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One more for me (considering where I work, I think I've been showing admirable restraint) -- American Boulangerie by Pascal Rigo, who owns Bay Breads and several other bakeries here in San Francisco. I'm hoping it will inspire me to start baking bread again. [Moderator note: The original Cookbooks – How Many Do You Own? topic became too large for our servers to handle efficiently, so we've divided it up; the preceding part of this discussion is here: Cookbooks – How Many Do You Own? (Part 1)]

I need some help.. please! I am looking for software that will help me create and PRINT custom cookbooks. These books are not meant to be for retail. Mostly just 2 -3 copies will be created I need something that has the power of a recipe software along with desktop publishing capabilties ( allowing me to change formats, add gra[hics etc.) i would appreciate any help. All the stuff i found was low end and quite useless really

Though I only spent one year of my life on Maui, a lot of what I remember is the food and for a long time I have been looking for a good Hawaiian cookbook. I have two, one from Roy Yamaguchi (which I don't really consider "Hawaiian" rather difficult to do at home fusion, though I have had great success from it) and one that is a local publication of Japanese cooking Hawaiian style, which it ok but doesn't cover much else. I really want a book that covers the popular local foods, loco moco and the like as well as more traditional Hawaiian foods as well as the Hawaiian variations on other (mostly Asian countries) foods. In the cookbook thread I noticed a reference to a book called Food of Paradise which seemed to cover mostly what I am looking for and just seconds ago I purchased it through Amazon Japan. What else is out there? Any favorites?

Can anyone name their top 10 choice of cooking / recipe books? If you can't name 10 that does not matter - jsut name however many you have. My current must have is Rick Stein's Seafood but, so soon after Christmas expenditure, at £25 will have to go on the wish list. It really is the business in terms of everything to do with seafood from buying through preparation to cooking and beautifully illustrated so you cannot fail to know what is going on. With this book one could become great!

A very good friend of ours from India visited us last year for a week. She insisted to cook every day. Very happy to get authentic Indian food, especially since she even brought all necssary spices with her. We had a feast. As she left she gave me an Indian Cookbook (in English) to keep: "Mrs. Balbir Singh's Indian Cookery". What are your comments about this book?

What has the French cookbook business come to? I picked up a copy of Regis Macon's "Ma Cuisine des Champignons" the other day. It is a semi-paperback book (come on Simon, what is the trade name for that?) I find it amazing that 3 star Michelin chefs aren't worthy of having their books published in a top quality way. In addition, many of them don't even have books. Is there a Passard book, Boyer book, Bras book? Every idiotic British, Australian or American chef has a cookbook printed on glorious stock and with terrific photgraphy to boot. But the French chefs often get relegated to second class status. I can recall publications of Troigros and Guy Savoy recipes in recent years that I would call "cheap" efforts. Occassionaly, a chef like Veyrat has a nice book published or the Pourcel twins had a top quality book publsihed as well. But most of them are horrible. What is it about French cookbooks. Don't enough French people buy them so that the quality of the books can be at a high standard? Just go into one of the large bookshops like Virgin on the Champs Elysee and their cookbook selection is pathetic. But down the road at Galignani the cookbook section is wonderful. But that's because they carry all the U.S. and British cookbooks too. Even in the way of topical books. The French do not seem to have food writers who are sourcing out new trends and alerting the world to them. The entire modern bistro revolution happened without a single French writer coming up with a cookbook based on the recipes of places like La Regalade, Eric Frechon, L'Epi Dupin etc. How can France maintain it's status as the culinary capital of the world without having a history of it's cuisine adequately reduced to print? (Edited by Steve Plotnicki at 11:21 am on Jan. 8, 2002) (Edited by Steve Plotnicki at 11:22 am on Jan. 8, 2002)

