Your 10 Favorite Cookbooks

[curlywurlyfi]

bit of a cheat really but every year Books For Cooks (London's finest cookery book shop with tiny + delicious cafe at back, mmmmm) publishes a little paperback digest (excuse pun) of their favourite recipes culled from all that year's new cookery books, tested in their kitchen. I've got all six books and find myself using them at least once a week (last night was carrot + cumin soup with slow-roasted tomatoes).

[Rachel Perlow]

Glorious French Food - Peterson

The Best Recipe - Cooks Illustrated people

Cuisine Actuelle - Patricia Wells/Joel Robuchon

Passion for Flavour - Gordon Ramsay

Culinary Artistry - Dornenburg/Page (though not cooking directly from)

Just a reminder that Andrew Dornenburg and Karen Page are online for an eGullet Q&A right now.

[mikeycook]

Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Vol. I (will probably always be my favorite, since it's the book I learned on.)

Julia and Jacques: Cooking at Home (I am convinced all her books are good.)

The Cooking of South-West France by Paula Wolfert - Other than MAFC, Vol. 1, the book I have used the most.

Ma Gastronomie by Fernand Point - My current favorite. It is interesting to trace his influence through the nouvelle french masters to today's top chefs.

[Mottmott]

The Cooking of South-West France by Paula Wolfert - Other than MAFC, Vol. 1, the book I have used the most.

Funny, but I've just come from the kitchen where I was doing the first stage of her Daube de Boeuf a la Gasconne for Sunday night's dinner, marinating the meat and veggies in wine. Tell me it's worth having run all over town for the ingredients yesterday in addition to the cooking itself (the pig's foot was the most fun to find).

The most memorable stew I've ever had was the Catalon stew from Wolfert's World of Food. Now I often use the technique of roasting vegetables separately to add to braised foods at the end of various recipes. I also like the technique that's in this Daube of using some of the vegetables pureed to thicken the dish before serving.

But with all that, I can't say than these or any other cookbooks are my favorites. The beauty of cookbooks is that they demonstrate so many ways to approach cooking even within a particular national cuisine.

[sherribabee]

My very first cookbook and the one I continue to reference when I need ideas to make something basic is the Better Homes and Gardens book.

I have a fascination with (and an unusually large collection of) church and PTA type cookbooks, simply because they're full of comfort foods and remind me of my childhood.

I've just begun to tackle Baking with Julia.

[robkhoo]

Larousse

I use it all the time for all those niggling little questions that pop up.

[kjohn]

I'm a big fan of the Taste Cookbook by David Rosengarten. His personal enthusiasm is infectious and his "criteria for quality" listed after every recipe is a helpful guide when you are covering new ground. Of course I was a big fan of the show as well.

[schneich]

Followed closely by a basic cookbook I bought in Germany (I have fun translating the recipes -- gets particularly interesting when I misinterpret something)

if any of you have problems translating german cook books

i gladly offer some help

cheers from cologne

t.

[schneich]

i use 10 - 15 of my 35 books

mostly

of course my beloved escoffier

followed by complete techniques - pepin

breadbaker apprentice - reinhart

breads of france - clayton

Mangia, Little Italy - Secrets from a Sicilian Family Kitchen - Romina

and i really would like to use my "El Bulli 1998-2002" a lot more

but my spanish/catalan sucks, in fact i dont know any...

since there doesnt seem to be an english translation (they just promise)

it would be great if there was someone (or more than one) who

would like to do a little recipe translation project with me, so that everyone could

use these recipes

we could do the whole thing as .pdf (only 4 those who own the book )

cheers

t.

[Bicycle Lee]

Larousse Gastronomique.  Try updating it's recipes as a sort of mental exercise.  ooooh.

yeah the recipes are pretty old school, but the book as a tool is unmatched

[MatthewT]

keller's French Laundry

Escoffier

kitchen confedential

The Medeteranean Feast (Clifforde Wright)

[cbel964]

As being one of the ametuers still using the red and white books- for the life of me i cannot remember the name;

Thank you for suggesting Mark Bittman and C. Trotter.

[Basilgirl]

There seem to be an awful lot of cookbook threads whipping around on e-gullet...

I have so many damn cookbooks that my sister helped me box up a bunch and then she labeled it "Loser Cookbooks"

Anyway, these are the ones out of the many many that get used on a regular basis:

Lidia's Italian-American Kitchen, Lidia Bastianich (FANTASTIC - snaps to Lidia on this one)

How to Cook Everything, Mark Bittman

The Best Recipe, Cook's Illustrated

Simple Italian Cooking, Mario Batali

Essentials of Class Italian Cooking, Marcella Hazan

Joy of Cooking

Betty Crocker's "Red Book" for basic good food

Make It Italian, Nancy Verde Barr

All of the Best American Recipes series - the "best" from the year's cookbooks, newspapers, Internet. Very nice.

