Introduction to Cuisine Books

[et alors]

If you want to cook Italian, you read Marcella Hazan, if you want French then Julia and Jacque can be your guides. But to whom to you turn for Spanish, Indian, Japanese? For new techniques like sous vide or fashionable trends like low carb?

What cookbooks/cooking books and authors have been your guides when the territory was unknown?

I seek adventure....

[rgruby]

Well, you might see if there've been any Beard or IACP winners for the cuisine you want to cook.

You might check the egullet boards for faves,

For Indian I'd say Madhur Jaffrey and (maybe) Julie Sanhi are every bit iconic as Marcella is to Italian. (I prefer Sanhi, but enjoy cooking from both). But, there are increasingly regional cookbooks in English. India is a big country! With diverse cooking traditions. But Jaffrey and Sanhi would be a good start.

For Spanish, Penelope Casas has some good books. I like Colman Andrews Catalan one. In the last few years there've been a bunch of enticing Spanish cookbooks. There's also Ferran Adrai's El Bulli tomes. Not sure there's a Spanish Hazan, if you will, but loads of good Spanish cookbooks have come out in the last few years.

Japanese - I don't really know. there are threads here, and I know I bought a friend a cookbook discussed and recommended here.

But there are other cuisines where there are recognized authorities. for Mexican look to Diana Kennedy or Rick Bayless. Fuschia Dunlop is exploring regional Chinese.

For the past several years there have been threads detailing cookbooks that have come out in that year. Last year I started a thread asking about the "vital" or "essential" or something cookbooks from that year - basically asking what seemed to be the best of the lot.

I dunno, I check out the award winners, stuff that gets high praise here, but it's hard to figure out what cookbooks meet your needs. I can usually tell pretty quickly after opening up a cookbook whether it's going to meet my needs, but mine may be very different from yours.

Good luck in your search, and if you do find some great cookbooks, please let us know!

Cheers,

Geoff Ruby

[The Naughti Literati]

Marcus Samuelsson (Aquavit) has a GORGEOUS cookbook called The Soul of a New Cuisine that I bought last night. It's African cooking and I'm really looking forward to experimenting with it as the weather cools down and food gets heartier!

I saw a scaled-down version of this in Starbucks along with some treats he created for them and it reminded me to pick this up. The photography is breathtaking, and actually, so is he. LOL

[robos]

For Japanese cooking, Shizuo Tsuji "Japanese Cooking-A Simple Art", foreword by Ruth Reichl and and an introduction by M.F.K.Fisher.

This book is a big source of inspiration.