Of late, Australian chefs have been producing some excellent cookbooks. Not sure if all of the below are available internationally but, even if they aren't, they're worth tracking down. A few of my favourite Australian cookbooks: Tetsuya by Tetsuya Wakada The most beautiful cookbook I've ever seen, by one of Australia's greatest - and most modest - chefs. He reveals the recipes for his famous signature dishes. Tetsuya's Japanese influences mean the recipes are relatively simple, so the book isn't purely gastro porn. You look at some of the recipes and think - "Wow! I could do that." The dishes are mostly light, with an emphasis on seafood, so the book is a real find for health-conscious food enthusiasts. Noodle by Terry Durack If you cook Asian-style noodles at home, you need this book. It has two sections: "Noodle iD" and recipes. In the noodle identification section, each of about 20 different varieties of Asian noodle, gets a double page spread. Big photo, and information about origin, cooking method, appropriate uses. The recipe section is divided by cuisine. There are terrific, authentic recipes from Japan, Korea, China, Vietnam, Thailand and other south-east Asian nations. Author Terry Durack, an Aussie now living in London, is a tremendously entertaining writer. The guy can get a lengthy laugh-aloud column out of the "death" of his beloved kitchen timer. Sydney Food by Bill Granger The man behind Sydney cafes bills and bills 2 shares the simple but inspired recipes that have made him the city's breakfast king. While bills and bills 2 are most famous for their breakfasts, the book's lunch and dinner recipes are fabulous, too. Breakfast recipes include ricotta hotcakes with honeycomb butter; pan-toasted sanwiches with tomato and fontina; fresh bircher muesli with stone fruit; coconut bread; french toast stuffed with peaches; potato and feta pancakes; lemon souffle cakes; crumpets with blackberry butter; roast mushrooms with thyme and taleggio; and toasted coconut waffles with fresh mango and palm syrup. Lunch recipes include spring onion pancake with gravlax; spaghettini with crab, lime and chilli; chicken noodle soup with lemon; ricotto and tomato tart; Puy lentil soup with Parmesan toasts; smoked trout and potato salad; coconut and passionfruit slice; and ANZAC biscuits. Dinner recipes include skewered swordfish with crispy coleslaw; barbequed whole fish with fresh herb relish; prawn and chilli linguine; baked snapper with lemon roasted potatoes and chilli relish; poached salmon with green-bean salad and tomato and anchovy dressing; individual blackberry crumbles; Pavlova; and coconut rice pudding with papaya and lime. Most of the recipes are dead simple. Many are quite light and healthy, even if they do sound decadent and indulgent. I recently saw the author on TV, and he said that he'd tried to create a cookbook people could use every day. He succeeded. Sydney Food is as practical as it is exceptional. Another Aussie cookbook to look out for: A massive 700-page reference book by Stephanie Alexander, titled The Cook's Companion here (but perhaps something else internationally). It's the new Aussie classic. Chapters devoted to all manner of ingredients and how to prepare them. It's not the kind of book that you flick though and think - "Mmmm, I absolutely must make that for dinner." But when you're knocking about the kitchen and think "I rather fancy some (insert just about any dish here)", you'll find the recipe - or one for a similar dish - in Stephanie's book. The answer to just about any culinary question you may have is in there.

Just wondering if anyone's got any opinions on the new Michel Bras book. Ran across an import copy at Books for Cooks in London but at sixty quid (thats UK sheets) thought I'd wait til it popped up on amazon.co.uk... pretty pictures but the translation looked a bit ropey cheerio J

I recently purchased "Hot Sour Salty Sweet" by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid, after reading the review in either Cooks Illustrated or Saveur. It is a huge coffee-table book, but has great recipes and stories. The book is basically a travel diary of the couple's travel down the Mekong river with their children. The recipes are straightforward and usually simple, although the emphasis on making your own pastes and spice mixes sometimes makes the ingredient lists long. I also enjoyed the stories about the people they met and the places they stayed. In addition, there are lots of photographs, not just of the food, but of the land and its inhabitants. If you are into either travel books or cookbooks, are interested in Vietnamese and Thai cooking (and the surrounding cultures as well), and/or planning a trip to this region of the world, then I highly recommend this book. It is available on Amazon.com for ฯ.50 new, ฬ used, I paid ส for it (incl shipping) on half.com in June.

Are there any recommended books out there with only chilli recipes? I love eating chilli at Mom's but have never made it myself...I'd like to get several recipes in one book to try, thanks.

