Cookbooks, Etc.

[WitchyPoo]

heyalice said:

I too loves me some Martha.
Any opinions on Deborah Madison's books? The 10th anniversary edition of Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone goes on sale next week and I'm curious.

That was the first real vegetarian cookbook I bought. It's great. The pictures alone are fantastic. I now eat meat but I still use it often.

[heyalice]

Thanks Witchy. And yet another cookbook goes on the wish list.
I do a lot of baking and I absolutlely adore Dori Greenspan's BAKING and anything by Tish Boyle.

[littleblacksheep]

I third the Chocolate & Zucchini recommendation. I threw that in my bag when going to France recently and had a great time going around the markets searching for the ingredients with it in my bag. Haven't tried the famous cake yet though. I don't like zucchinis so the prospect of putting one in a cake hasn't won me around yet! I like the writing style though.

I also have The Silver Spoon and all I have used it for is a batter recipe. I sometimes take it out thinking I might do something from it, but end up putting it back and taking out something else instead.

The Hairy Biker cookbooks I recommend. They are a great read aswell as providing tasty recipes. The guys take their bikes around the world and really experience the food & flaours of the places they visit. They are quite funny too.

Re-opening my Kitchen Diaries by Nigel Slater these days. Lovely book to read and has great winter recipes (all year really, but we are really on the same wavelength for winter). It is really interesting to take out and see what he cooked at the same time of year and is full of inspiration. I have the hardback version and there are some beautiful pictures of the food in there aswell.

Big fan of Nigella Lawson's cookbooks. I have How to Eat which I think is a great staple cookbook to have in the kitchen, How to be a Domestic Goddess which is wonderful if you like to bake but are a bit nervous about it. If you don't like to bake, don't bother!. I also have Feast which I have used a few times to plan various parties and is great if you have an 'occasion' to cook for. From funeral to Sunday lunch to Christmas dinner.

I bought Gordon Ramsay's Fast Food recently but haven't used it yet. I also got Marcus Waring's How to Cook the Perfect... which I have used a few times. It is really good for getting things just right. I looooove perfect roast potatoes and he has a good recipe for that, but also a lot of things to do with basic ingredients to make them special. He also has the recipe for his custard tart in this book. He won a chef competition (I think it was Great British Menu) to prepare the dessert course for a dinner for the Queen with this custard tart. I really am looking forward to trying it.

Started cooking Indian cuisine recently. Didn't have a clue where to start, but my boyfriend loves curries and I wanted to be able to make them myself. Bought 50 Great Curries of India (Book & DVD) and it was well worth it. The photos are a bit like the cookbooks of the 70s in the presentation of the food, but the recipes are really varied between region & flavours and I have had so much fun trying them out. I heartily recommend the Pistachio Chicken Korma if anyone else gets the book. In fairness to the photos though, they do make you want to try the recipes out and they show how things would end up for the plate. I hosted an Indian dinner party and used this cookbook and another I purchased with more stylish Indian recipes. Still easy to prepare, but more dinner party than mid-week dinner style. The book is Rice, Spice and all Things Nice by Reza Muhammed. Wonderful recipes, and the author is quite funny to read. He obviously loves himself but the recipes are really tasty. Think Banana Leaf wrapped Sea Bass with Green Mango Dressing or Duck Varuval. They went down a treat. I did a China Grass dessert which is a bit like an Indian panacotta and that was easy to make, totally tasty and looked impressive. I think I like that the recipes in this cookbook aren't daunting at all, but they end up looking and tasting great.

I have Peter Mayle's Provence A-Z which although is not a cookbook has a lot of recipes as various letters in his A-Z of Provence.

I also bought In the Mood for Food by Jo Pratt recently. I haven't used it yet and have to confess that I bought it cause it has this pink lace pattern overlaid on the cover photograph and it is quite a pretty cookbook. I got kind of distracted. It is a nice book however, and is divided into sections like 'Lazy', 'Healthy', 'Extravagant', 'Romantic' etc. The recipes do seem good though, I just seem to pick it up and look through rather than try though.

[cantienne]

Re-opening my Kitchen Diaries by Nigel Slater these days. Lovely book to read and has great winter recipes (all year really, but we are really on the same wavelength for winter). It is really interesting to take out and see what he cooked at the same time of year and is full of inspiration. I have the hardback version and there are some beautiful pictures of the food in there aswell.

I love this book - it's inspiring to see how a chef cooks at home, and gives me lots of ideas for simple meals.

[kkslider]

Has anybody tried out Cat Cora's Cooking from the Hip? It looks pretty interesting, and I think she's just brilliant.

I love my Alton and Nigella and Craig Claiborne, but my personal addiction is those little fundraiser cookbooks that churches and schools and women's clubs put out. You can score some fabulous regional recipes in those. And I'm from West Virginia by way of Kentucky, where the regional cooking is to die for. ::starts dreaming about pie::

[Deleted]

Has anyone read/used the Oxford Companion to Food ? I'm thinking of getting it for a friend for Christmas and I'm wondering how it is to read. It gets good reviews on Amazon but I was just curious to see if anyone around here had picked it up (bend at the knees, it weighs over 6 pounds).

[Deleted]

Around here, the recipes in those regional cookbooks that the church ladies do inevitably involve large quantities of Campbell's Cream of ___________ Soup. And Tater Tots.

I'm no food snob, but I just can't go there. I just can't.

Now I'm very intrigued by the Oxford Companion to Food - might make a good Christmas gift for my parents, who are impossible to buy for. Lately I've been getting them cookbooks because they love to cook, although their recent health kick (my mom keeps slipping prunes into all her baking) is making that harder...

[whatever]

I love Jamie Oliver's cookbooks, and his shows, most likely because my cooking style is pretty is similar to his.

I tried watching his show on BBC America, but the jerky camera work made me nauseous. I read through one of his cookbooks my sister had, and copied down a few recipes, but I haven't tried them yet.

[Deleted]

kokopelli said:

I personally can't get into the Jell-O thing at all. The texture just squicks me out. Jell-O shots, and snorting it up my nose once in college to freak out a less adventuresome coworker, is the extent of my experience with it. But I love to see the vintage cookbooks with all the lamentable pictures of gelatin salads.

And aspic? Eeek.

You mean this doesn't make your mouth water? What kind of drugs were people on back then because I can't imagine forcing that stuff down.

I'm a sucker for any beautifully photographed cookbook. I have all three of Giada De Laurentiis' cookbooks and I want to Morimoto's book because it looks pretty. I don't even eat Japanese food that much. I just bought Gourmet Shops of NYC and when my cousin comes to town we plan on hitting a bunch of those shops and cooking up a storm.

[dwanollah]

Anyone else tried any Gordon Ramsey cookbooks? I sense a slippery slope for me if they're good....