[Hi mods! I wasn’t sure if this went here, as I see most cooking related items go, or if it should go IMHO as a sort of poll. Since it was a toss up for me, could you please direct wherever necessary. Thank you.]
I’m learning to cook and so far, I’ve been gravitating towards what I call ‘gourmet’ type fare, but in reality is just probably a jib different than what’s a basic standard. In other words, I might prefer sun dried tomatoes over cherry, Camembert cheese to swiss or yellow bell peppers rather than green. If that makes any sense. Or not fancy at all, but 'tis to me.
However, I pretty much either find myself picking the fartherest out recipes from older stuff (like I just recently did a mash-up cross of Chicken Kiev and Cordon Bleu from 1986), newer things that I don’t completely understand (the Other Half just bought me a cookbook from Ikea that lists ingredients like ‘filbert kernels’ or even gherkins that I’m not familiar with or terms I’ve never heard of) where the directions are almost non-existent or searching out specific stuff on the web, resulting in a dinner free-for-all.
So, my question to everyone is thus… can anyone steer me to cookbooks that are a bit frilly but with really good instructions on what / how to do things? I’ve inherited a ton of Betty Crocker (great directions, but, at least in the ones I own, not a lot of variety above standard) that I like and I’m also pretty interested in any ethnic cuisine too, so there’s some of those that I’ve yet to plumb. At the moment, I’m just tired of checking stuff out online and would prefer to cut my chops the old fashion way and have a splatter stained book on my counter. Any advice will be greatly appreciated it.
You should always start with the Bible - The Joy of Cooking. It can tell you techniques and instructions for everything. Get an old used one though - people here say the newer print kinda sucks.
I don’t use most of the recipes in there, though. I’ve been compiling my own cookbook from the internet. That way I can write on the recipes with my critiques, suggestions, and substitutions.
I’m partial to anything by Cook’s Illustrated, whether it be their magazines or cookbooks or website. I think the best bang for the buck is the website - at $20/year or so, it gives you access to all their recipes. But don’t skip the accompanying articles. They’re great at not just recipes, but telling you why they do the things they do.
They do have ethnic recipes, and they tend to be tasty but not necessarily authentic. On the other hand, you can usually make them without mail-ordering ingredients from Bangladesh (or wherever). CI does a good job at coming up with recipes that can be made from a standard grocery store. Depending on your taste, you may want to up the seasoning on the ethnic recipes.
I like the Cook’s Illustrated Best Recipes. Mostly fairly standard, but some higher-end stuff too. And very good with instructions, so you don’t already have to know how to make a roux or whatever.
But beware, if you buy it from their web site, you’re likely to get automatically signed up to a cookbook-of-the-month club thing without any real warning.
That looks like both of those suggestions are right up my alley (and you’re right Quercus, I’m not quite up for the cookbook-of-the-month thingee yet), so thank you to everyone. I think I’ll check them out while I sit here and decide what all I do and don’t like about the meatloaf and buttermilk mashed potatoes I just made.
The Art of Simple Food by Alice Waters is a great book on doing the simple things right.
Alton Brown’s books I’m Just Here for the Food and I’m Just Here for More Food (which is focused on baking) are great for really learning how and why different cooking methods work. You could also do worse than to get hold of every Good Eats episode you can find (hint: YouTube).
I think the $20 a year or so for the Cook’s Illustrated website is worth every nickel.
Assumes sophisticated tastes, but not a lot of kitchen experience. It has very clear, step-by-step instructions and fantastic photography. You’ll love it.
I’ll grudgingly recommend Pelelope Casas’ book on Paella. The ingredient lists for her recipes are good, but her cooking method really sucks. I like Southern Cooking by Edna Lewis and Scott Peacock, and Tom Douglas’ Seattle Kitchen, by Tom Douglas.
Oh, just thought of another one, which is one of my all-time faves: Italy jThe Beautiful Cookbook by Lorenza De’ Medici.
I do believe we’ve already got some of Alton’s stuff. I can’t believe I didn’t think of that before. As to Rachel Ray, since my family is pretty big on her, I’m sure that’ll be one of the things that ends up on my gift list of things from them to me. Of everything else that’s been listed, I think my next definite purchase will be How to Cook Everything. That thing has like a 1000 recipes, plus explanations! I’m sold already, now I’ve just got to find a (cheap) eBay price to match. Heh.
