Cook Books Worth Owning
 

I've a great fondness for cookbooks. I love the good ones and adore the great ones. Cookbooks are maps and guides, histories, tools of divination...you name it. They are US.
One of my favorites is WHITE TRASH COOKING by Ernest Miklar. I picked it up in Nawlins a few years ago. What it has to recommend is mayonnaise and gravy-heavy, but totally worth it.

I love the Ultimate Southern Living Cookbook. Great food, most very easy to make. I think it's better than The Joy of Cooking.

The only cookbook I've ever used for more than a few minutes of flipping-through-oh-heh-that's-sort-of-interesting has been The Joy of Cooking; it serves, in my mind, as a reference book for all things culinary.

I suspect that my fondness for it has to do with my somewhat relaxed approach to cooking. I'd rather my cookbook give me broad outlines than strict recipes, because I don't like to follow them.

:lol: I told Tonchi in a pm that I've never seen a recipe thar I couldn't change. For better or worst.
1 book that I've held on to over the years is. "The American womans cook book." Maybe because I paid too much for it in Singapore. For something to read on plane and while waiting on same. Computers have about done away with cook books. In my favorite folder for food I have about 76 bookmarks and I have a recipe file on another drive that has 97 files in it. I have no recipe boxies on web sites because I refuse to give the required info. But I like to think I can cook. I live by my self and cook and eat what I want to. Maybe not healthy. Some of my food HERE

My gf owns a kabillion cook books...her mom and I got her two from Rachael Ray for Xmas. She's used a couple of the recipes so far, and they turned out great.

Bernard Clayton's The Complete Book of Soups and Stews, Simon & Schuster, ISBN 0-671-43863-8. Excellent pea soup, and if that's any example...

Geraldine Duncann's Some Like It Hotter, 101 Productions, ISBN 0-89286-245-9. The Bobotie recipe, p. 64, is getting very smudged.

D. Dewitt & N. Gerlach's The Whole Chile Pepper Book, Little, Brown; ISBN 0-316-18223-0. Now I make my own chili powder and curry powder -- the curry powder is impressive.

Anne McCaffrey's Serve It Forth: cooking with Anne McCaffrey, Warner Books, Inc.; ISBN 0-446-67161-4. Wonderful weirdness, at least three recipes for sherbet or ice cream made with strategic use of liquid nitrogen. Page 120 is an attention-getter. It's all about how, and why, to fix armadillo. Free-range, of course.

UG, do either of books #2 and 3 on your list have any good salsa recipes?

I swear by the Betty Crocker Cookbook. It may not be fancy, but the recipes almost always work.

The Good Food Book by Jane Brody also has some very good recipes.

I believe I've posted before, I'm sure I'm deficient in some way, but I don't believe I've ever made something from the Joy of Cooking and had it turn out good.

I love cookbooks too, but I never seem to follow the recipes much like BusterB. I use the recipes like guidelines. The problem is that I have come up with some really great results, but I couldn't tell you exactly how I got there.

Steve - I make a really good fresh salsa, but I couldn't give you the exact recipe. Would a kinda/ sorta/ to taste type of recipe work for you?

My favorite is a standard pico de gallo kind of thing--tomatoes, onions, peppers, etc. etc. But I've also experimented with some habanero recipes.

I also have Serve It Forth. The Banana Bread recipe is indeed the best in the world.

Oh, and you can just dump ALL of the ingredients into a bowl and whoosh it. Don't worry about the whole combine wet, combine dry thing. Whoosh.

I have to put in a big vote for Joy of Cooking. It's rare that you can just sit and read a cookbook ... the "About" sections are at least as useful as the recipes themselves.

Some of my best recipes are out of those plastic-spine bound community cookbooks ... usually put together by church groups as fundraisers. Darn tasty stuff there.

I dug up some good salsa recipies a while back. But they are not easy. Mainly tomatillos, dried chipotle peppers, roasted and skinned bell peppers and some other stuff - it takes about four hours to make. But day-um it was gooooood.

2nd for The Joy of Cooking. Everything you need to know and most everything you want to know. It even tells you what to substitute.
Learn this book and you can decide what flavor, texture and color you want to end up with, the create a recipe to get it. :thumbsup:

question: Does anyone here own the original Joy of Cooking? The '50's version? I need that one!

Try amazon used, ebay, and half.com

danke schon!

(just imagine the "dotdot" over the 'o')

You can get around the dot-dot issue by spelling is Schoen.

Means the same, sounds the same ...

I miss the EssTzet, though. I was devestated to hear the Germans dropped it.

wolf--you're as German as a wiener schnitzel wearing a lederhosen! And that is something I'd pay to see!!

My rendition of Deutschland Über Alles would put a tear in your eye.

What's better about the old one? Is it a specific recipe you're looking for?

Yes! The momster has it. It's now the color of the floor and held together with a rubber band, however :)

Definitely check Ebay. But I've most often found out-of-print issues by searching on Amazon.com. They will put you in touch with book dealers who often have the original editions. That was how I found the recipe book for my retro Sunbeam mixmaster.

No, I just long for simpler times. And somebody here in the cellar said the new edition sucks. Too much reliance on convenience foods.

We've got the '78 edition here, it is full of lardy goodness (well shortening anyway) so you don't need a first edition just avoid the recent printings. I was raised in a home with an ancient copy and lard in the fridge, look how well adjusted I am!

I know what you mean. We have all the old issues of the Pilsbury Bakeoff winners that they used to publish but have not bought any more of them for more than a decade. All they have is recipes with packaged pre-processed ingredients and quick-n-easy stuff meant to feed without involving yourself much in the process :yelsick:

I have and use an older Joy, but I also understand the need for make-it-quick recipes. There are many nights where the leftovers are all gone and there's no time for elaborate cooking. Then the throw-three-things-together-and-call-it-a-meal recipes come in handy.

