The best cookbook

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’d like to know people’s opinions on what the best cookbooks are. The best, in my opinion, should not merely provide delicious recipes, but should raise the skill of the cook, providing new knowledge and techniques that are useful even without making a single dish from the cookbook. I use the word cookbook loosely, as you will see from my favorites:

On Food and Cooking by Harold McGee: Very authorative book on food science. Explains what happens on the molecular level when bread is kneaded, why searing meats do NOT seal in any juices, etc, and explains the history of a huge variety of things. This guy knows more about food than anyone else I’ve seen. The only bad thing about the book is it is totally Euro-centric, not dealing with any other kind of cooking, and ignoring Asian vegetables. However, it’s a huge book, and so I can’t fault him for leaving some things out. Oh yes, and one more bad thing: the cover is totally ugly.

The French Laundry Cookbook by Thomas Keller: Has great tips for very fine cooking, such as using a chinois, a tamis, and other miscellaneous tidbits like always squeegeeing the fish skin before frying. The recipes, when I’ve had time to make them, and beyond excellent. They really taste incredible - almost like the dishes at the restuarant itself. It’s tough to make though, usually taking me about 4 hours to cook one dish.

Essentials of Cooking by James Peterson: Excellent reference material for various cooking techniques. It’s very thorough, and has helpful pictures. The only problem is he doesn’t give some valuable tips - like his section on frying fish does not mention the squeegeeing of the skin. I’ve ordered Peterson’s “Sauces”, it looks awesome… if it’s as good as it looks, I’ll add it to this list when I get it.

Indian Cooking by Maddhur Jaffrey - This is one cooking book that raised my Indian cooking skills tremendously. She explains essential techniques I never learned in other cookbooks before - like how to brown onions as the first step of making a curry, etc. And the recipes are delicious!

So, what are some other ones?

2

Oh, and to say it before anyone else does… the best cookbook is…

How to Serve Humans

3

If you like to think as well as to cook, if you’re curious about the background of the dishes you prepare, if you want to have your culinary mind expanded, you should immediately buy all four of John Thorne’s books (all from North Point Press):

SIMPLE COOKING
OUTLAW COOK
SERIOUS PIG: AN AMERICAN COOK IN SEARCH OF HIS ROOTS
POT ON THE FIRE: FURTHER EXPLOITS OF A RENEGADE COOK

Yeah, I know…this is the eighty-fifth time I’ve pushed John Thorne on everyone. No, I’m NOT John Thorne. I seriously think he’s the best food writer in the country, now that M.F.K. Fisher’s dead.

For books that are more recipe-based than theory (although they are deeper than mere lists of recipes), these are a few of my indispensables for specific cuisines:

Julie Sahni; CLASSIC INDIAN COOKING
Susan Derecskey; THE HUNGARIAN COOKBOOK
Cheryl & Bill Jamison; THE BORDER COOKBOOK (Northern Mexico, plus the bordering areas of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California)
Jessica B. Harris; THE WELCOME TABLE: AFRICAN-AMERICAN HERITAGE COOKING
Philip Stephen Schulz; COOKING WITH FIRE AND SMOKE (Barbecue techniques, plus a terrific range of sauces, marinades, and dry rubs)

4

“Moosewood” (revised edition) by Mollie Katzen et al. is one of my favorite cookbooks. I brought it when I was a vegetarian and even though I’m back being a carnivore I still use it religiously. I like it because the cooking style is very relaxed, most recipe have alternative versions or offer substitutions. She also has a handy section on conversions, measuring techniques and general cooking help. In her new book (Vegetable Heaven) she even has a section on how to roast all vegetables which for a very amateur chef has very handy. I can’t tell you how many cookbooks assume you know how to roast red peppers, I didn’t, until now.

This isn’t a cookbook but a extremely helpful resource, is “The Food Encyclopedia”, I don’t know who the publisher is but I’ve seen other many good examples of encyclopedias in the cookbook section. It comes in very handy when I’m wondering what really is the difference between a sweet potato and a yam or how do you de-veil a shrimp or how big is a cardemen seed.

I’ve also found the Woman’s Weekly series from Australia to be very good.

5

::snicker::

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I use the more recent Moosewood cookbooks quite a bit, too…the ones credited to the “Moosewood Collective” rather than to Katzen, who was responsible for the original MOOSEWOOD COOKBOOK and for THE ENCHANTED BROCCOLI FOREST (both of which I consider nifty historical culinary artifacts rather than practical cookbooks…I spent quite a bit of time up in Ithaca, NY, back when I was a hairy bearded young gent, full of fun and cannabis and lysergic acid).

