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My wife's doctor has instructed her to abstain from salt for the remainder of her pregnancy. As I am of the persuasion that considers unsalted meat an abomination, this has caused no small amount of tension in the household. I'm looking for saltless cooking techniques and recipes (my wife insists I call them "salternatives" -- as she is pregnant, I find it advisable to humor her as much as I can) that don't leave food bland and only vaguely edible. Any suggestions?

Over the years I've collected both cookbooks and a large collection of what I call cooking "booklets." These are small booklets that were often mailed or given out free at grocery stores. Most of them measure 5 1/2" x 8 1/2". My Mother had a large collection, and I've bought many of them, for a few cents each, at vintage shops and estate sales. I think my Mother would often clip something out of the newspaper food section or a magazine and send it in to the sponsor for the booklet. Magazines like Sunset and Better Homes and Gardens printed a series of these booklets. They're a historical record of the way we cooked and ate at the time, but I also find them a great resource for creating new recipes today. I'll start by posting the Metropolitan Cook Book printed by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. Often there wasn't a published date in these cook books, but based on the recipes compared to my collection of vintage cook books, I'd say this one dates to around 1915. Many of the recipes are similar to what I've found in the Fannie Farmer Cookbook of that time. There is a section of recipes titled "Invalid" recipes, where one could have things like Oatmeal Gruel, Irish Moss Lemonade and a Raw Beef Sandwich. Under the "Lunch Box" section, there is a suggested cold lunch for "Industrial Workers"- 1 minced ham sandwich with white bread 1 Swiss cheese sandwich with rye bread 1 whole tomato 1 apple dumpling 1 cup coffee (in Thermos) For "School Children"- 1 cottage cheese sandwich on brown bread 1 jelly sandwich on white bread 1 apple 1/2 pint bottle of milk

I have the kitchen to myself for two whole days and thought I'd try a couple recipes from it. What have you tried besides the chicken? I'm leaning towards the Chard/Onion Panade and the Spicy Squid Stew with Roasted Peppers. But it all looks sooo good that I'm open to other suggestions.

A friend and I found a fabulous wine shop yesterday, and she kept saying, "This one is supposed to be quite good," while we were checking out the wines. I finally asked her, "How do you know?" and she replied, "It was in my comic book." In Japan, where I am, there is a manga called "Kami no Shizuku" aka "Drops of God" and it's all about wine. Always wanting to learn more about wine (because I know nothing), I'm looking for an English version. I know it has been translated into Korean, but I have not yet found any info on an English version. Do you oenophiles think there might be a market for a comic about wine? I think there might be a bit of a snob appeal to wine in the English-speaking world that might preclude an English-version of a wine comic book, but I'm hopeful for a translation of the original. And if I can't find one, I guess it's a good reason for me to practise reading Japanese... By the way, at this wine shop a '03 (I think) bottle of Stag's Leap (I can't remember the grape) was going for Y25000 (just over US$200)...or maybe it was Y32000 (about US$270). Edited to add: if you're interested in seeing what the comic looks like, this blog is a diary of the wines mentioned in the comic. Scroll down for pics of some of the covers. (the site is in Japanese) You can also see pictures of the wines, if you're interested.

On Maggie's marathon "how many cookbooks" thread, there's a discussion of Classical Southern Cooking by Damien Lee Fowler, with everyone (including Maggie and Alex) agreeing that it should be republished. I have a few such books on my own mental list, including Miriam Ungerer's Good Cheap Food, bought many years ago when I was an impoverished student. Like most really good books, its most valuable lessons were not even hinted at in the title. It was reissued in 1997 and widely praised (again) at the time, but seems to have dropped out again. What are your nominations for cookbooks deserving of a second (or third or fourth) life?

HOST'S NOTE: This post and those that follow were split off from the pre-release discussion of Modernist Bread. ***** Figured I don't need to dump all this into the contest thread - so I'll post here. My journey to making my first MC loaf. Her's the poolish after >12 hours: Not pictured - water with yeast in it below the bread flour and poolish That went into the mixer and not long later I had a shaggy mass: That rested for a while - then mixed until medium gluten formation - a window pane that was both opaque and translucent (no picture for that slightly messy part) Folded and rested, folded and rested, I think this is 1/2 the mass now ready to rest one final time. Proofed it in the oven - I have a picture of that but it's just foggy window oven Then it went into the oven, here it is at max temp - 450 with steam turned on. Completed loaf: \ And the crumb - this is awesome bread:

