Just got The Essential New York Times cookbook and The Sunset Cookbook, the latter being a big but well-edited collection of recipes from Sunset Magazine over the years. Both are great reading. And I've already made two things from the Sunset book and they've been terrific.

Otherwise, current fave is Stir Frying to the Sky's Edge by Grace Young. Due to that book alone, my partner and I have been on a stirfrying jag as of late. We also just got her Breath of a Wok. These books have allowed us to produce dishes better than we have at most Chinese restaurants.

Otherwise, the standards--

New Basics
Silver Palate
Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything, How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, and How to Cook Everything in the World
Gourmet -- the new green one

And one other that I rely on alot -- Flavor Bible. Not a cookbook per se, but an alphabetical list of flavors and ingredients that tell you what complements what. An indispensible font of ideas for those times when you want to make something but don't want to follow a recipe.

Bill/SFNM wrote:Yes. My rule is that I can't add a new book to the library unless I give another book away.

Glad my significant other doesn't know about that rule!!

After some complaints that I "have more cookbooks than [I] could ever use", we started a new exercise. We each picked two recipes out of cookbooks that we haven't used recently/much/"ever" to make this week.
This week we made the pork should goulash with peppers out of Jamie at Home (Jamie Oliver), shrimp, peapod, mushroom and lemongrass stir-fry out of Practical Thai Cooking (I have a lot of Thai cookbooks--for some reason, I haven't used this one much), Patra ni machi=fish covered in a coconut/cilantro/mint chutney steamed in a banana leaf with Easy Pulao from My Bombay Cookbook (a Parsi cookbook by Niloufar King) and Thursday we're making a recipe from the Charlie Trotter cooks at home (probably Cornish hens if I have time to track some down). So far, not a clunker of the bunch. I think I'm going to have to continue this for a few weeks--it's kind of fun and motivating me not to get into a rut/obsessed with one cookbook (though I may have Zuni/Land of Plenty withdrawal)

While living up here in Minneapolis, I've started reading several local food blogs (but still find myself here on a regular basis). I thought I would share an entry from a pretty good blog - The Heavy Table - about the new cookbook, "One Big Table: 600 Recipes from the Nation’s Best Home Cooks, Farmers, Fisherman, Pit-Masters, and Chefs," written by former New York Times food columnist Molly O’Neill.

In the article, the author is clearly frustrated about East/West Coast bias towards Midwestern food. Specifically, the books' skimming over the importance of Wisconsin as a cheese powerhouse. The blog author claims that Molly O'Neill not only skimmed over the historical facts about cheese making in WI, but flat our got them wrong.

The blog entry includes Molly O'Neill's email defense and the blog author's rebuttals. It was a quick, entertaining read. Here's the entry.

Over the past year or so, I've really been interested in Asian and Asian fusion cooking.

Land of Plenty: Fuscia Dunlop's Sichuan cookbook.
Momofuku: a great cookbook and a great read!
Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art by Shizuo Tsuji This is a comprehensive look at Japanese cooking. Impressive and pretty accessible.

I have too many cookbooks I do not use. I have the classics-which I reference from time to time but I find myself dusting a lot of books that take up precious space. I have obtained books at garage and library sales, second hand books stores, foreign countries and dead relatives that seemed like a good idea at the time. (Why did I buy that self published Eskimo cookbook by a local ladies club in Alaska?) But as I try to find something to make I can't find what I want and tend to take ingredients, measurements, etc. from a few books to make it my own-and fit what I have/have not in the pantry. It took at least 5 cookbooks (and a few Hail Mary's) to come up with my saurbraten, stroganoff and crepe batter. There is an art to looking at a good recipe and cookbook and figuring out if it will work. I have clipped hundreds of recipes from magazines, newpapers, internet and from friends and put them in my own spiral books for future use -which I never seem to do. Infact upon review of the earlier editions I can not figure out why I even bothered in the first place as the recipes do not look good anymore. Perhaps my tastes have changed. I will sit down and go through some of my books-cover to cover looking for something to make and have drawn up blank on many and have tabbed pages on a few. But I can not get rid of these books. I think that cooking two recipes from an existing book before buying a new book is a great idea as posted above. I do not buy books for me but buy books as gifts. If I need a recipe or technical advice I will go on LTH or other forums.

When I was down in Mobile Alabama a year ago at an open market the local womens club was selling an interesting cookbook that many into creole cooking might appreciate.The recipe book is billed as the first African-American cookbook,dictated by Mrs Amy Fisher in 1881.
The title is "What Mrs.Fisher knows about Southern cooking." The reason it was dictated is that Neither Mrs.Fisher or her husband could read or write and adds to the interest of the book.All recipes from memory.
She cooked for 35 years in Mobile and San Francisco for society people.If you have never seen a recipe for Terrapin stew,Creole soup or Jumble cake you may find this as an interesting read.
The book was published by Applewood books,PO Box 365,Bedford Ma 01730.( www.awb.com ).Softbound cover, 94 pages.

HI,

Actually the first known-to-date "free woman of color" cookbook dates from 1866.

To see an image:

First African-American Cookbook 1866
Mrs. Malinda Russell
Paw Paw, Michigan, 1866

Only Copy Know of First African-American Cookbook

Malinda Russell was born in Tennessee a free woman of color. On her way to Liberia at age 19, she was robbed in Virginia by a member of her party. She immediately began to work as a cook, companion and laundress. She married had a son and was widowed after four years; using her maiden name for the rest of her life.

After her husband died, she returned to Tennessee and kept a boarding house on Chuckey Mountain for 3 years, than a pastry shop for 6 years and "by hard labor and economy, saved a considerable sum of money for the support of my self and my son."

Then in 1864, for the second time in her life, her money was stolen by a guerrilla party who threatened her life is she revealed who they were. "Under those circumstances, we were obliged to leave home, following a flag of truce out of the Southern borders."