The two books I particularly like are SUNDAYS AT MOOSEWOOD: ETHNIC AND REGIONAL RECIPES and MOOSEWOOD COOKS AT HOME: FAST AND EASY RECIPES FOR EVERY DAY.

7

Oh, dear lord, Ike’s started in on cookbooks . . . Someone pass me the cooking sherry and a comfy pillow.

My favorites are more from an entertaining title standpoint:

“Be Bold with Bananas” and “How to Turn a Trick a Day with Bisquick”

8

For the unfamiliar and the all-thumbs cook I recommend “The Joy of Cooking” as the best all-around introduction to cooking and overall technique. My copy (which I requested when my parents asked me what I’d like as a graduation present) is very well thumbed. Of course, almost every time I use a recipe in there I change it – my taste isn’t the same as that of the authors.

By the Way, the title of the book (and the Twilight Zone episode, and the Damon Knight short story it’s all based on) is “To Serve Man”. The Simpsons are partly respoonsible for scrambling this all up.

And “The Joy of Cooking” doesn’t have any REALLY good recipes for Man, either. I always have to change them.

9

I’ll second a number of the above. My copy of Julie Sahni’s book has many stains on it. Her section on breads is wonderful.

I also love the Moosewood Collective books–they are a good introduction to a wide variety of ethnic dishes. The emphasis is vegetarian, but some of them also have fish recipes.

Another favorite of mine is Julia Child’s, The Way to Cook. Great sections on soups, pastry, and meats. It is worth the price just for her duck recipes.

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One of my faves is The New Basics Cookbook, by Julee Rosso and Sheila Lukins (who also did The Silver Palate Cookbook, which is not nearly as good) - it has lots of helpful tips, and the recipes are uniformly good. I find it to be much more useful than Joy.

Also on Mollie Katzan’s bandwagon, if you cook with kids, her Pretend Soup (for kids up to about 6-7) and Honest Pretzels (for kids over 4, at least my kids), are EXCELLENT!

Although not a cookbook (it does include a couple recipes), I really enjoyed Ruth Reichl’s autobiography Tender at the Bone.

Additionally, pretty much anything by M.F.K. Fisher is worthwhile. FWIW, she wrote books about oysters and wolves, but nothing about serving Man.

11

If you’re into the science behind cooking I’d suggest Cookwise by Shirley Corriher.

If you want a good read try anything by M.F.K. Fisher.

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D’oh! Yep, I got the two mixed up. Darn it, it’s so rare to be able to make a joke on that Twilight Zone episode, and I messed it up… :frowning:

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I don’t have any cookbooks yet (still living at home and plus I generally write down recipes I like in a notebook when I find them in my Mom’s and Grandma’s recipe books) One cookbook that I like though (and I am getting a copy soon) is From Nova Scotia Kitchens It’s a really neat book with lots of good recipes in it (everything from cookies to maindishes) but it also has some interesting recipes that might be hard to try. It has stuff like Fiddleheads, Dandelion Wine, Dandelion greens, Calfs foot jelly and more. It’s also got some background history on Nova Scotia and the variety of foods brought with people to there. It also has a section on home remedies for different things like coughs and such but it would be hard to make since some of it tells you how much to use by how much it cost… It’s an interesting cookbook though. And the absolutely best recipe in it would have to be “Cape Breton Pork Pies” They are a dessert and very very yummy.

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Oh, a thread about books that I can eagerly contribute to!

First of all, another vote for The Joy of Cooking. This was my first “real” cookbook, and to this day, is the book I head for first when I need a basic recipe. Even after a year of culinary school, I still learn things from it (and use it as a reference for homework).

The Best Recipe by the editors of Cook’s Illustrated Magazine is a book that I always recommend to beginning cooks. All of their recipes have been well-tested to be nearly fool-proof and to give the best final product. All of the recipes come with little explanations of how they came to find the best recipe, and the food science behind why this is the best recipe. My only complaint is that most of the recipes are just plain-ole-American fare, and doesn’t try branching too far into other ethnic cuisines.

For the more advanced:

My Mexico by Diana Kennedy. Real Mexican food. 'nuff said.

The Cake Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum and
The Professional Pastry Chef by Bo Friberg
Both of these books together will nearly give you the experience of my Baking II class in culinary school–cakes, frostings, plated desserts, marzipan, fondants, candy-making, coulis & sauces, and sugar-pulling–without the chef smacking your hand with a wooden spoon when you don’t do it right.

La Technique by Jacques Pepin. Now out of print, this is an essential book to have to learn many classic French techniques in cooking. It is well-illustrated with thousands of pictures showing from how to make a tomato rose to preparing a lobster to making sausage.