I borrowed this from the library recently, as I wanted to do a test run before buying. My gripe is that with the layout of the book (photo on left, right page with narrative/recipe) every single recipe goes to the flip side of the page (except a few basic dressing or condiment recipes). Even if it is only a couple of lines. I find this annoying to the point where it is making me have second thoughts about buying the cookbook. Having a recipe on 2 facing pages is fine, you can lay the book open and see everything, but having to flip the page over when you are 3/4 of the way through the recipe is just annoying. The ingredients are listed in a column on the left side of the page, compressing the useable area on the first/right page. On one recipe, the 2nd page literally has 5 lines of text (the left margin area is left unused to have a consistent layout with the prior page). It has that feel of someone trying to stretch out their term paper to make it more pages😆

I got my copy of Eleven Madison Park: The Next-Chapter earlier this year and have enjoyed reading through it several times. As a result, I have been considering getting the version published in 2011 for Christmas, however, I am not sure if it is a duplicate of the recipe book included with the next chapter set. So I am wondering if somebody has access to both if they would be able to advise me whether the recipes are duplicated between the two books.

i am in the process of minimizing and have some cookbooks that i can no longer use. if anyone would like them, please pm me with your snail mail address and i will drop them in the box. right now i have 4 available: Lancaster County Cookbook My Own Cook Book - Gladys Taber Peter Hunt's Cape Cod Cookbook The Luchow's Cookbook I would rather send them to a good home with one of you than drop them in the local library book sale.

Opened the Washington Post and learned that Chef Roland Mesnier has died. I never met him but have enjoyed baking from and reading two of his cookbooks. RIP. https://www.whitehousehistory.org/roland-mesnier-in-memoriam-1944-2022 https://www.chefrolandmesnier.com/about/history-timeline/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/08/27/roland-mesnier-pastry-chef-white-house-dead/

"Los Secretos del Helado" is in my opinion the best professional book ever written about ice-creams. Originally it was printed only in Spanish language, I searched the forum and in some past threads some users complained about this. But now it's available for free download in English and Italian language: http://www.angelocorvitto.com/ingles/libro/pdf.html This is a mandatory book for all ice-cream makers. Teo

165, 124. That's a lotta cookbooks, but I know it's nowhere near the true figure. C'mon, guys. Fess up. [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 4)]

Say you were rounded up with a group of folks and either had a skill to offer in exchange for a comfy room and some other niceties or were sent off to a slag heap to toil away in the hot sun every day for 16 hours, what 3 books would you want to take with you to enable you to cook and bake such fabulous foodstuffs that your kidnappers would keep you over some poor schlub who could cook only beans and rice and the occasional dry biscuit?

It may be that I have missed it in the topics, but I can't find any reference to the 2011 publication of Cook's Illustrated Cookbook: 2,000 Recipes from 20 Years of America's Most Trusted Food Magazine. It appears to retail in the USA for $40 but is available on Amazon for far less than that. Obviously lots of recipes with interesting notes also. I always love the notes and explanations. Back home in Canada my library doesn't carry Cook's Illustrated and the larger city library has only a few issues. I've borrowed it from the local library in Utah and am thinking about buying it. Any thoughts, please ?

I have a centrifuge and have been working my way though some of the recipes that benefit or require a centrifuge. Also have a similar carbonation set up as the one that is mentioned in the book and will be getting to the carbonation section next. Anyone else experimenting with this James Beard award winning cocktail book?

I am a big fan of Kenji Lopez-Alt's columns on Serious Eats and was pleasantly surprised today to learn that he has a book coming out. It is being released by Amazon Sept. 21. I plan on buying a copy. Anyone else? The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science

I was excited to see Bayless publishing a new cookbook this month, More Mexican Everyday. He's one of my favorite chefs both for his cooking and his cookbooks, and I love Mexican food. Plus, living in Oklahoma I have access to pretty much all of the necessary ingredients. Has anyone else ordered this? I'm headed to the local mercado this afternoon to stock up on ingredients. The cookbook arrives tomorrow, but I won't have time to shop later in the week so I'm going to guess at the necessities based on the Table of Contents. I figure masa, crema, and poblanos are a safe bet! Plus some tomatoes and jalapenos. What am I missing?

Has anyone else picked up a copy of Lesley Téllez's new cookbook, Eat Mexico? I've long wanted to take a culinary tour of Mexico City, but I still haven't made it down there; this book is doing nothing to calm that desire! There are quite a few ingredients in it that I am going to have a hard time getting my hands on, but I thought I'd give some of the recipes a try anyway. Is anyone else cooking from it yet?