Someone suggested starting a topic to discuss dishes made from this book. I think it's a good idea. I got the book a couple weeks ago and read through it. It's fantastic. While i have Dunlop's other books and have cooked from them A LOT, this one seems more streamlined for weeknight dinners with dishes that don't require 8-10 marinade or sauce ingredients. I've cooked a couple meals from it and everything has been awesome. Last week it was chicken with black bean sauce and spinach with fermented tofu. Both were delicious. Last night it was pork tenderloin with chinese chives (not a recipe in the book, but i took the recipe for the chicken livers with chives and subbed pork tenderloin), stir fried cabbage with dry shrimp and bok choy with shiitake (i used dry, rehydrated). Everything was delicious. I really liked the baby bok choy. The flavors were clean and light. Wife thought it was kind of bland, but i liked it. The cabbage was also delicious, though wife and daughter didn't agree I thought it was funny that my purple cabbage turned my yellow/orange tiny dry shrimp green. Forgot to take pictures of the dishes. What is everyone else making?

In this topic on the cookbooks that shaped us, a few series of cookbooks have been mentioned: Sunset books and the Time-Life Foods of the Worlds spring to mind. Other than those, I know that Williams-Sonoma has a selection of single-subject cookbooks, and of course there's the "Beautiful" series, but I'm not very familiar with any others. I'm sure they're out there, although it seems to me that series aren't as popular as they used to be in cookbook publishing. So maybe the series that are worth checking out are old ones, but maybe I just don't know about the contemporary ones that are available. Are there series that are worth buying today? Which old series are worth tracking down? Is it just a collector's passion, or can one actually cook from these?

If you had a choice of one bread baking book (artisinal) which would it be? OK. You can have 2 choices. Thanks, Joe

Okay, there's a thread on the cookbook you couldn't live without--how about the cookbook that's languishing on the shelf? My vote is "Jeremiah Tower Cooks". I never seem to have a goose liver, a fresh black truffle, fresh chestnuts, chive flowers and Armagnac lying around the house...(Casserole of Whole Foie Gras).

A few weeks ago I bought a copy of this cookbook which is a best-selling spin off from the highly successful television series by China Central Television - A Bite of China as discussed on this thread. . The book was published in August 2013 and is by Chen Zhitian (陈志田 - chén zhì tián). It is only available in Chinese (so far). There are a number of books related to the television series but this is the only one which seems to be legitimate. It certainly has the high production standards of the television show. Beautifully photographed and with (relatively) clear details in the recipes. Here is a sample page. Unlike in most western cookbooks, recipes are not listed by main ingredient. They are set out in six vaguely defined chapters. So, if you are looking for a duck dish, for example, you'll have to go through the whole contents list. I've never seen an index in any Chinese book on any subject. In order to demonstrate the breadth of recipes in the book and perhaps to be of interest to forum members who want to know what is in a popular Chinese recipe book, I have sort of translated the contents list - 187 recipes. This is always problematic. Very often Chinese dishes are very cryptically named. This list contains some literal translations. For some dishes I have totally ignored the given name and given a brief description instead. Any Chinese in the list refers to place names. Some dishes I have left with literal translations of their cryptic names, just for amusement value. I am not happy with some of the "translations" and will work on improving them. I am also certain there are errors in there, too. Back in 2008, the Chinese government issued a list of official dish translations for the Beijing Olympics. It is full of weird translations and total errors, too. Interestingly, few of the dishes in the book are on that list. Anyway, for what it is worth, the book's content list is here (Word document) or here (PDF file). If anyone is interested in more information on a dish, please ask. For copyright reasons, I can't reproduce the dishes here exactly, but can certainly describe them. Another problem is that many Chinese recipes are vague in the extreme. I'm not one to slavishly follow instructions, but saying "enough meat" in a recipe is not very helpful. This book gives details (by weight) for the main ingredients, but goes vague on most condiments. For example, the first dish (Dezhou Braised Chicken), calls for precisely 1500g of chicken, 50g dried mushroom, 20g sliced ginger and 10g of scallion. It then lists cassia bark, caoguo, unspecified herbs, Chinese cardamom, fennel seed, star anise, salt, sodium bicarbonate and cooking wine without suggesting any quantities. It then goes back to ask for 35g of maltose syrup, a soupçon of cloves, and "the correct quantity" of soy sauce. Cooking instructions can be equally vague. "Cook until cooked". A Bite of China - 舌尖上的中国- ISBN 978-7-5113-3940-9