I like to look at Michael Chiarello's Casual Cooking, but haven't made anything yet.

Plus too many recipes printed off Food TV.com. They're taking over my house.

OK, I'll stop now.

[jwagnerdsm]

I would probably say that the Joy of Cooking gets used three to four times a week in my kitchen, often times just to double check a process that I am using or to look for some ideas for cooking. Julia's "The Way to Cook" is right up there for me. It's another good reference. I notice on the Food Network that they are advertising an every man's cookbook that is supposed to serve as a far reaching reference. And it contains something like 136 recipes. Seems like a waste. What's the one or two cookbooks you can't live without and what makes them so great? Gotta start getting the ol' Christmas list ready.

[Singapore]

The Frugal Gourmet Cooks American.

[Chad]

Oddly enough, Bobby Flay's Bold American Food. Great cookbook. Everything I've made has come out well. I find myself turning to it more than any of the others when I'm looking for new ideas or inspiration.

Chad

[jackal10]

Escoffier

[Busboy]

Thomas Keller, but rarely for an entire recipe or -- God forbid -- an entire meal.

The Complete Works of Jacques Pepin. OK, making that up, but

"The Complete Technique" unquestionably a classic.

"The Art of Cooking 1&2" Out of print, but worth getting. A lot of overlap with Complete Technique, which was itself out of print, when Art of Cooking Came out. I had never heard of Jacques when I stumbled across this series, it was my Bible for two years

"Julia and Jacques Cook at Home" A good step up from "Art of French Cooking" . Basic French, also great because Jacques and Julia have little arguments with one another, so you get to learn different techniques for the same dish, and that there are different techniques.

"Jacques Pepin's" Good classic French

Also, Larousse Gastronomic, more for reference and learning than actual cooking ("what the hell's a quenelle?"

[Mayhaw Man]

Craig Claibornes New York Times Cookbook as a reference/idea book as much as for a cookbook.

An excellent Junior League Book printed in the seventies (still in print a t Amazon and Barnes and Noble) in Monroe, LA called "The Cotton Country Collection". It is an excellent collection of both South Louisiana Cooking and of the traditional Southern recipes served in the Delta. The baking sections have some of the best "down home" desserts I have ever seen in one collection.

Also, the original Silver Palate seems to be losing it's cover for the second time (note to self..buy duct tape), so I must use it alot as well.

[GG Mora]

When I bother to use a recipe, it often comes from Patricia Wells' "Bistro Cooking". JoC is always handy for double checking cooking times. And Anne Willan's "La Varenne Pratique" is invaluable for training. There are those who say you can't learn to cook from a book. I beg to differ, as long as the book is "La Varenne Pratique".

[bloviatrix]

Also, the original Silver Palate seems to be losing it's cover for the second time (note to self..buy duct tape), so I must use it alot as well.

My copy is all frayed and splattered. The pages are sprouting post-it note flags. And I have lots of written notes stuck between the pages. I regret not buying it in hardcover.

I frequently refer to Madeline Kammen's The New Making of a Cook. I never cook from this book, but when I'm looking to learn about a specific technique, it's a great resource.

And, although not a cookbook, I use the Oxford Companion to Food all the time. It's another great resource book (and since it's really expensive - hardcover- try to have someone give it to you as a gift)

[bigwino]

Well, I'm a complete cookbook whore these days, so it's hard to narrow it down. My favorite of the moment is ever changing. But I can try.....

When looking for a recipe, I almost invariably go first to the Dean and Deluca Cookbook or one of the Cook's Illustrated volumes I have. I don't consider anything definitive, but these have always been very reliable sources for great food and solid baseline info on techniques and ingredients.

I keep meaning to put my count on the "How many cookbooks" thread, but it keeps changing....

[Basilgirl]

Lidia's Italian-American Kitchen

How to Cook Everything, Mark Bittman

Cook's Illustrated The Best Recipe

[denise_jer]

We recently bought Darina Allen's Ballymaloe Cooking School Cookbook, and I just love it! I've been cooking out of it 3-4 times a week for the last month. She encourages you to use seasonal ingredients, and the recipes are easy to follow. I haven't had a miss in there yet!

[torakris]

Of my close to 200 cookbooks about 20-25 get a fairly good rotation, if I had to pick one that I used the most it would be Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone (and I am far from a vegetarian!), next would be my set 4 Donna Hay books, her food is simple and fast and tastes great!