Search the Community

There has been a wide variety of cookbook and food references published during the first decade of this century. Excluding Food Literature, what are your top 10 cookbooks and references during the first decade?

I'd like a copy of Apicius. I'd like an English translation and I'd prefer--really prefer--it to have no substitutes for ingredients. Or, if it does include substitutes, to also mention what the original ingredient was. I've looked at a couple of online versions and found it doesn't tell you what the original item was. What's the best and most reliable hardcopy translation?

I saw several articles back in the summer that Phan was finally writing a Slanted Door cookbook. Anybody know when this will be released? I've Googled to no avail.

I received "American Pie" along with a new peel and stone for Christmas. I have just a regular GE oven so 500 degrees is as hot as I can go and I have the Emile Henry pizza stone. I was wondering if anyone else had this book and which of the doughs fared the best in a home oven.

Why is there no talk about this book? It seems to be completely overlooked, which surprises me, as Platter of Figs is one of my all-time favorite cookbooks. What's the deal?

I have to come up with a savory recipe using champagne (or other sparkling wines). Any ideas? Is it generally considered a bad idea to cook with champagne? Doesn't the characteristic quality of champagne (the festive fizz) disappear when you cook with it? For the recipe, I would prefer it wasn't one of those ultra fancy ones (lobster with champagne/caviar sauce, or something like that): I think it would be much more interesting to use the champagne in a simpler and less expensive dish. All thoughts much appreciated.

Digging around on Amazon and found a new chocolate book. Still listed as pre-order, no release date. It has a look inside option, and shows everything from pate de fruit charts to making chocolate showpieces. Looks like another to add to the list .

I just got an e-mail from the Culinary Institute of America announcing their new charcuterie textbook, The Art of Charcuterie: Anyone know anything more about this book? Planning on buying it?

Well, Trying to decide if there's anything out there in the last year or so that I might want to put on my xmas list. Keeping in mind that I'm almost completely out of the loop on what's been published. And, I haven't done more than skim the couple of cookbooks I received last Christmas. I did get Bourdain's book for my birthday. I think I'll put the new McGee book on the list. There's a new book on Canadian cheese that I might add as well. Other than that - what would you like to see under your tree in almost a month's time? And what have you picked up this year that's been a worthwhile addition to your library? Cheers, Geoff

I'm an engineer by training and get spammed by lots of technical publishers. Normally I ignore this kind of junk email, but the one below from Food Engineering Reviews caught my eye. I imagine this journal is obscenely expensive (as most technical pubs are), but the publisher is providing free article downloads through December 31, 2010. These articles may be interesting reading for curious foodies and budding food engineers, and may provide some insight into the next advances in modernist cuisine. For example, their December 2010 issue has the following articles: Mathematical Modeling Procedures for Airflow, Heat and Mass Transfer During Forced Convection Cooling of Produce: A Review The Use of Electric Fields for Edible Coatings and Films Development and Production: A Review High Pressure Processing of Meat, Meat Products and Seafood Polymeric-Based Food Packaging for High-Pressure Processing Some interesting articles from earlier issues: Nanoencapsulation: A New Trend in Food Engineering Processing Enhanced Extraction from Solid Foods and Biosuspensions by Pulsed Electrical Energy Shelf-Life Testing of Coffee and Related Products: Uncertainties, Pitfalls, and Perspectives Selected Applications of Ultrasonics in Food Processing You can find all of the issues/articles at this link: http://www.springerlink.com/content/1866-7910/2/4/ Enjoy!

Full story here. Much ado about nothing? A piffle-y bit of fluff? Or has Slate got something there?

I have a wok burner, I have a wok, and I have Grace Young's Breath of a Wok and Stir Frying to the Sky's Edge. I've cooked a bunch of the recipes from Breath and just started in on Sky's Edge, but Sky's Edge is starting to feel like a simple rehashing of the same recipe style from Breath. I'm looking for some variety: what are some of your favorite cookbooks that focus on (or at least have a lot of recipes for) stir frying? Any other good resources for this Westerner?

Has anyone heard of this book or had a chance to see it? http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1902686713/ref=oss_product It looks like it was just released at the start of November. My understanding was that Laduree hadn't published a lot of recipes in the past. This book has the "sweet" recipes and they have published another with the savoury side covered.