In the meantime, I’ll be checking out the rest. I am particularly interested in Beadlin’s suggestion. Basic Cooking might be right up my inexperienced, but oh-so-sophisticated (bwahahaha!), alley.
Another intriguing cookbook of his is called Simple to Spectacular and it shows how you can use the same essential technique to make simple/rustic dishes and super-fancified dishes. Its one of few cookbooks I own that make clear how difficult a recipe is to execute compared to the others in the cookbook (the first in each technique section is always the easiest).
Finally, because I’m a Bittman fan (can you tell), How to Cook Everything is an excellent reference.
The reason for the IKEA cookbook confusion is that it appears, from your description, to use British/European words for things. For example, “filberts” are just hazelnuts, and “gherkins” are small pickles. “Double cream” if you’ve seen that, is heavy cream. No sense using a cookbook you need a translator to use! Measurements given by weight (grams, etc) instead of volume (cups, etc) is a dead giveaway that you are about to encounter a “two nations separated by a common language” problem.
Hello Again, thanks for that explanation! Yeah, I figured I’d stumbled on something that wasn’t American-centric, but only assumed that meant for weights, measures and more colourful ( ) spellings. It never crossed my mind to consider terminology. Now I’ll have to have an interpretor for a sous chef.
As to Bittman, I’m also already on board. I found a copy of Everything on that little auction site for about 12 bucks, including shipping. However, I wanted to compare prices, so I headed over to Amazon and found a pre-order for the next edition of that which has 2000 recipes and their giving an almost $15 break in cost. Which means I’ll be purchasing one as soon as payday rolls around. Once I’ve got to use it a time or twelve, I’m sure I’ll be buying more of his stuff. If for no other reason than I’m OCD that way.
I’m not sure if this is what you’re looking for, but for simple, basic recipes that work every time, your best bet is to check used book stores and church basements for congregational cookbooks. They are full of recipes for things like “Eugenie Martin’s Best Coffeecake,” which will be an excellent coffeecake, possibly the best you’ve ever had. The recipes don’t tend to be difficult, and can often be thrown together quickly from normal ingredients.
For fancier fare, buy the Junior League cookbooks. These can often be found in small, local stores. (Watch for them when you’re traveling. They make great souvenirs/Christmas presents.) People bring out their best, fancy food for these, and the results are often spectacular. In addition, most Junior League members aren’t professional chefs, so the recipes don’t tend to be difficult. (Plus the sales benefit community charities.)
Most people don’t think about these when they are looking for new things to cook, but they are great resources.
I totally agree with this - Junior League can be a great resource. I hadn’t thought about it in years, but this suggestion has encouraged me to pull out some of my mom’s old books.
I’ve always loved Cooking Light, too - they frequently rely on high-flavor foods to replace the fat/calories in many dishes, so the result is often more gourmet than standard fare. The dishes are also very easy to prepare; the only drawback is that sometimes the ingredient list is a tad long given all the spices.
Other good choices are How to Cook without a Book and Perfect Party Food by Pam Anderson and Diane Philips, respectively.
Another comment I’d make is that you can make the food you prepare feel more gourmet with just a few simple tweaks: if it’s presentation that you’re working on, stacking food often makes it much more professional looking. So, say you have steak and potatoes and green beans. Mash the potatoes with some garlic and/or gorgonzola, put some in the middle of the plate, stack thin-medium slices of steak or tenderloin and arrange on top of the potatoes and put a small pile of garlic-sauteed green beans on top of that. Instant gourmet.
If you’re thinking to enhance the flavor of a dish or a meal, super-flavorful ingredients, like spices, cheeses (think goat cheese, brie, smoked gouda, etc.) and high-end meats if you’re not vegetarian can help you do the trick easily. A few examples: jazz up fetuccini alfredo with a handful of fresh basil and proscuitto; make fresh fish or shrimp more exotic by poaching it with some shredded coconut and curry powder; for a simple, fresh meal, have crusty bread with apricot jam and brie on it with a salad on the side and some fruit.
Publications I buy too frequently and regret later are things like Martha Stewart’s Everyday Food - you know, those little mini-mags you get near the cash register at the supermarket. Her baking recipes are fabulous, but every time I try an entree, I find myself having to tweak it a LOT to make the flavors truly interesting. Maybe I’m buying the wrong ones? Also, I’ve tried a few of the Semi-Homemade recipes from a couple of books my mom bought me - I don’t like them at all. The food never seems to turn out quite right.
