maggiethecat

I don’t need any more cookbooks! I’m not going to buy one more cookbook, unless, of course, something really special comes out. I can look up any cuisine, any culinary nook and cranny in the hundreds of cookbooks that stretch to the ceiling in my kitchen bookcases, and the boxes in the garage. Sephardic, check. Polish, check. Escoffier, check. Mennonite, check. Vietnamese, Lithuanian, scones, muffins, cupcakes, Fanny Farmer 1922 – check. (Why is an American first edition of “The Man with the Golden Gun” nestling between “The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook” and “The Nero Wolfe Cookbook?”?) I’ve set on a course that’s like saying: “We don’t buy one damn thing to eat unless the freezer’s empty.” It’s time to check out all those spines in the bookcases and see what I’ve neglected or missed out on since my French friend Ida presented me with Francoise Bernard’s “Cuisine Facile” at my bridal shower. I have a beauty: “Mrs. Rowe’s Restaurant Cookbook” by Mollie Cox Bryan (10 Speed 2006.) It’s a biography, with recipes (and a forward by the Sterns) of Mildred Rowe and her eponymous restaurant in Staunton, Virginia. The subtitle is “A Lifetime of Recipes from the Shenandoah Valley.” I wonder how many of you feel a psychic shift when you read a cookbook? With the great ones (Elizabeth David, Jane Grigson, Andrea Nguyen, Marcella Hazan, Jacques Pepin, Charles Ranhoffer – just for starters) I feel time and food transforming the Gastronomical Me. “Mrs. Rowe’s” does it for me. I’m Northern and urban. Mildred is Southern and country, but her recipe for Chicken Fried Steak morphed me. (Until last year I’d never tasted it, let alone cooked it.) I became a more generous, centered cook – how could I not, after making a batch of her (yeast based) Alabama Biscuits? The Cream of Potato and Bacon Soup, the Creamed Turkey on Biscuits, the Brown Sugar Pound Cake, her special Chow Chow, and her Southern Fried Chicken – the recipes work and they taste good. Really good -- third helpings good. There’s garlic salt, ketchup and Crisco aplenty -- it’s the best quality, least snobbish recipe book imaginable. I guess Mildred and I have something in common: “Salmon Cakes with White Sauce, “page 131. It’s made with canned salmon, dried parsley and “2 cups thick White Sauce.” My English grandmother made the same recipe, down to the dried parsley, and called it “White Sauce” not Béchamel. just as Mildred did. When my most exacting critic, the SuperTuscan – who hates white sauces – said “Let’s make this again next week, “I knew why Mrs. Rowe’s customers were regulars. (The gingham apron with rioting rickrack got me into character.) Full disclosure: I’ve acquired ten new cookbooks in the last month – I’m a shameless recidivist. But I’m gonna reform, I swear. Francoise Bernard rocks.

For rock solid instruction, classical technique and great recipes, how about Jacques Pepin's La Technique and/or La Methode ?

I'm chuffed to report that, according to today's New York Times that Chef Jeff's bio is not only up for a movie deal, but a TV show: read on.

PM me your address. Who knows what apronly frilliness might show up USPS? Signed, Apron Lady in LBD with a martini and aching bunions from wearing the heels. Anne, your job here is really important. I salute you.

I'm not a professional chef, so my opinions may be useless to you. I own 'Scoff, and like Ranhoffer's "Epicurean" it's a masterpiece of classical cookery. Have both of them on your reference shelves, but, trust me, even opening one of them is so intimidating that you'll wish you'd gone to hairdressing school. Why cook through one book? Why not flitter through , say, Kellar's "Bouchon", any of Rick Bayless's cookbooks (all brilliant and useful) Marcella Hazan's ouevre, and why not: Julia Child. As St. Anthony of Manhattan has written: "Her recipes work." Point, Ducasse -- sure. Go for it. I'm a crazy Francophile too, but you'll need a break.

Charles, you are Mr. Gregarious. Have fun with your family. And if you're ever in Chicago, we can ferry dishes together. Bonne chance.

Villanelle I humbly read each article you sent me How otherwise, because I know how hard It is bare the literary thee? It felt as if with sadness or with glee You’d shown us through the Inside Aisles with Mom Or shaken golden loquats from their tree. Tim Hayward, Steven Shaw and Rachel D Ivy and her pillows, Babbling Brooks Chris Amirault, Dave Scantland, Janet Z. A letter in my mailbox from Miss P. A neighborhood in Pittsburgh from Diane Those silly Smackdowns – Sunday evening glee! And many thanks to you, dear Peter G. To point out one missed tercet first time round Where would I be sans readers such as thee? A Villanelle’s too short to thank each writer Who wrote and dropped those adverbs and rewrote. My gratitude’s enormous, don’t you see? I felt as if each word was just for me. Write. Read. Discuss! edited: Oops. Emotion made me forget poetic structure. .

Perfect. You pitch in and help and don't bitch about the conditions except to your eGullet buddies. But I get jgm's frustration.

Deep breath. I feel you. A year ago I cooked through the last three months of my mother's life, in my parent's house. Three meals a day for five people, and I'd run lunch and dinner to the hospice before Mummy came home to die. (Don't mean to be depressing. Those were the circumstances.) Thank God she hung in there. My biggest adjustment was moving from gas to electric and I have the scars to prove it. I hadn't packed knives because I was on an "International" flight from Chicago to Ottawa, and the dealio was simply to get there before Mummy died. Thank God she hung in there, but I had to buy a knife. I had to remember the exact positions of her pots and pans, learn her (non-Cuiz) food processor, remember where the spatulas and wooden spoons were housed, even the cabinet drawer where she kept the foil and plastic wrap. It wasn't easy. Could you be more specific about "useless crap?" Coffeemaker? Mixmaster? Citrus juicer?