Culinary Artistry by Andrew Dornenburg and Karen Page. A cookbook with very few recipes–this is more a reference guide for the cook who is comfortable making dishes without recipes. This book has listings of foods and the foods that go best with them. For example: I pick up a bunch of salmon that was on sale at the market, but I haven’t a clue as to what to make with it. So, I look up Salmon in the book, and it gives a list of different foodstuffs that go best with salmon, such as corn, tomato, watercress, garlic, ginger, shallots, citrus, coriander, leeks, snow peas, and olives. From there, I could consider making… Ginger-Citrus Marinated Salmon with Corn Relish on a bed of caramelized leeks.

For reference:
Larousse Gastronminique and The Oxford Companion to Food. Both are thick, expensive encyclopedias, with Larousse focusing on French, and Oxford focusing on mostly Western European/British/(some)American. I have found both to be indispensible during my time in school.

15

Bravo Avumede, if there is one book about cooking that everyone who cooks should read, it is this one. You will never look at a fried egg the same after reading this book.

Another book in the above vein is “The History of Food” by Reahy Tannehill (sp?). This covers a somewhat, but not entirely, Eurocentric history of what we eat and why. From such sordid details as what was actually in the Roman “Liquamin” sauce (you don’t want to know, makes fish sauce seem civilized) to how humans used to urinate in one spot to make mineral “licks” for reindeer herds. Her other two books were on the history of sex (excellent) and another on cannibalism (which, between all three books, about covers all that there is to eat). This is one that ranks with “On Food and Cooking”.

For the raw beginner, nothing beats “The Joy of Cooking” it even includes how to skin a squirrel. Some of my favorites are:

“The Boston Cooking School Cookbook” by F.M. Farmer

“The Everyday American Cookbook” by Agnes Murphy

Now that I think about it, I really should stop here. You are all very lucky that I am reorganizing my library of one thousand cookbooks. Elsewise this list might have gone on for pages.

My rule of thumb for collecting cookbooks is that they should not mention microwave ovens. Older cookbooks have “scratch” recipes. No, “add a can of this, add a can of that”, sort of garbage. Like so many cooks, I rarely use my cookbooks and just cook whatever I find at the store however I like.

So, time for one last merciless plug (see it coming?). Since everyone who responds to this thread loves to cook;
"Alla youse get yer butts over to my recipe thread and contribute some (more) recipes!"

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I use the following cookbooks. This probably disqualifies them from being the best.

Joy of Cooking by Rombauer/Becker.
The Best of Jewish Coking by Frucht/Rothschild/Katz
Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Child
Geat Deserts from the Great Dessert Chefs by Khalsa
How to Make Good Curries by Helen Lawson
Spanish Cooking by Pepita Aris
The Art of Meican Cooking by Kennedy
The Oriental Cooking Class Cookbook
The Moosehead Books (I occasionally add meat)
Mable Hoffman’s Crockery Cookbook

Anyone know a good Japanese sushi cookbook?

17

Beat This by Ann Hodgman is really good (her basic rule - double the chocolate or add bacon.)

My favourite all-round cookbook, though, is Whole Foods for the Whole Family published by La Leche League. Easy recipes, tasty, and designed for new mothers, so there’s a lot of juggling ingredients to make do with what you have. Lots of “If you don’t have white wine, use apple juice. If you don’t have apple juice, use white grape juice. Or you can omit the baking soda and use orange or pineapple juice. It works fine with water, too - just add a pinch of sugar” stuff.

I concur on the Moosewood books and The Joy of Cooking.

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Oh yeah! Cook’s Illustrated magazine is the BEST! The editor, Chris Kimball, is also responsible for two fine cookbooks, THE COOK’S BIBLE and THE YELLOW FARMHOUSE COOKBOOK.

Is anyone else familiar with Edouard de Pomiane’s FRENCH COOKING IN TEN MINUTES, OR, ADAPTING TO THE RHYTHMS OF MODERN LIFE (1930)? That’s another little volume that makes a great gift for a just-starting-out cook…sample advice: “As soon as you go into the kitchen, set a pot of water on to boil. Don’t worry, it will be used for something, if only for the coffee following your meal.” Great spot illustrations, too.

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Ike, how could you possibly forget Moosewood Restaurant Book of Desserts? That’s my Moosewood Trinity right there!

My favourite, least used, cookbook is A Guide to Good Cooking produced by Five Roses Flour, published in 1938. It’s fascinating to see how cooking and eating have changed so much. It was difficult to make party-type food during the depression, but somehow, people managed.

I mostly use cookbooks as inspiration, unless I’m baking.

20

The Betty Crocker book is the most dependable for American food. (Mexican and Tex-Mex don’t need recipes.)
If you don’t know what the “traditional” ingrediens are, you can be led far off by a fancy cookbook and no one will recognize what you made.