Oh, I totally agree. But to win money in a baking contest that used to rate national attention?

My cousin has a masters in Home Economics. The whole emphasis is on quick and easy for them, you know. She teaches at the prisons in the LA area, trying to help some of those women who have children and not much else to learn how they can make home and food in general more interesting and effective. Unfortunately, when she gets excited about a recipe and passes it to the momster and me there is never anything that catches our interest. The momster was widowed early in life and I could not have children, so I guess we have never had the pressures that most of you guys go through to get food cooked and on the table every night. So little pressure, in fact, that I would just as soon eat out of a can as cook something more complex if there is anything else I want to do. Cooking a fine meal is an art form to me, but I increasingly feel less interest in being the artist because there is nobody to appreciate the work.

I've just found the 1967 Joy of Cooking on eBay and bought it for £0.99 ($1.76)! Okay, it's going to cost £5.00 ($8.91) postage, but after the recommendation on here I thought it was worth getting a copy.

Now I'll just have to keep asking for translations every time I want to make something...!

The Way To Cook -- Julia Child (my kitchen Goddess)

I am trying to rebuild my collection of cookbooks that I lost in our house fire in '03. I love buying books, but I hate re-buying them!
I haven't gotten around to replacing the classics yet, but I will get there eventually.

Oo, Wolfie! :love:

Time to go shopping for spotty bananas... I wonder if using cooked plantain makes a perceptible difference?

Steve, I'll have a look for what you asked for -- but ya know, PDG is about my favorite of the salsas itself, tastes fresh and un-messed-with and just bursting with a full complement of vitamins. A fine way to get me to eat my veggies, perhaps because the stuff is really very like a salad. You can dial the heat up or down just as you like, and all that user-friendly stuff.


Some Like It Hotter is notable for lengthy ingredient lists, though too you can also omit some bits if you don't happen to have them handy. Likely I'll find more the salsa kind of thing you're looking for in The Whole Chili Pepper Cookbook.

I think that plantain would be too fibrous to really work out right. As I recall, also the flavor is more subtle than banana, and the spices would overpower the banana-yness of it all.

Now, if you had a strong desire to use plantain for something, I had some beef and plantain casserole stuff some years back ... I think the origin of the recipe was either Cuban or Dominican.

So you reckon plantain would end up behaving more like a squash, texture wise... hmm. And I've done a little Caribbean fried plantain this and that, and I'd always thought the plantain a little more strongly flavored, unless it was the frying that lent it the flavor.

Freely associating: Squash --> Pumpkin --> Pumpkin Pie... this should be good:

Gingersnap Pie Shell
1 1/2 cups fine gingersnap crumbs
1/2 cup butter, melted
1/3 cup sugar

Pulverize ginger snaps. Blend w/butter and sugar. Press into buttered pie tin. Chill several hours. Makes 8-9 inch pie shell.

I don't know if you might set this crust by baking briefly like a graham cracker crust.

ooooooooh.

:drool:

I can very easily envision a cheesecake in such a crust.

Oh yes.

If I had to pick one first for salsas, Steve, I'd take
The Whole Chile Pepper Book. The index lists thirty-two sauces including salsas, cross-reffed with ten salsas proper. The book is organized by regional cuisines, with dishes and sauces together. If the salsas are anywhere near as much fun as their curry powder and chili powder recipes, you should be very happy.

cook books are only for giving you new ideas, a direction or to answer questions about certian ethnic seasoning trends/tendancies (beyond that... the 4th edition of proffesional cooking is all you will ever need)

The original Fanny Farmer Cookbook (written by Fanny Farmer Merritt, circa 1918)
Has everything you ever wanted to know plus some amazing recipes that still turn out perfect today.

I ordered The Whole Chile Pepper book from ABE. I'll report back . . .

yeah.. fanny farmer is a damn good one especially if you ever need to know how to cook on a wood fired cast iron stove, interesting in a historical sense, but yeah.. the recpies are solid and simple.

Good thread Brianna. I have a monster collection of cook books because I collect them. But y'know I always go back to my tried and true "Joy Of Cooking." Mine is circa '70's whatever. My very first cookbook. The Anne Lindsay cookbooks are pretty good and healthy...but I've stopped buying books (unless they're second hand...gets pretty expensive) and I get most of my recipes from the internet now. You can find everything out there!

I ordered 1 on friday from abe, will also report.

Beard on Bread is another one of my staples. *chuckle*

I use this one all the time. Definitely in my top three, maybe the best general purpose cookbook in the kitchen. I have several smaller specialty cookbooks that surpass it in that specialty.

Hey Big V - absolutely right - it has all the basics you could ask for!
I also use the Joy of Cooking and the Better Homes and Gardens basic...

any one into cooking Mediterranean foods?

MrsV has a couple of Greek cookbooks she consults once a week or so. DE-lish! :yum:

If Mrs. V is of a mind, I could use the titles....

The Complete Book of Greek Cooking
by Rena Salaman and Jan Cutler, published by Hermes House. $5 at Waldenbooks. She says this one is the best. I don't read 'em I just eat 'em.

Thanks V and thanks to the Missus!

Steve. There be something heere to your liking. http://www.panix.com/~clay/cookbook/...ents.cgi?salsa

The Enchanted Broccoli Forest by Mollie Katzen. I'm not a vegetarian, but she's got some really interesting and delicious veggie dishes. And I like her drawings.