second rise.)

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51FZKALvzOL.jpg

Got this yesterday -- I predict it's going to get some serious kitchen playtime in the next few months. I can't recommend Currence's restaurants enough if you somehow find yourself in Oxford MS.

I got two cookbooks for Christmas

An Australian one -- The Country Women's Association 'Classics' Cookbook.
Mum had a small version of this when I was growing up, full of all the classic grandma baking recipes that I used to make as a kid that I am getting homesick for again.
bummed there's no lamington recipe in there but otherwise now I'm all set to make spongecakes, trifles, jelly rolls and rum balls :D

I also got the Dorie Greenspan book 'Baking: From My Home to Yours' which I'm superexcited about

AND...local used bookstore has Joy of Cooking for $5. I'm so tempted to buy it

Which Joy of Cooking version? I've got the original, one from the 70s, and one from the 80s(?) - the one from the 70s is the best. The original has questionable flavor/texture combinations throughout (and is small) and the 80s one got too much good info revised out of it.

I think it's the 75th anniversary edition? I know there's better editions than others but I figured for $5 it can't be that bad

True! Worth it, even if just for reading through imo - if it's the facsimile of the original, that's the one I've got. It's a fun glimpse at the past.

I recently got the Well-fed 2 and Nom Nom Paleo cookbooks -both excellent - and have cooked delicious things from each. We've had these oven-fried fishcakes at least 5 times lately - all kinds of different seasoning suggestions. I mixed in Thai yellow curry paste and cilantro for the last batch, and ate with lime mayo.

i'm def gonna get the nom nom paleo book--everything i've made from her site has been outstanding.

yeah even though the name is incredibly annoying and embarrassing to have on one's bookshelf i might get it. i bought myself bruce aidell's meat cookbook for xmas. i need to work on cooking more out of the books i have before i get any more though.

I went back to the used bookstore -- the Joy of Cooking they had was the "all new" edition which cuts out heaps of stuff from the other editions. I decided I would hold out, I don't want a crappy version.

Got this yesterday -- I predict it's going to get some serious kitchen playtime in the next few months. I can't recommend Currence's restaurants enough if you somehow find yourself in Oxford MS.

― millions now living will never kick out the jams (WilliamC), Thursday, December 26, 2013 3:33 PM (5 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

man i went into the bookstore last week not really planning on getting a new cookbook but this just looked like way too much fun to leave on the shelf.

we just got both volumes of Alice Waters' Art Of Simple Cooking - my mom gave us the (new?0 2nd one, and so we picked the first one up as well. we are seriously considering a CSA membership for 2014 and these are full of good ways to use excess veggies

plus, the first one has the best caramel sauce recipe ever

CAD, please post updates when you cook from this! I made a batch of the soy-pickled shiitakes this morning and will report on them in a few days. There was a lot of pickling liquid left over, and I have a couple of ideas of what to do with it. (Mustard greens & small turnips)

CAD, please post updates when you cook from this!

i made the osso bucco and pea risotto tonight--sort of a weird first choice but all the ingredients were easy to find and it seemed like a nice wintry meal. i halved the recipe and called a few audibles but no complaints with the result. i had never made risotto! the whole time i was doing it this scene was playing in my head:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRp2phlJWXA

lol I always think of Top Chef in my head when I make risotto; but oh jeez that poor girl! how mortifying

I wish I could get veal shanks or lamb shanks or any other kind of shanks other than smoked ham hocks around here. I would osso bucco the hell out of the universe.

Today from the Currence book I made the pickled sweet potatoes and lemon-pickled honeycrisp apples, except I accidentally picked up a back of fujis instead of honeycrisps at the store. The pickled shiitakes are good, though it seems the soy overpowers the mushroom flavor a bit.

I really want La Tartine Gourmande: Recipes for an Inspired Life - Beatrice Peltre. Anyone been able to look at this cookbook or own it?

I've not found it at any book store I happen upon.

deborah madison's "vegetarian cooking for everyone" is my basic cookbook, almost all i need

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51nlbmRddnL.jpg

also sandor katz the art of fermentation is just a joy:

http://media.npr.org/assets/bakertaylor/covers/t/the-art-of-fermentation/9781603582865_vert-b614f1efff1f31b4ee1f12ebfe888c73a4c1c415-s6-c30.jpg

Yeah that book is insane. So far I've only done sauerkraut but one day I'll branch out.

red miso is surprisingly easy if you have a basement with cellar temperatures. i just decanted a two-year old crock of my homemade miso and it is sublime

ooooh that book looks like a good way for me to start fermenting stuff, thanks for the rec!

Yeah even if you never ferment anything it's super-entertaining; the people who ferment meat are o_O (and that's before you go reading their web forums).

*hurl*

Man I'm trained as a microbiologist and even I wouldn't get involved with meat fermentation.

I had a super wonderful sauerkraut a few months ago; they sold the juice separately as a drink and for real I would be all over drinking that stuff over soda any day!

Read at your own hurl-risk: http://www.rawpaleodietforum.com/display-your-culinary-creations/high-meat-recipe-preparation-for-more-advanced-rafers/

There's this wave of fancy Southern cookbooks. That Currence book, the Edward Lee book, the Donald Link. They all have very similar names, like "Bourbon, Black Eyed Peas and Shrimp," or "Meat, Marinade and Moonshine" or "Whiskey Jars, Soup Pots and Southern Fried Cast-Iron Skillets." They all have pretty awesome recipes. I'm making the bourbon-spiked banana pudding from the Link book today, as a matter of fact.

Wish I saw this thread a couple of weeks ago, because I just went on a cookbook spree. Finally bought the Marcella Hazan Essential Italian, the first Bayless book, Molly Stevens' All About Braising and I want to say one of the many books by Melissa Clark, because I like her Times recipes. Simple, unpretentious and good.

A couple of my go-tos for the last couple of years, for the same reason, have been by Bill Granger, my favorite Aussie fresh/comfort food chef. Oh, and I've yet to be let down by Smitten Kitchen, whose recipes are the best sort of home cook concoctions/adaptations. She's got really good instincts, imo.