s/d: cookbooks!

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.

These pickled sweet potatoes are amazingly good. I think I'm going to make a double or triple batch, enough to have jars to process instead of just the one jar for the fridge.

I'm not somewhere I can get a hold of the book (will probably buy it when I am back in the states)--if I could twist your arm to post the recipe that would be super awesome; I am in the land of sweet potatoes (who knew Taiwan was so into sweet potatoes? They are everywhere, including a special little roasting display at the local 7-11).

OK --
Pickling liquid, saucepan:
1/2 cup sweet white wine
1 cup champagne vinegar
Grated zest and juice of 1 lemon
Grated zest and juice of 1 medium orange
1/2 cup light brown sugar
1 teaspoon salt

Pickling spices, tied up in cheesecloth or a large coffee filter:
2 tablespoons peeled/chopped fresh ginger
1 whole star anise
2 tsp. peppercorns
1 medium shallot, thin sliced
2 cloves garlic, thin sliced
1 dry bay leaf
1 tsp. red pepper flakes
3 whole cloves

Bring the pickling liquid to a simmer, add the spice packet, simmer for 10 minutes. Add:
4 cups peeled sweet potatoes, cut into matchsticks
and simmer for 3 more minutes. I timed the 3 minutes from when the liquid came back to a bubble.

Turn off the heat, toss the spices and let the sweet potatoes cool in the liquid, then jar 'em up. I let the jar sit in the fridge for four days before tasting. I'm sure they'll just get better over the next week or two.

I didn't have light brown sugar and used dark. I didn't have champagne vinegar and used 2 parts sherry, 1 part cane and 1 part brown rice vinegars. Currence must have been using big commercial-kitchen coffee filters because it takes 2 normal ones to hold all that stuff.

Glad I had a mandoline. 4 cups of matchsticks by hand would have been a huge pain.

The Smitten Kitchen cookbook has been a hit at my house. Also this one:
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0MhX5uhyV1Y/UhFanj3eOUI/AAAAAAAAXqo/0-1N0uSnW7I/s1600/1373459981_flour-too-indispensable-recipes-for-the-cafes-most-loved-sweets-savories.jpg

Includes the recipe for their famous egg sandwich.

Thanks so much WmC! I think I can pull that one off even though the kitchen setup I inherited was:

Two gas burners, which are actually totally badass and crank out the BTUs like no-one's business

One pot. No lid.

One wooden spoon

One not so sharp knife

Electric kettle

Vegetable peeler

Salt

Two small dishtowels

Chopsticks/forks/spoons/knives for eating

A few bowls, plates, mugs, glasses

To this I have added: a pot with lid and steamer insert; a cheap but somewhat sharper knife; a mixing bowl and three smaller prep bowls that can double as serving bowls; a strainer; and a filter for the sink drain.

Husband's first reaction to seeing original kitchen setup: "it's like camping!"

Gonna ask apartment owner to purchase a rice cooker for the place. There's no oven, microwave, toaster/toaster oven, crock pot, or any other kitchen appliances, but a rice maker would be a game-changer.

Grabbed Fuchsia Dunlop's Every Grain Of Rice from the local library after having used a bunch of the recipes via the Grauniad &c.

I just bought that the other day!

i cooked from it last night

Well now I'm really going to need a rice cooker!

I received 'Every Grain of Rice' for Christmas this year and it really delivers on being the every day Chinese cookbook. I can easily knock together a couple of dishes in the time it takes the rice cooker to deliver. I've got her Hunan and Szechuan cookbooks and they are great but the recipes do take a bit more prep work, although I love being able to do 辣子鸡，chicken with chillies at home.

Favourites so far are 豆豉鸡丁, black bean chicken, and 家常肉末芹菜， celery with minced beef. Last night did 香肠炒荷兰豆， mange tout with wind dried sausage but I think I out in too much meat and not enough ginger as the flavours didn't balance right.

While our kitchen is not quite as galley style as quincie's it doesn't have a great deal of space but does have a usable wok burner on the hob. It really made a difference vs my old place where the burners dint quite have the oomf.

Only criticism and this goes for all her books is that the pinyin has no tone marks so it takes some work with Pleco to work out how to pronounce things. ( I'm learning mandarin so this matters to me)

Burners having oomph is sooooo important; I am going to overhaul the hell out of our gas range at home someday.

My landlady is dropping off her rice cooker tonight for us to use while we are here! I hope it is not some crazy neuro fuzzy model with tons of buttons, because I cannot read Mandarin. If needed maybe I can post a pic on ILX for help ;)

Getting the hang of the timer setting on our old one in the states was well worth it for morning Porridge and Congee. Our one in Australia is just on and off.

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

― kim tim jim investor (harbl), Sunday, April 8, 2012 6:56 AM (1 year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Ohmahgod there is a cookbook called '660 curries'. That sounds fantastic b/c curry's my favorite food. But uh does the book ask you to grind all the curry pastes from scratch? Because that would be asking kind of a lot.

Anyway, I got these as a Christmas present to myself, and they're all by Isa Moskowitz and Terry Romero, both of whom are genius. They haven't let me down, tho I'm just starting to get into these books. Surprised they haven't been mentioned already:

* Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World
* Vegan Cookies Take Over Your Cookie Jar
* Vegan Pie in the Sky
* Veganomicon

Hey guys, I want some like ESSENTIAL CRUCIAL COOKBOOKS! Ideally ones that just totally fucking nail a specific type of cuisine. Here's what I'm thinking:

Lidia Bastianich's "Lidia's Italian American Kitchen" (but she has like 20 cookbooks -- are there other better ones?)
Marcella Hazan's "Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking"
maybe something French, but not something so outdated as "Mastering the Art of French Cooking"

Also, maybe some essential food mags I could subscribe to? Bon Appetit rules, Food + Wine sucks, I am considering Saveur though but I have never read it and know nothing about it

I want to read about fooooood!!

all about roasting/all about braising
maybe one of rick bayless's books, i've had good luck with mexican everyday
grace young's books on stir-frying

or maybe "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" IS worth getting? idk!

i'm liking fuschia dunlop's "land of plenty" for sichuan cooking, but i've only made like two things from it so far (ma po tofu and gong bao chicken)

or maybe "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" IS worth getting? idk!

― belami young (Stevie D(eux)), Wednesday, October 22, 2014 9:26 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it's very interesting to read, not actually super fun to cook from imo

Madhur Jaffrey is the go-to Indian cookbook author, but her books have been retitled and combined so it's hard to figure out which is the go-to. I have old library copies of A Taste of India and Indian Cooking.
Yotam Ottolenghi's books are great - Israeli/Mediterranean/Levant food - but I haven't cooked much from them yet. Jerusalem, Plenty and the new one Plenty More (latter two are vegetarian)

Saveur is a little more fancy-pants in the written/travel section than Bon Appetit but it's still a good read IMO.
You should watch The Mind of a Chef on Netflix and PBS.

Every time I read Food + Wine it's just like wanky bourgie resort horeseshit and not about FOOOOD, like I just want COOL FOOD SHIT

show me some 25 year old crust punk pastry chef in Omaha covered in tattoos who talks about how much he fucking loves FOOOOOOD idgaf abt the fucking Maldives

MTAOFC is fun as a game: Open to random page and pick one recipe with your eyes closed kind of thing. Attempt on a winter Sunday afternoon when you can just order takeout if it all goes wrong. Be prepared to eat a weird dinner with like one 3-hour-preparation dish and a side of toast.

Otherwise, nah.

show me some 25 year old crust punk pastry chef in Omaha covered in tattoos who talks about how much he fucking loves FOOOOOOD