Your Favorite (Can't Do Without) Cookbook

[highchef]

I've followed the "Cookbooks - How Many Do You Own?" thread.   Now I'd like to

ask - which is the one you have that you'd rescue if you could only pick one?  I've

purchased several based on what many of you have purchased or written about, 

but I guess I'm ultimately looking for the creme de la creme - an ultimate

collection.

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where are you from?

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Maryland - altho I lived for 2 yrs. in Baton Rouge and fell in love with Cajun/Creole cooking

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Then I highly reccommend John Folse's new cookbook, I believe you would enjoy it. can be ordered at www.jfolse.com

[eje]

One more. "The Art of Mexican Cooking" by Diana Kennedy. I just love this book. So many fantastic recipes.

Erik

[natasha1270]

Can I still keep my internet connection? While I dearly love all My Cookbooks, I find myself looking for recipes on the internet more and more.

I didn’t have the wonderful gift of inheriting a family cookbook so I have decided to compile one of my own – asking around the family so other recipes won’t get lost. I guess this is the one I would keep and also my piles of magazine clippings and misc other recipes I have not yet added.

N.

[MT-Tarragon]

I think that I would keep "The Making of a Cook" by Madeleine Kamman. It has a lot of great information on how to do things, as well as recipes. I can tweak recipes, or come up with things of the top of my head, but if I don't know how to do it I can look it up in this book.

If I were just looking for recipe lists, I'd probably keep "The New Basics Cookbook" or "The Complete Meat Cookbook."

[Timh]

Like scorchedpalate, I would forsake all of my other cookbooks to save my 4 volumes of recipes and notes from my professional career. Just about everything I've ever cooked , I jotted down notes about. While apprenticing in Japan, I logged everything, and in Paris, the same. They are my culinary soul.

Edited March 29, 2005 by Timh (log)

[Grub]

I'd never be able to restrict myself to a single book, so at most, I guess I'd go with this old "Woman's Day" encyclopedia series I've got laying around... It may seem completely outdated, and is filled with the type of discolored food pictures that end up being mocked on the Internet, but it has an enormous amount of great information, and although some aspects truly are outdated, it gives you a good insight into the way fads and fashions change in the food industry.

Better Homes and Garden ring-bound (convenient) is great also.

Right now, I'm going through the 7th edition of the Culinary Institute of America's "The Professional Chef." A tad ambitious, but great information.

Does anyone "annotate" their books? I always try to jot down a few notes about dishes I make...

[SuzySushi]

I also would choose to keep "my" cookbook of all the recipes I have on my computer that I've gotten from friends, copied down from other cookbooks, downloaded off the 'net, or developed myself. About one-third of them are tried-and-trues, the others yet to be made.

If I had to choose one book, however, I'd probably go with At Home with Japanese Cooking by Elizabeth Andoh (OP). It's my most food-stained. Every recipe I've tried tastes like what I remember eating at friends' homes in Japan. This is not restaurant food, folks, but flavors that remind me of my Japanese mama (a friend's mother who became like my family in Japan), in the days before fast-food became so popular.

[MicBacchus]

Thanks for the rec, highchef, it's on my wish list already!