Another simple hint: Use the best simple ingredients you can buy. I’m not talking about “oooh lookee Target has Balsamic Vinegar with Yak’s Teeth and Mongolian Rosemary!” I’m talking “Hey, the Farmer’s market has tomatoes in season this week.”
Good ingredients means good food without much hassle. Grab those good tomatoes, slice 'em up, drizzle with olive oil and a little salt and you’ve got an amazing salad. Throw some olives and fresh basil on 'em if you really want to be fancy.
Another quick tip: Fleur de Sel. Basically coarse salt from France that’s not overly salty. A friend of mine who’s a chef turned me on to this stuff. It’s crazy expensive - about $10-$15 for a smallish jar - but you don’t use much of it so a jar lasts like a year. You don’t use it in food, you use it ON food, at the very end. Throw a bit of this on the aforementioned tomatoes instead of normal salt and you can really tell the difference. I put it on everything - steaks, omelettes, heck I eat it out of the jar at times. Yum yum yum.
And I agree with overlyverbose on making food pretty. I’m not such a big fan of stacking (makes stuff hard to eat),but it usually doesn’t take much to do some simple plating instead of throwing things together in a mess, and it makes things seem special. Even just throwing a sprinkling of a fresh herb or spice over whatever you’re serving to make a contrasting color on the plate jazzes things up. I don’t do this every time I cook, but if I’ve taken the trouble to make a really nice dinner I try to make it look nice on the plate, too.
Punkyova, I’d never thought of that! My mother would probably be willing to part with some of her’s (more the church bizarre variety than the junior league), but I’d prefer the latter, so I will indeed take your suggestion to look for some in local retail shops. Now that I’m so close to Dallas, that shouldn’t be hard to do while I’m searching for decorations to fill the new house. Thanks.
Excellent ideas from overlyverbose and Athena too. The ‘jazzing up ingredients’ bit is exactly what sort of got me started down this road. I figured why use plain white bread for something when I can use Sourdough (and on and on and on…), but I must admit that I’ve been raised in the Heap Your Plate school of aesthetic. I’m not sure how much I’d want to veer from that, seeing as getting people to even eat outside the box (“What? You mean you expect me to try peanut sauce?!”) and I can just imagine them grumbling more about having to actually unstack food. Gah! That may just be something that’ll have to wait until later and I have them hooked.
Further, I have been using fresh stuff when I can, almost to a fault. I mean, in my very limited experience, using a garlic press produced less appealing results than I’d like, but I did it anyway. Same on rosemary tossed on the tops of dishes, I liked it but they complained. < sigh > However, on the other hand, mushrooms from the Farmer’s Market rocked everyone’s socks, despite the claim that canned were “just as good!” And I’ve already started with sea salt versus regular. Is that comparable to Fleur de Sel?
In closing, I’ll add the other cookbook recommendations to my ever-growing list. This is such fun! I’ll also cop to buying those little super market books too (I’m especially bad around Halloween) and you’re right on the money about them being pretty much a meh. I’ve found that if I’m interested in a specific recipe, I’ll just go check it out on their website. I recently did this with a pumpkin dip from tasteofhome.com and it was amazing. But overall, I think the book would’ve suck though. Certainly for an almost $5 charge.
Thanks again guys! I’m now off for the weekend. If anyone else replies, I apologize for not being able to get back to you until next week. Everyone have a good one!!
No, although most Fleur de Sel is salt from the sea, the distinctive thing about it is that it’s large & flaky, not granular like normal salt. It looks sort of like kosher salt, but not exact.
The texture is part of the appeal. You don’t use it like normal salt, you use it right before serving, so that there’s chunks of it on top of whatever you’re making.
Lately, I’ve used The Bon Appetit Cookbook quite a bit. Since I often refer to the Epicurious web-site for recipes, it’s nice to have many of their recipes all in one reference. In general, the recipes are approachable and I can find most ingredients in my local stores. And, it’s a big cookbook - lots and lots of recipes to try.
Or not fancy at all, but 'tis to me.
Of everything else that’s been listed, I think my next definite purchase will be How to Cook Everything. That thing has like a 1000 recipes, plus explanations! I’m sold already, now I’ve just got to find a (cheap) eBay price to match. Heh.
) spellings. It never crossed my mind to consider terminology. Now I’ll have to have an interpretor for a sous chef. 
