If your Thai food recipe has let you down, you might like Madhur Jaffrey’s Quick and Easy Indian Coooking, especially if you have, or are willing to aquire, a pressure cooker. Get some brown rice going, throw some curry in the pot, lock it down and go watch TV for about a half hour while it cooks. It doesn’t get much better than that.
It’s a specialty book, but I’ve cooked more often out of it than any other cookbook I’ve bought in recent memory.
For quick, simple meals, I love Lindsey Bareham’s books. I bought A Wolf in the Kitchen from Amazon, but my real favorite was Supper Won’t Take Long, which I bought from a used bookstore in London. The meals are imaginative, tasty, and her little descriptions of the recipes are very amusing and well written.
Unfortunately, her books use metric measurements, so you’ll need a scale–I usually just find myself copying her strategies, techniques, and ideas, though, rather than measuring everything exactly as she has it in the recipe.
Nigella and Giada would surely insist on Nutella.
And RayRay on EVOO (“that’s Extra-Virgin Olive Oil”!). Which I’d probably be tempted to douse her in. And set alight…
Back to the topic at hand: anyone know of a cookbook that’s good at presenting basic recipies with suggestions on how to “dress up” for more variety? The Cook’s Illustrated/America’s Test Kitchen recipies are occasionally good at this, but usually only when suggesting other things to stuff the entree with…
I have a fairly old version of that one (it was in with my grandmother’s stuff that I inherited) and it’s taught me a lot. Some of the recipes are kinda dated after watching stuff on TV these days, but it’s the book I always reach for when I need to know.
Not too sure it’d be the one to help spruce up a tired repertoire, but I have really gotten a lot out of it.
I’ll keep an eye on this thread for advice, always looking to spruce up my repertoire.
Go to a used book store or on-line equivalent and get yourself a 1950’s or 1960’s edition of the Betty Crocker Cookbook. As I type this, swiss steak is in my oven from my own copy. The recipes are simple and easy to prepare. For the most part, however, they are not geared towards people restricting calories.
Just wanted to add, I have the 1950 edition with this cover. Worth its weight in capers and truffles, it is.
It’s certainly not gourmet, but it does have good, easy to follow recipes for meals that will feed the family. For the Nice Meals[TM], I’ll usually reach for Jeff Smith or James Beard.
Nigella Lawson’s books are interesting because she is an accidental TV chef having begun life as a journalist. She plainly says that she picks recipes on the basis of “if I can cook it anyone can”. Her books make pleasant reading as she writes very well for a cook.
Her website has lots of recipes. Those that are actually hers are identified.
How to Cook Without a Book is very good for that - you get a basic recipe (quick and easy tomato sauce, for example) and then it gives you ten or so variants that use the same recipe with either different or additional ingredients. Also, the recipes all turn out amazingly good - the sauteed tilapia with lemon caper pan sauce I made from that one got better reviews than anything I’ve ever cooked for my boyfriend before. It’s very “mix and match” and “here’s the basic proportions - now you try!” in tone, and both totally easy and weeknightable.
A few years ago, in a remainders bookstore, I bought one of the editions of the Betty Crocker Cookbook for about $5. Loved it to death. So when it started falling apart, I asked and received the latest edition (10th edition, I think). A nice touch is that it’s spiral bound. It’s the only cookbook I can actually just sit and browse through. I’ve also thought of getting The Joy of Cooking after hearing so many good things about it.
Saffron and truffles. 
Didn’t mean to sound like I was dissing it, I love the book! After some of the discussion in this thread, I looked. It’s a 1953 edition, 50+ years old and still gets pulled out quite often.
Also, digging around, I found a 1902 edition of “Harper’s Cook Book Encyclopaedia” that appears to have been snagged from the Steinway Branch of the Queens Borough Library. Not sure how that got here, no relatives from there, AFAIK none of them have ever been to Queens. Now that book has some archaic stuff in it!
It isn’t gourmet, but Desperation Dinners (Beverly Mills and Alicia Ross) have a couple of cookbooks out - I like them both. Their Desperation Entertaining was good too.
Thanks! I’ll have to look for it. Weeknight stuff is definately what I need.
Check out Saving Dinner. There is a website, and you can get a weekly menu mailer: six main dishes, suggested side dishes, and a complete shopping list. There are several different menu mailers - vegetarian, crock pot, kosher, low carb, etc.
Leanne Ely (the Dinner Diva behind Saving Dinner) has a couple of books as well. They are basically bound versions of the menu mailer. I really like the holiday one - it gives you an entire year’s worth of holiday meals.
I am a terrible cook, but even I can make all the recipes. They are tasty, quick and nutritious. Highly recommended!
My new favorite cookbooks are the “Biggest Book of…” books by Better Homes and Gardens.
Biggest Book of 30 Minute Meals (my current favorite!)
Biggest Book of Soups and Stews
and
Biggest Book of Slow Cooker Recipes (no, it’s not the file that I have of the 107+ pages of slow cooker recipes…available upon request by email…which is in my profile)
I’ll have to 2nd (3rd or 4th…) the AB books and the How to Cook Everything and How to Cook Without a Book books. I just love them
You need the Australian Women’s Weekly Cookbooks.
I know, they sound awful, but they’ve got everything from easy store cupboard meals to fancy dinner party food, and they’re simple to understand, easy to cook, plus the recipes are FOOLPROOF.
Just pick a book that suits, there are literally hundreds. Each has about 50 recipes, and is small and cheap, so you can buy one and if you like it, build up a collection.
I have Low Fat Casseroles, 50 Fast Chicken Fillets, Quick Soups, Thai, After Work Dinners and Storecupboard Favourites (some of the titles might not be quite right).