Hearing that Michigan was the Garden of the West, she moved to Paw Paw. Forced to leave the South because of her Union principles, she wrote this book "hoping to receive enough...to enable me to return home."

It is quite astonishing this fragile and unique copy of "A Domestic Cook Book" has survived. For years, my husband Dan and I tried to discover more about her, spending our 48th wedding anniversary in the South, trying to uncover further details.

Her story is an African-American story; it is an American story. She has overcome.
The Janice Bluestein Longone Culinary Archive, Clements Library

Somewhere in my house is a color facsimile of this book.

Regards,

Not really a cookbook (no recipes per se) but the most innovative book on food pairings I've ever seen is "The Flavor Bible" by Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg. If you've got basic skills and seek to expand your knowledge, this is most intuitive. Could not live w/o it. I've given or suggested it to many and a must for any serious cook.

Looking at my books to see the most tattered it would be Pei Mei's Chinese Cookbook Vol 1. Received as a gift from a piano playing China scholar in the late 70's after an amazing meal @ his home while supposedly rehearsing. It opened the way to me attempting to cook. Color photographs of each dish inspired me to try to cook some pretty (for the time) outrageous food.

Also in the same dept de tattered would be the Joy of Cooking. Both are seminal tomes in my early cooking development.

[quote="mrbarolo"]The first Silver Palate has to come first. It's where I started during or just post-college. It was so user friendly, from layout to instructions to sidebars to suggested menus, to reference tables---for someone just starting.
quote]

Funny - as I started reading this thread, my shelves of cookbooks flashed in my mind trying to think about which is my favorite... all I knew is I would have to mention this exact book because:

1. It's a good cookbook
2. Sentiment - My mom gave me her well-loved, "ancient" copy when I first moved out on my own. It still has a special place.

Silver Palate and the Beard on Bread/Beard on Pasta box set I finally wrestled away from my mum hold a special place on the shelf. (The beard on bread book binding still automatically opens to my favorite food covered recipe I cooked over and over as a kid.)

Hi- I just saw this cookbook on Amazon, and it looks really interesting.. It is called Fifty Grades of Chicken. Has anybody seen it? It got great reviews. Here is the link.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/038534 ... prachel-20

Hope this helps, Nancy

Mostly now I do not use or buy cookbooks. I get most recipes off the internet now or I have them in my collection of saved recipes. I look at food blogs such as Dorie Greenspan, or a similar blog too. I have an old Joy of Cooking that I would use from time to time as a reference piece. I have enjoyed Maida Heatters books on desserts and baking, I also like Bernard Claytons books on bread, I like Beard on Bread and I also love the old vintage Time Life Foods of the World of which I have many. I do not really use them for cooking things but love to read them they had some really good food writers that are now deceased and are really interesting.

There are only 3 cookbooks I remotely mess with.
1) The Joy of Cooking - great for a quick reference for temps, generic cooking principles, and easy to use basic recipes.
2) The River Cottage Meat Book - my favorite book about meat, from butchering it to cooking it, to eating healthy (non-roided up) meat. http://www.amazon.com/The-River-Cottage ... 580088430/
3) Charcuterie - Ruhlman classic with good recipes and techiniques to help you understand the idea of making charcuterie.

The rest is looking at a variety of ingredients, and then thinking what I want to make, and searching up some recipes on Bon Appetit, Food Network, and Epicurious websites to compare what others have done and make my own recipe from there.

Hi- My two favorite cooks, and the two that I cook out of all the time are Jane Brody's Good Food Book and Good Food Gourmet. I like the fact that all the recipes are healthy, but they allow you to have butter and sugar and other forbidden items in moderation. There is a basic salad dressing in Good Food Gourmet that I fix all the time, and it takes me five minutes to throw it together. You can frequently find both books at used book sales. I just bought another copy of Good Food Gourmet, for $1 last year at the Evanston library book sale. Hope this helps, Nancy

Here is a really old one but good.

The Cuisine of Hungary. Very interesting book I have had it for years.


http://unjustlyunread.tumblr.com/post/1 ... of-hungary

I also have this book which I enjoy.

http://www.amazon.com/Kaffeehaus-Exquis ... 0609604538

I posted in this thread a couple years ago. At that point Julia Child's "The Way To Cook" and Steven Raichlen's books were the only cookbooks I felt were essential to me. In the last couple years I've added Malmann's "Seven Fires" to that list. It's a great technique book, but the recipes in it are things I never would have come up with on my own. Things like: burnt oranges with rosemary, caramelized endive, and braided beef with anchovies and olives. A really great book!

This is such a great thread that it deserves to be revived just for its contents so far. But I thought of it when I came across this fond discussion of the Settlement Cookbook--"The Way to a Man's Heart." Like the author, I have an old edition that was my grandmother's (the one with the toque- and apron-wearing women on the cover) that I like to read for many of the reasons she gives. I also have a facsimile of the first edition. Apparently, there have been 40 editions.

Originally published in 1901, The Settlement Cookbook became a beacon of sorts to Jewish home cooks and their less culinarily inclined offspring. Authored by a social service worker in Milwaukee named Lizzie Black Kander, The Settlement Cookbook has become a benchmark of Jewish cooking in America, and remained relevant over a century after its publication. . . .
That first printing was intended for the women at the Settlement House, as a study guide and reading primer. The language was clear and direct, the tone that of a stern but loving aunt, the underlying message that if you can master the domestic arts, you’ll have a happy husband, and if you have a happy husband, he’ll provide for you.

Hi- I was not sure where to put it but there are a lot of fans of Joy for Cooking. Currently Amazon has the kindle version of the latest edition which came out last year for $2.99. Hope this helps, Nancy