I just got a copy of Grace Young's "Stir-Frying to the Sky's Edge"—I enjoyed cooking from "Breath of a Wok" and wanted to continue on that path. Does anyone else have this book? Have you cooked anything from it? Here was dinner tonight: Spicy Dry-Fried Beef (p. 70) I undercooked the beef just a bit due to a waning propane supply (I use an outdoor propane-powered wok burner), but there's nothing to complain about here. It's a relatively mild dish that lets the flavors of the ingredients (and the wok) speak. Overall I liked it, at will probably make it again (hopefully with a full tank of gas).

Raw Tuscan Kale Salad with Chiles and Pecorino p.63 I found myself a few minutes from the Farmer's Market that was sure to have Tuscan Kale so I decided to take the plunge. The kale ($1.50) was lovely. The recipe calls for the dressing to be made separately in a bowl but I made it directly in the large bowl I was going to toss the kale in so as not to lose any bits and to even further simplify things. I did not have pecorino so I did sub a nutty asiago. After letting it rest the requisite initial 5 minutes I sampled directly from the bowl. Verdict: really good - I could have put a serious dent in the huge bowl but I wanted to give it some more resting time. An hour later I sampled again and realized that the cold had muted the flavors. After letting it come to room temp, it was even better for its rest. The recipe calls for the salad to be served with toasted bread crumbs, preferably from whole wheat or rye. I had no bread in the house, so taking a cue from her raw brussels sprouts variation I toasted a few walnuts, smashed them with my handy kitchen brick, and tossed them over for an experiment. They were mildly interesting but I preferred the simpler form. I might try it next time with the bread crumbs, or using pecorino versus the asiago, but I really like it as is.

I received this book today as the result of a $15 impulse purchase on Amazon after reading several blog reviews. Being a sucker for cookbooks that include stories about the recipes and the author's food thoughts this sounded like a natural. Verdict: I really am enjoying the read and am inspired to either follow or riff on several of the recipes and I am only at page 65 of 400+. I believe this will be the book that vanquishes my polenta virginity with the Buckwheat (& corn) polenta with bacon-sauteed radicchio on page 11 There are no photos, but the writing puts the food clearly in your mind's eye and your taste buds' anticipation. Thoughts from other purchasers or possibles?

Due to a "typo" on my grocery list a few weeks ago I wound up with an extra pound of sesame seeds. I've got a few bread recipes that call for a decent quantity, but I don't have much time for baking at the moment. What can I do with them in the savory kitchen that will use a lot up all at once?

We have a topic on Elizabeth David's works here. I picked up this particular book and have enjoyed reading through it, as I do with most regional cookbooks, with a particular eye for sourcing ingredients. It's fascinating to get a look into a time and place where sourcing Parma ham would have meant a trip to Soho and explicit exhortations to not trust butchers trying to pass of Bayonne ham as the same product. I imagine there might still be places where this is the case. I've only gotten through some of the antipasto chapter, but have already decided I'm going to blame Ms. David for my British father's love of making salads with raw button mushrooms. Of course, his were always made with Kraft dressing and not good olive oil and lemon, as her recipe calls for, so perhaps my blame should be tempered. It's one of the first recipes I'm going to try, I think. It's nice to read through, just as a book, without getting tripped up with standard recipe format over lists of teaspoons and weights; I'm wondering if it's equally easy to cook from?

Hello: A friend of mine grows giant pumpkins for a contest and has a pumpkin around 300 lbs and one in the 200 lb range this year. He was wondering if there are any good recipes specifically for giant pumpkin. From what I understand (as I have never tried cooking with a giant pumpkin), giant pumpkins do not have a lot of flavor probably due to the large amount of water they are fed to grow to ridiculous sizes. Would a pumpkin soup work for this massive fruit? Any recipes or ideas to help my friend eat through 500 lbs of orange squash? Thanks!

