The standard Joy and Silver Palette are the mainstays (the latter not nearly as much), but I still own more vegetarian cookbooks than anything else; Sundays at Moosewood Restaurant gets used most often among 5 or 6 Moosewood books. I also like Madhur Jaffrey’s World of the East, the Julie Sahni Indian one, and Laurel’s Kitchen if there are hippies to feed. There’s also one of Steve Raichlin’s barbecue books, a Bobby Flay (I think), Border Cooking (yum), a bunch I never use, and Kenny Shopsin’s delightful Eat Me, the only cookbook in the world with the word “fuck” in it.
I learned to cook as a vegetarian and have probably been over-relying on Das Joy for meaty things – how’s How to Cook Everything?
Does it discredit me as a foodie if I admit I have about five Rachel Ray cookbooks?
In my defense, I didn’t purchase any of them for myself… but, I didn’t return any of them, either. And I’ve made things out of almost all of them. Say what you will about her as a TV personality, but her recipes are very cookable, middlebrow-aspiring-higher weeknight fare.
Nah. No problem. I think we have at least three of her books on the shelf. You are right…for Wednesday night dinner-type stuff, her recipes are quite doable and tasty.
I agree. The facsimile of the original one is interesting, but I don’t think it would be very easy to cook from. My wife has noted it uses a lot of lard. We’ve used various FFs for over 30 years, so it is more a reference source than a source of new recipes.
It is interesting to compare old cookbooks with new ones. When we first got married we used a Betty Crocker cooking for 2 cookbook. Lots of use of canned soups and no red peppers in sight. The more recent Weight Watchers books hardly have a recipe in which peppers aren’t used for color.
Thanks for the article, silenus. That was a really informative read. The comparison of good vs. easy struck very true to me. I got Ad Hoc at Home last Christmas and I’ve been meaning to make lots of the recipes in them, but I keep finding that I’m out of time or I lack one or two ingredients. The one recipe that I have made multiple times was the chocolate chip cookies and that was the absolute best chocolate chip cookie I’ve ever had. The recipe is anal retentive - I think it tells you to have 1cup and 1tsp of something - but what comes out is perfection. In contrast, Pioneer Woman is a fun read and I keep meaning to make her recipes since they seem so easy. But good gracious, that woman loves butter.
My recipe books include the ubiquitous Joy of Cooking, Alice Water’s Art of Simple Food, Wei Chuang’s Taiwanese cookbook, some generic Spanish cookbook, and Ad Hoc.
The Minimalist Cooks Dinner – Mark Bittman
Hors D’Ouvres Handbook – Martha Stewart (say what you will, this book is amazing)
New York Cookbook – Molly O’Neil
I have both “Joy of Cooking” (ETA: 1972 reprint) and “How to Cook Everything”
These are books I use fairly frequently. I own an awful lot of cookbooks, many of which I only use occasionally. My most surprising cookbook is a celebrity Italian cookbook by Sophia Loren. (Sophia Loren Recipes and Memories). It’s actually amazing for simple, rustic Italian food.
I have several Moosewood books as well, they are some of my rare non-food porn* books. Most of my other books are bought on visual appeal. I buy a lot of marked down cookbooks just for the pictures.
*Food porn is pretty pictures of food, get your minds out of the gutter.
A fun cookbook to have, if you can find a used copy, is Cecil Dyer’s Best Recipes from the backs of Boxes, Bottles, Cans and Jars. It’s full of all sorts of things your parents made. I’ll usually take one of the recipes and tweak it to taste by beefing up the spices and such, but over all, it’s a nice slice of Americana.
Both. Much like the Joy of Cooking, it contains information on ingredients and instruction on basic technique, as well as recipes that apply that theory and technique and those ingredients. So it’s both a handy reference and a cookbook.
YES! I have this, there are a LOT of classic easy middle-class recipes in there, and a lot of them are pretty darned good. I make Crescent Caramel Swirl (a souped-up monkey bread from the Pillsbury bakeoff of 1976) in the deep dark depths of January. I really shouldn’t, but I need to keep up my energy when I have to go out and shovel the driveway twice a day.
My mom had this one growing up! The one that I remember is souped up rice (minute rice with canned mushroom or cheese soup). Not high toned food, but things a lot of ate for supper when we were kids.
