dimbulb

So which cookbooks do you have on your kitchen bookshelf? Which ones are indispensable? Which ones just take up space?

Here's mine:

1. Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking (Marcella Hazan): One of my favorite cookbooks. Great, simple, never-fail recipes described in great care. Never fails to deliver authentic great tasting italian dishes. Some classic crowdpleasers from here include: Pork Loin Braised in Milk, Roast Chicken with Two Lemons, the best Ragu Bolognese ever....

2. How to Cook Everything (Mark Bittman): A new favorite of mine. Lots of recipes (2000), along with many suggested variations, and descriptions of foods and the appropriate techniques for each.

3. The Professional Chef (Culinary Institute of America). Targeted towards the professional chef (duh!). Recipes tend to make huge portions (want a gallon of soup?). Great pages describing each classical technique in detail. Recipes tend to be a bit fussy, with many steps.). Great resource for learning about cooking.

4. Cook With Jamie (Jamie Oliver). So so. Nice pictures, most recipes work. Too few recipes and too little instructions/techniques for the money

Have a few more, but these are the ones I refer to on a regular basis

snowy

I don't own these cookbooks (yet), but they are the ones I rely on.

1. How to Cook Everything Vegetarian (Mark Bittman). An awesome guide to vegetarian cooking that even a carnivore can love. I love Bittman because his focus is generally more on method with an emphasis toward personal experimentation. I keep renewing it from the library and I've asked for it for Christmas.

2. The Joy of Cooking. It's a fantastic reference, and I don't know what I'll do when my roommate moves out and takes his copy with him.

Cookbooks I own are really too numerous to mention! I often get cookbooks as gifts. There are a lot that focus on vegetarian cooking and soups, but none have really turned into favorites. I also have two copies of the Better Homes and Gardens cookbook; its brownie recipe is the best.

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skizziks

hmm...
joy of cooking
better homes and gardens cookbook
bon appetite cookbook
think like a chef (tom collichio)
craft of cooking (tom collicio)
nastering the art of french cooking 1 and 2 (julia child)
enchanted broccoli forest (Mollie Katzen)
Artichoke To Za'atar: Modern Middle Eastern Food by Greg Malouf
silver palette good times cookbook
Vegan with a Vengeance (Isa Chandra Moskowitz)
The Barbecue! Bible by Steven Raichlen
im just here for the food (alton brown)
im just here for more food (alton brown)
various indain cookbooks
various chinese and other asian cookbooks
various vegetarian cookbooks
various old cookbooks that you get from churches when the parish donates thier recipes

i WANT to get bouchon and the french laundry cookbooks by tom keller. but i just cant bring myself to it.

and a bunch of others. i have about 4 shelves of cookbooks

sapiens

How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman
The Best Recipes in the World by Mark Bittman
Theory and Practice of Cooking by James Beard
Sundays at Moosewood Restaurant
Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home
The New Enchanted Broccoli Forrest by Katzen
The Bon Appetit Cookbook
The Thousand Recipe Chinese Cookbook by Miller
Pasta East to West: A Vegetarian World Tour by Nava Atlas
Chef on A Shoestring
The Magnolia Bakery Cookbook
Essentails of Classic Italian Cooking by Marcella Hazan

I probably use Bittman's Best Recipes book and Marcella Hazan's book the most. I've made Hazan's Chicken with Two Lemons many times.

Starkizzer

My moms brain is one of my best resources.

When I need a specific recipe I tend to google it and then take bits of what I like from several and make my own.

I do love to look through my parent Mediterranean cookbook when I'm home.

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dimbulb

funny... I actually live within walking distance of Moosewood.... Went there 1-2 times, didn't see what the big fuss about the food was, and I've never been back. Maybe because I'm not that big a fan of vegetarian cooking...

SabrinaFair

The Ultimate Southern Living Cookbook. I absolutely adore it; it has all kinds of recipes. The name is misleading--it's not solely based in the Southern idiom. Every time I want to learn how to make something new, such as a new type of bread or particular cut of meat, this is where I usually start. It also has great instructional sections for learning new techniques.

I also love collecting local cookbooks--church groups and whatever that compile recipes for fundraisers. Some of the recipes are great--others are just freakin' hilarious. Thanks to my ex-boyfriend's grandmother, I literally have a recipe for bbq raccoon. True story.

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Charlatan

I'd have to look on my book shelf... let me get back to you.

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guyy

I lived at 404 1/2 N. Cayuga St. and the Moosewood is 215 N. Cayuga. I never once ate at the Moosewood. I had already had too many dishes advertised as "straight outta Moosewood." But maybe i should have tried it. I've been thinking about writing about hippy cooking and especially Moosewood & Tassajara and thinking that i should try a few recipes. I read over some of the Moosewood recipes and i was surprised that the recipes followed what i consider to be proper cooking practices. After eating unappetising Moosewood this and Moosewood that for many years, I'm guessing that people did not follow the recipes. I also have a soft spot for cookbook illustrations & the Moosewood has some nice ones.