I will confess right up front I have been a huge fan of Diana Kennedy since I purhcased "The Cuisines of Mexico" some 25+ years ago. I've read her books like novels and they've inhabited my nightstand off and on for years. I've heard many comments over the years that her recipes are intimidating and not approachable. Funny, for me it was just the opposite, she made the food and Mexico come alive for me. If her cookbooks hooked me, my first class with her back in 1993 set the hook. So even thought I own the Spanish version of Oaxaca al Gusto, and knew it was classic Diana, I was looking forward to the English version as I knew it would be easier for me to manage. I also knew it would be possible to cook from the book and decided to find out just how accessible - or not - it really is. I chose to make 2 easy recipes over the weekend just to get a feel for the how the book and recipes work in practice, not theory. Arroz con Pollo Pag. 11 I had 2 concerns with this recipe, one that it would be bland and two, with 5 cups of liquid to 8 oz of rice, that the rice would be mushy. Turns out neither were a problem. Diana recommends leaving the skin on the chicken when poaching, which I did and just defatted the broth. There aren't a huge amount of seasonings in this dish, just some tomatoes (not even charred), garlic and salt, along with some onion, 2 tomates verde (tomatillos de milpa, i.e. wild tomatillos) 1 allspice berry, 1 clove and a sprig of parsley. This is not an assertive, in-your-face kind of dish, but the flavor profile was surprisingly potent. I cook for my 91 year old mother who constantly surprises me with the subtleties of her palate. She can tell almost instantly when a dish is off. Not a big rice lover, she actually loved this dish, and I have instructions to make it again. The flavors all play well together with no one single flavor dominating another. Diana says the rice should be "moist", I think it walks the fine line between being soft and mushy. My rice turned out pretty well. Each grain was separate and did not clump together. The recipe called for using a whole chicken, which I did. I think when I make this again, I will probably start with 2 whole skin-on, bone-in chicken breasts, each whole breast cut into 4 pieces. And because the white meat dries out so much, I'll probably poach them less than called for in the recipe and make up some of the liquid with chicken stock. This won't change the integrity of the dish for me, just the ease of preparation. I am lucky enough to be able to source tomate verde at the Mexican markets here in San Diego. These are tiny tomatillos about the size of a marble. They are quite tart and have lots of seeds. I couldn't see how just two of them were going to impart any flavor. But the beauty of Mexican sauces is that when made correctly they are perfectly balanced and the flavors in this dish were. The little tomatillos contributed just enough tart to counteract the tomatoes in the sauce. If regular tomatillos are all that are available, chose one that is on the small side. This was a lovely dish, not earth shattering, nor particularly challenging, but it was easy to make and tasty to eat. I do have pictures of the dish, but I am having problems uploading them.

I have chicken satay and grilled pork marinating now for dinner. The satay recipe was slightly different than most that I see, but smells great and makes sense. My only beef so far is that several of the recipes I was drawn to based on the photos use ingredients that the author admits can only be found in Thailand. He offers substitutions, but they seem half hearted. And a fish sauce made with rice roaches?!?

A fine one too. He claims they are all possible to bake and assemble in the kitchen. This is a bit more elaborate then C'est du Gateau". CM won the 2005 world pastry cup as well as wrote the hit ( fFrance) pastry cookbook "C'est du Gateau"in '07. You'll also see a glimpse or two of him in the upcoming documentary "Kings of Pastry". Also available from Amazon.fr

Good Meat by Deborah Krasner caught my eye this morning and so I looked thru it. It looks great and has my interest but before I shell out $40, I thought I'd see if anybody has an opinion.

I have run across this title and am interested in many of the topics in the book, Ian be found here Anyone have this title? If so, what are your thoughts & experiences w/ the book.

I thought we could put together a list of cookbooks that are useful resources for sous vide/long time, low temperature cooking. A few are dedicated to SV/LTLT cooking. There's Sous Vide Cuisine by Joan Roca & Salvador Brugues (Amazon link here; eG Forums topic here). There's Under Pressure by Thomas Keller (Amazon link here; eG Forums topic here). There's Society member Douglas Baldwin's Sous Vide for the Home Cook. Soon, we'll have Society member Nathan Myhrvold's epic Modernist Cuisine (eG Forums topic here; Amazon link here). Then there are cookbooks that aren't dedicated to SV/LTLT cooking but use the technique, such as Society member Grant Achatz's Alinea cookbook and Michel Richard's Happy in the Kitchen. Are there others out there that you turn to when you fire up your Auber, rice cooker, or SV Supreme?