Heh, I’ve got a few with it in, most recently Momofuko. Every third word in there is ‘fuck.’ Chefs nowadays have potty mouths.
FYI, if anyone’s got an iPhone, they just came out with a “How to Cook Everything” iPhone app. I think it’s the whole book, with a nice interface. At $1.99, it’s a steal.
You guys are seriously pissing me off. My kitchen is still not finished so I can’t cook and my house is a mess.
Anyway, on my cookbook shelf:
A bunch of cheap “foreign cooking” books: Greek, Thai, Chinese, Spanish, Italian. The only one I used much is the Thai one, mostly to get the hang of curries. Right now, I usually just make them up on the spot.
Decent cookbooks: a nice smallish cookbook on Italian that I actually use (contains all the basics; meat, stews, pizza, pastas - including fresh pasta - and salads), a vegetable cookbook - useful when I take something new and strange home from the market, the “Margriet” cookbook - used to be pretty much the standard cookbook for the Dutch housewife; I’ve got the 1960ish version that still has recipes for head cheese and cow tongue.
“Inspiration/porn” cookbooks; “the elements of taste” - nicely pretentious, “the ultimate fish and shellfish cookbook” - OK if you’ve got weird fish, “European Peasant Cookery” - very interesting but lots of the recipes are very terse and don’t appear to have been proof-read; could easily have been my favorite if it was constructed a bit better, “van soeter cokene” - mediaeval recipes of astounding size and with amazing combinations of flavors.
And some other stuff. I might get rid of some.
To everyone using the silver spoon; is it worth getting? Do you use it much, and for what?
I love my cookbooks, and many are on the “practically unuseable” side of quirky, but I love them for that very reason: Practically anything published before the 1940s is interesting to read, but my oven doesn’t have a setting for “moderate” or “hot,” for example. To me, cookbooks are for reading and for gaining inspiration, not necessarily for recipes. I recently edited my collection, and kept “only” about 300 books.*
As for the books I actually use - The Joy of Cooking, A Gracious Plenty, How to Cook Everything, and a couple of Junior League/Church Lady cookbooks for specific recipes - I owe my pecan pie and pecan tassie recipes to a bunch of Junior Leaguers in metro Atlanta! I bought The Joy of Cooking when I was first married, in 1989, because I wanted to expand my repertoire of basic Southern/country cooking. This was the ONLY cookbook on my grandmother’s shelf, so I figured it must be good. It’s still the one book I’d recommend for someone looking to learn about ingredients, recipes (how and why they work,) and techniques.
*Yeah, did the same with my shoe collection. My husband simply doesn’t understand that “only” 75 pairs of shoes and 300 cookbooks isn’t really all that excessive. Men!
I’ve got probably 100-150 cookbooks I’ve acquired over the years, so I have a “don’t use often” shelf above all our kitchen cabinets with about 75 books and a “frequent-use” shelf with about 25-50 under the glasses.
My most frequently-used cookbooks from the frequent-use shelf are:
Dakshin - south Indian cooking
A couple of Rachel Ray books (I think Rachel Ray’s Favorites or something with a similar name and her Big Orange Book)
Joy of Cooking, 90’s edition
Fall Baking and Breads and Soups by Betty Crocker (they’re the booklets you get at the store; the former has an awesome maple nut scone recipe).
New Indian Home Cooking - lower-fat north Indian cooking
Indian Home Cooking - unadulterated Indian cooking (i.e., not low fat)
Thai Kitchen
A couple of Cook’s Illustrated “Best” books
Viva Tradiciones - a really good cookbook I got for my wedding shower; has some great Tex Mex in it
This thread reminds me that I need to break open the traditional Mexican cookbook I got when I was pregnant, but still haven’t used. I might try to make some mole or adobo myself. I also want to use my Bon Apetit Fresh & Fast - it’s this huge compendia of various recipes from Bon Apetit magazine. Another great book that I should use more frequently is Cooking Light. I think I have the 2006 “Best of” edition, but any of those books are good.
and in one, dozens of cookbooks, mostly one’s mentioned here. In the kitchen of my summer house, one cookbook-America’s Test Kitchen Family Cookbook, the best all round go to cookbook. Either use the recipes, or use them as a base.