Tassajara is a mystery to me. The food seems very removed from even American beatnik Zen.
-----Added 16/12/2008 at 11 : 38 : 08-----
This is a good one as long as you don't take Marcella too seriously. She's sort of right about the clams for clam sauce (Sagami Bay clams from my local fishmonger worked great, but supermarket clams, even fresh ones, did not cut it.) Otherwise, she's too uptight about little details of technique and ingredients.

dimbulb

Apparently the ingredients are the key. I've read that using the San Marzano canned plum tomatoes from Italy as she recommends is the key to a great tomato sauce. I can't really justify using tomatoes that cost twice as much as usual though, so I just stick with the Wegmans store brand, which gives me decent to good pasta.

roachboy

moosewood...what i remember from going there once or twice was being assured that at one point the place was actually good. that point was apparently falling further and further into the past. i figured the food was mediocre, but at least i had the chance to wave at that point in the past as it fell away.
the cookbook is part of that strange "new american" wave of the late 70s that resulted in other things like the echanted broccoli forest (irritating layout, irritating font, irritating writing, but some good recipes) and the white dog in philly. actually, philly was a big part of all that. i used to have the frog cookbook but lost it along the way, along with whatever preference i might ever have had for "new american"

i like marcella hazan and sometimes am in the mood to be bossed around by her. she is at her most bossy on making pasta, i think. it's kinda funny, if you're in the right mood.

but she's entirely right about things like san marzano tomatoes. and actual reggiano. and using decent butter rather than that flavorless mass produced stuff. little things that make a huge difference---of them, though: if you're going to make a simple tomato sauce, you really compromise it with most regular canned tomatoes. it's worth the extra buck, if you can swing it. but the style of sauce is not bolongese...prefab "italian" in the supermarkets of america would have you think that there's only one basic spaghetti sauce. it's silly.

marcella also has the best carbonara ever. it's so simple, but it's great. and she's not terribly bossy in that one.

i never could get the pork braised for hours in milk to work, though.

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spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

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guyy

I agree that the tomatoes are important, but it's not really the brand or the region or the variety of tomatoes at issue. What you want are tinned tomatoes with nothing added. Crap like citric acid & calcium chloride keep the tomatoes from breaking down as you cook and make for suboptimal sauces. So there: a picky detail that's not in Marcella's book.

There is no decent butter in the US. All of it is flavoured, even the organic, "natural" butter. It doesn't bother me that much because i'm not much of a butter fan to begin with, but the flavouring apparently fucks up some sauces. My mother had trouble getting some candies to come out right and after much consultation with the people at Organic Valley, blamed the "natural flavouring." There is some amazing butter in Italy. And yes, it does not pay to skimp on the Parmesan. Some Wisconsin & Argentinian Parmesan-knock-offs are decent cheeses on their own, but they do not function as Parmesan substitutes.

Cooking with Marcella is a matter of submission. I guess she takes the logic of the cookbook & the recipe to their logical extremes.

World's King

I use the Joy of Cooking for reference.


Everything else I need is in my head...

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eribrav

I have a few cookbooks, but I find my subscription to Cook's Illustrated more useful than any of them.
I get the magazine monthly and get all sorts of new ideas and things to try. I would say we end up trying at least one new dish from each edition and almost all of them have been winners.
I also subscribe to the website and use that as more of a cook book type reference, when needing a specific recipe for something I want to make or when given an ingredient that I'm not familiar with using.

alicat

Joy of Cooking has been my go-to since my Gramma gave me my copy in 1991. I have many others but I rarely use them. Once in awhile I'll pull out my old Betty Crocker "Cookie book" for some ideas. I too love to collect and read the books produced by churches or other organizations, pretty simple food but usually fun with a few gems.

These days I'm most likely to Google for a recipe or go to Recipezaar or AllRecipes. I really like the peer reviewed sites because I can get a concensus on changes people made or problems with a recipe. Of course a recipe can have 700 positive reviews and still be a flop to our tastes and sometimes there is a ton of mundane recipes that have to be weeded through, but they are indespensible for me.

Pet peeve: I can look for a recipe online and find one only to have the exact same recipe copied and pasted over and over again on site after site. The whole of the internet available to millions of people and apparently once one recipe is posted, no other options or versions are needed. Sheesh.

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guyy

You need the older editions for stuff like bear meat.

tcm_eternal

Got "Just One Pot" for christmas this year