Speak up Girlfriend, I can't hear you! Gyoza wrappers work fine -- I think, in a pinch, I've used them for cannelloni. If you can find wrappers that contain eggs, it's very very close. (I won't tell Marcella.)

I don't know what kind of logic it has, but my cheapo rice cooker arrived yesterday. I'll take on the Brown Rice Project this week, and I hope to be converted from a Hater to a Lover. ← Well. . . did the new rice cooker convert you from a Hater to Lover? ← In fact it did! The cooker fixed the gluey/crunchy texture that I associate with brown rice. We'll be eating a lot more brown rice.

We fight the cooking for two conundrum every day, and have for the twelve years since the Girl went to college, never to eat here again on a regular basis. Here are a few things I've learned: 1)Leftovers must be quality and frozen immediately. A sorry dish of leftover pasta or Pad Thai, clingwrapped and shoved onto a refrigerator shelf gets tossed after three days. A bowl of minestrone in the fridge just sits there. A frozen minestrone two weeks later is worth a bravo! Meatballs, a bag of frozen shrimp you can dip into at will, a package of pulled pork -- these aren't leftovers. They're prepared high-quality food. 2)Portion size portion size portion size. Two peeps don't need that much food, and I should be arrested for what I've wasted and tossed. Plan ahead, an use economies of scale. 3) Buy better. So what if you can buy a family pack of good chuck when you know that four pounds of ground chuck, however utilized, will be 16 servings. Throw the five bucks for a couple of chuckeye steaks or a Cornish Game Hen. Buy three small servings of good protein a week, and cook from your well-stocked freezer the other nights. 4) Make stock. Freeze it. Last night I pulled a container from the frosty hinterlands of my freezer and made a vegetable/tortellini soup in about ten minutes. It tasted fresh. 5)Always have a good loaf of bread around, a couple of cans of tuna fish, and excellent cold cuts and cheese. Brown bagging a non-leftover lunch clears the palate for a dinner that comprises from- the- freezer stuff. 6)Egg cookery is your friend.

Lemme tell yopu, it's work Yes, and if one belonged to that 'tea' culture, one also remembers that it was a great honor to be chosen 'to pour.' Usually the most senior and revered member of the group was asked. ← Last year I had the honor of "pouring" and it made me feel positively ancient, although half the ladies in the room had twenty five years on me! But I was what my dear Mama would have called "Great High Visiting Lady" so the task fell to me. Let me tell you it's work! The tongs and the sugar cubes, lemon, milk? A warm coffee cake and a mug, kicking it with your girlfriends discussing "Butterfield 8" or Peg Bracken's latest was just fun. Note to self: Maybe I should write a piece about tea parties. So sublime, especially if there was a bottle of sherry on the tea tray.

Robert, I understand, and often on this topic people do tell about what lit their fires -- in fact many folks have started topics about what cookbooks lit them up. Check out the age of this topic: it was then, as now, just meant to be fun. Any worthier posts always appreciated And like you,and others here, I just like books. They do furnish a room.

The Great Coffee Cake years ran late fifties through mid-sixties, and most of the swans wore slacks and drank from -- gasp -- mugs! The lovely cup/plate combos, the linens, the dresses were the property of Afternoon Tea, usually with two tables of bridge set up in the living rooms, tea sandwiches and the unintelligible ( to me,) murmurs of "two spades" or "three no trump." Tea was dressy, coffee was casual. The food at either event should make a comeback.

157,789.

Great idea, Janet. On similar lines (if the spoons are heatproof, etc.) why not bite-sized shepherd's pies? They could be made ahead -- fill the spoons with the meat filling, covered with piped- out mashed potatoes , run under the broiler.

Thanks for the recommendation. This was just the thing for my sweet tooth. I clicked through to the original recipe and used all flour instead of part cornmeal. I also made small tarts to use up the assorted jams leftover in the fridge and the last of a jar of dulce de leche. Wow, was that one good. ← I love the idea of using up the odds and ends of jams and curds I have in the fridge in small tarts. Cool.

Oops, one came in the door from Half Price Books an hour ago. "Vietnamese Food and Cooking" by Ghillie Basan. 157,699.

And two more for me! David Tanis's "A Platter of Figs" and Jennifer McLagan's fab "Fat." 157,698. Keep counting and reporting, mes amis!

I don't know what kind of logic it has, but my cheapo rice cooker arrived yesterday. I'll take on the Brown Rice Project this week, and I hope to be converted from a Hater to a Lover.

Very. I want to order cases and cases and I don't own a restaurant. (OTOH: Major Paper Geek.)

Susan, I'm so honored that this coffee cake will be part of the Thanksgiving retreat for your set of Swans. Be still my beating heart! And, truly, Lois's recipe can be improved by any whim and any ingredient at hand. (I'd like to be the pan greaser!)

I ordered a cheapo Proctor Silex rice cooker from Amazon to research this further. I want to like brown rice.

I remember Julia Child defending meat-eating by saying something like: "One day we'll find out that plants have feelings too and then what will we eat?" Well, Saint Julia may have been right. This story is so cool. When plants are stressed by bad weather conditions, they form their own aspirin gas to protect themselves. Even cooler: They put out gas to warn other plants when a predator is around. "Plants are known to emit chemicals to signal one another when they are close together, for instance, when being chomped on by insects." I'm feeling guilty as I husk the corn. Sure, it's a Science story not a Food story, but it makes me respect my Swiss Chard all the more.