Jump to content
  • Welcome to the eG Forums, a service of the eGullet Society for Culinary Arts & Letters. The Society is a 501(c)3 not-for-profit organization dedicated to the advancement of the culinary arts. These advertising-free forums are provided free of charge through donations from Society members. Anyone may read the forums, but to post you must create a free account.

The Best Cookbooks of 2011. So far...


LJHdineSRQ

Recommended Posts

[

I mean like traditional cultural food practices, such as regional Indian cookery, or rural Thai food, authentic Mexican, regional Chinese, etc. I'm not criticising Modern Cuisine

Have you seen India: the Cookbook? (Technically, end of last year, but still pretty recent) I'm wondering if it is worth buying (a tad expensive).

"I think it's a matter of principle that one should always try to avoid eating one's friends."--Doctor Dolittle

blog: The Institute for Impure Science

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Have you seen India: the Cookbook? (Technically, end of last year, but still pretty recent) I'm wondering if it is worth buying (a tad expensive).

^^^

Yeah, I have that one (last year? or was it this year...I'm not actually sure). It's excellent.

Jenni - have you any comment on the rather serious criticism on Amazon UK of a distinct lack of recipe-testing/proofreading?

This is a beautifully presented book, as all the Phaidon ones tend to be and the recipes are really enticing. Unfortunately I have tried three recipes so far and each and every one has failed as key ingredients are missing (yeast, I would assume, in the naan breads where it asks you to leave the dough for two hours to rise in a warm place) or it asks you to prepare ingredients for pastes which it then never refers to again (Imperial Chicken) or where it imagines you can make 12 portions of lentil filled puffed bread with only 1 tablespoon of self raising flour (which is going to form a dough to encircle 120g of lentils).

Beautiful but utterly worthless. I will be writing to Phaidon to complain and ask them to send me a corrected edition.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/product-reviews/0714859028/

"If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch ... you must first invent the universe." - Carl Sagan

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 6 months later...

Kokkari: Contemporary Greek Flavors

Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams

The Family Meal: Home Cooking with Ferran Adria

The Art of Beef Cutting: A Meat Professional's Guide to Butchering and Merchandising

Les Petits Macarons: Colorful French Confections to Make at Home

Edited by JBailey (log)

"A cloud o' dust! Could be most anything. Even a whirling dervish.

That, gentlemen, is the whirlingest dervish of them all." - The Professionals by Richard Brooks

Link to comment
Share on other sites

seems like it was a slow year, but I like Odd Bits quite a bit, though I have yet to acquire said bits to cook from it. I'm not too overly impressed with The Family Meal, do I really need photos to guide me through a Caprese salad? I love books with lots of photos, but to me it seems there's quite some filler in there to make the book nice and thick. An odd one IMO.

Modernist Cuisine - so far to me - is a great collection of photography, I have yet to cook from it, simply don't have the time for most of it. (and I'm still miffed at all the errors in the first edition, something I still believe should not have happened in a book collection of this caliber - and price)

I mostly got older books it seems, some in German, some about meat and meat cutting, but the year went by with not much that attracted me.

"And don't forget music - music in the kitchen is an essential ingredient!"

- Thomas Keller

Diablo Kitchen, my food blog

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Overall a very good year (including a few I will buy in the next few weeks and hopefully more time to cook after having our first baby three months ago):

- Modernist Cuisine

- Heston at home

- Eleven Madison Park

- Rustic Italian Food

- Volt INK

- The food of Morocco

- Essential Pepin

- Mourad - New Moroccan

- Odd Bits

- Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams

- Mozza

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It looks like all the 2011 cookbooks I'm interested in have been published; here are the ones I'm keeping:

- Foods of Morocco (Wolfert)

- Mourad: New Moroccan

- Mozza

- PDT Cocktail Book

- The Italian Baker, Revised (never bought the original, not sure how much I'll use this one)

- Momofuku Milk Bar

- Make the Bread, Buy the Butter (have been following her blog for a while, kind of a fun book which has convinced me to try making Camembert at home)

- Sweet Confections: Beautiful Candy to Make at Home (hate the title, but I bought it for the pumpkin and chocolate caramel recipes)

- Les Petits Macarons

- Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams

A few that I thought I would like and thus pre-ordered, but ended up being returned:

The Food of Spain (did exactly nothing for me, despite the nice photography)

Off the Menu

Sugar Baby

So, what's up for 2012?

Edited by mukki (log)
Link to comment
Share on other sites

An Everlasting Meal: Cooking with Economy and Grace by Tamar Adler with an introduction by Alice Waters (Oct 18, 2011).

Lyrical writing and a very different approach to meal preparation and planning. I was captivated by her relaxed approach to getting food on the plate and her philosophy of seeing the future possibilities of that food. I bought the Kindle edition and the downside to that is not being able to lend it out!

Anna Nielsen aka "Anna N"

...I just let people know about something I made for supper that they might enjoy, too. That's all it is. (Nigel Slater)

"Cooking is about doing the best with what you have . . . and succeeding." John Thorne

Our 2012 (Kerry Beal and me) Blog

My 2004 eG Blog

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I have to get Tamar's book, I took a butchery class from her a year or so ago that was a lot of fun. You'd never expect it from her (she's more on the petite side than burly butcher), but she carried half a pig from the walk in fridge to the cutting table! We shared the sawing though :-) We had a great bbq of some of the freshly butchered instruction meat and got a good load of meat to take home :-)

She's a great instructor, I expect that book to be a winner.

"And don't forget music - music in the kitchen is an essential ingredient!"

- Thomas Keller

Diablo Kitchen, my food blog

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Overall a very good year (including a few I will buy in the next few weeks and hopefully more time to cook after having our first baby three months ago):

- The food of Morocco

- Essential Pepin

Good luck on the cooking - my kid's six and I'm still hoping I'll have more time to cook some time soon (said only half in jest).

Ok, do these books add anything different to their earlier editions. If I have Paula's first Moroccan book and Complete Techniques is there any point in looking at these?

Cheers,

Geoff

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think both Wolfert books are quite similar whereas the Pepin books might have some small overlap in recipes but are very different. (Cooking got already much better over the last few weeks - we are close to our old schedule of cooking 3-4 times a week and going to restaurants with our daughter 2-3 times).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 4 weeks later...

Many fine books this year, but right now I am anxiously awaiting the arrival of "The Art of Living According to Joe Beef". I ordered it as soon as I knew I wasn't getting it as a Christmas gift. First glance at a friend's copy a couple of week's ago was love at first sight.

Jerry

Kansas City, Mo.

Unsaved Loved Ones

My eG Food Blog- 2011

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Many fine books this year, but right now I am anxiously awaiting the arrival of "The Art of Living According to Joe Beef". I ordered it as soon as I knew I wasn't getting it as a Christmas gift. First glance at a friend's copy a couple of week's ago was love at first sight.

I picked that one up at Homesense the other day (the Canadian version of Marshall's housewares dept) - I saw the bone marrow picture and since that was one of my favourite dishes at Joe Beef I had to have it. Sadly it's not the same as they make the marrow at the restaurant.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
×
×
  • Create New...