I know several people around these parts have picked up a copy of J. Kenji López-Alt's The Food Lab, so I figured it was time to start cooking from it. Chopped Greek Salad (p. 836) This is an excellent rendition of Greek Salad, with great proportions of the various ingredients, and just the right amount of dressing. There's nothing Earth-shattering here, but it gets me off on a good foot with this cookbook.

I got Food52 Genius Recipes a couple weeks ago, and this is the first thing I've cooked from the print version... Marie-Hélène’s Apple Cake Dorie Greenspan Available here I think this recipe actually appears in Around my French Table, too. It's an excellent apple cake, particularly interesting in that it doesn't have any spices in it. It is dense with apples, with just enough cake batter to hold everything together. Aesthetically it's a challenge to slice when it's warm, so I suggest letting it cool, then slicing, then reheating if you want it warm.

Has anyone else been reading this? I just finished the first time through and was impressed by the quality of the book, although many of the recipes might be a bit too southern for my taste. One recipe that I hope to try is green goddess dressing, p 36. The photography is beautiful, and I appreciated the section on okra as I have five okra plants growing on my balcony, which passes for my garden. I have deep respect for Satterfield and any author who is not too lazy to write out v-e-g-e-t-a-b-l-e-s.

Hello! I'm not sure if the "cookbook" section of the forum is the best choice for this post, but... I recent was gifted "Dry-Curing Pork" by Hector Kent - a purely self serving gift from my boyfriend, I might add! I'm going to make the coppiette this weekend, and his instructions for slicing the loin are a bit vague to me. He directs to slice it in "... 3/4 inch strips at least 8 inches long." Do you suppose the 3/4" dimension refer to thickness of the slice (ie the smallest of 3 dimensions), or might he mean thinner slices that are 3/4" wide? Misinterpreting this would really change the cure/dry time... Am I making sense? Thoughts? And for fun, here's my report on my first attempt at his bacon recipe (among other things). Um... wow! http://operaflute.blogspot.com/2015/06/when-time-is-on-your-side-bacon-and.html Thanks!

While not a new cookbook by any means, I haven't really had time to dig into this one until now. We've previously discussed the recipes in Jerusalem: A Cookbook, but not much has been said about Plenty. So, here goes... Chickpea saute with Greek yogurt (p. 211) This was a great way to kick off my time with this book. The flavors were outstanding, particularly the use of the caraway seeds and lemon juice. I used freshly-cooked Rancho Gordo chickpeas, which of course helps! The recipe was not totally trivial, but considering the flavors developed, if you don't count the time to cook the chickpeas it came together very quickly. I highly recommend this dish.

I know that there were similar threads, but I'm mostly interested in what kind of software or apps do you use for storing different kinds of recipes. For example, for most text and image based recipes I (like most people here) use Evernote. The notebooks-style organization works well, especially once you start using the Evernote Web Clipper. My browser (Citrio) can download videos, so video recipes are downloaded directly to the OneDrive folder on my PC and synced with the cloud. Very convenient, actually. At last, I'm currently testing the Asparagus android app. I might eventually move from Evernote to this one as it's more convenient for the quick references (though has no web clipper). What do you use for text, images and video recipes?

A friend gifted me a book written by someone I know of but only loosely. The acquaintance is a former missionary who has lived in Oaxaca for 15 years and co-authored this book with Susana Trilling (famous Oaxacan cooking instructor). The book is self published and really surprised me with its quality. The whole thesis is saving the indigenous foods of the area and combatting GMO infiltration of the area. Those of you who know the area might know of one of my hero restaurants - the like-minded Itanoni in Oaxaca City - surely they all travel in the same circles. Recipes are average fare - not fancy - clearly recipes from regular local folk, but very authentic, not fusion. They start with basic fresh masa, run you through all sorts of things including molé and salads and end up with stuff like yucca and egg tacos. The chapters include: Wild Greens (purslane, amaranth, etc), Beans & Squash, Salsa, Nopal and Maguey, Food and Fiesta, Medicinal uses. About 300 pages in all (so figure 150 in English and 150 in Spanish). This book is not available through Amazon. It is bilingual. I highly recommend it. Side note: Quite frankly these guys are goofs. They don't know how important and well produced this book is and aren't marketing it worth crap. Go buy it. Tell them I sent you. And enjoy this book. HERE