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I know these books have been mentioned to death here, but I cannot divine the answer to my question from previous threads. I wish to learn to prepare Thai food at home. There are some nice restaurants in Columbus, but none of them near enough to where I live, so there you have it. I know there's a place called Bangkok Grocery, so it seems like I should be able to buy any necessary ingredients. I know HSSS doesn't focus exclusively on Thai food. Which one of these two books should I get (or is there another one entirely that would be better than either)? Also: Darn you people and your larb thread. I don't have a car at work and therefore will be unable to obtain any sort of Thai food until at least seven hours from now.

What are some of your favorite cookbooks and/or authors? And how did they influence your writing and cooking as it is today? Thank you.

My nephew is getting married in a couple of months. I don't have a heck of a lot to spend on a wedding present, but I like Ivan and his bride quite a bit, and want to give them something they'll enjoy. Since we're known in the family as the gourmet cooks (which is a nicer way of saying that the rest of them can't cook to save their lives), the obvious candidates are food related. I'm thinking of giving them a solid cookbook and, perhaps, one of the wedding spice boxes from penzeys.com. I have something like 200 cookbooks in my collection, but few of them seem suitable for a new couple starting out. A high percentage of my personal favorites are ethnic or too specific (such as Kafka's Roasting, which has the right "heft" for a gift like this). I'd prefer a title that'll help them get started, the one book they turn to repeatedly, probably because it's the only major one they own. So it should probably cover the entire meal rather than just the entree. (I don't think they're afraid of cooking, but they're definitely beginners.) Also, I don't want to pick a cookbook that has a lot of recipes for expensive foods that twenty-somethings can't afford (which is why I eliminated Roasting, as beautiful a book as it is). That was the problem with the "Cooking School" book we bought, lo, 23 years ago (damn, now I feel old). It had lots of good "beginner" recipes, but too many of them were for lobster and prime rib -- not exactly what I could afford on my then-salary of $185 a week. I was considering something like Witt's Classic American Food Without Fuss but (a) it seems to be out of print and (b) it seems like a cheap gift, even if it's the most useful. (Ivan wouldn't care, but my sister would sniff) My husband suggests the Jamisons' Real American Breakfast, which is a possibility (and a great book, if you haven't seen it), but I'm looking for more suggestions. Esther

Name it.

Salt-of-the-earth Cunningham still has spice

What Chinese cookbooks are your favorites? Most helpful? Least helpful? Why?

Many of us have grown up with cookbooks from a local church, the PTA, Women's Club, and other organizations. The recipes are usually submitted by women and, here in the South, reflect much of what we consider to be southern culinary heritage. Meals were meant to be simple, filling, and made of relatively inexpensive ingredients. Game, fish and other readily available meat sources were often used. You could find chapters dedicated to pickles and other canned goods. John T. Edge of the University of Mississippi's Southern Foodways Alliance published a compilation of recipes he gathered from southern community and church cookbooks. This book, "A Gracious Plenty: Recipes and Recollections from the American South" (Link to Amazon) was published a few years ago and did a great job of describing what we generally think of as "southern cooking." Mrs. Varmint's grandmother published many recipes in these types of books, and she was later featured in a hard-bound publication, "Coastal Carolina Cooking" (Link to Amazon) I was fortunate to receive this past Christmas a gift from my mother-in-law that could truly be described as a labor of love: a compendium of my wife's grandmother's recipes. It's amazing what she cooked. More amazing are the recipes that weren't included, as they were committed only to memory. How to make shad (and to de-bone it) and its roe. Fig preserves. Coconut cake. Wild turkey stew. I'm glad to have received the written memories, but it's a shame we didn't get the others out of her. What are your favorite church cookbook recipes? Do you use one cookbook in particular? I encourage you to post your favorite recipes in the eGullet recipe archive, too.

Do you have one cookbook that has been used so much it is falling apart and possibly held together with tape? Does it automatically open to your favorite pages, because you have pushed on the binding too ahrd too many times? Are the pages stained with drops of now unidentifiable food? So what book in your collection does this describe? For me it is the New Basics, though I don't use it as much any more, for a while it was my favorite (ok my only!) cookbook and it tends to open to page 746, the lemon shortbread recipe.

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.

Dear all, Have already checked some topics about cake books from the index, but would like to start another one. I am looking for the recipe cake books which has the recipes of absolutely delicious layered cakes. You know, not just a cake + buttercream, but perhaps something more interesting, when flavor combination just leaves you with WOW! And of course the compliments from others.. Preferably not too complicated, the one which is possible to make for the intermediate baker at home. Any suggestions?

Hi, I'm interested in learning how to cook Pakistani/Indian food. I want a book that has relatively simple recipes and is for a beginner of this type of cuisine. The reason I say Pakistani and not Indian, is that I feel that I enjoy food in Pakistani restaurants generally more than Indian. I know they are similar in many ways, and even have many of the same dishes and ingredients, but I generally found the Pakistani versions to be spicer and generally more flavorful. I also would like to learn some good meat dishes and kebabs, and I know a lot of Indian books are more veg-centric. Does anyone have any suggestions? Thanks - WBC

I'm thinking of buying my mother a cookbook stand/holder for her birthday and was wondering if anyone had recommendations or warnings. There are a number of choices and prices on Amazon, but I'm tempted to just buy the one from Williams Sonoma. I live overseas and won't be able to see any of these products in person, so any input on sturdiness, durability, and clean-ability would be appreciated. Thanks very much!