Which Cookbooks DON'T You Use & Why?

[Mikeb19]

I don't buy and read cookbooks necessarily for the recipes, rather for the techniques, inspiration, stories, etc... I enjoyed reading Thomas Keller's books but honestly am not all that moved by the recipes. And then theres Pierre Gagnaires 'Reflections on Culinary Artistry' - it's not even a cookbook, rather just a bunch of pictures and PG's stories of inspiration. Aquavit was another of my favourite books to read, but I don't really use the recipes.

Cookbooks that I do occasionally use - Michel Bras' self titled book, Ducasse's encyclopedia, Pierre Hermés ph10, and my Larousse des Desserts.

Lately though, as wierd as it seems, the book I've been looking through most is a cheap book on Ukrainian food (my grandmother died before she could teach me Ukrainian cooking, this style of cuisine was my inspiration to start cooking in the first place).

[Porthos]

My sweet wife bought me an Emeril cookbook based upon his restaurant menus last year. I will most likely never even crack it open a second time. I have an aversion to his adding extras to recipes that add clutter to the taste. He's fun to watch occasionally but that's about it for me.

It's interesting that I just finished Julia Child's biographical work My Life in France because of a quote from Curnonsky that she included: "Food that tastes of what it is." That line jumped off the page for me.

I just bought a cookbook up in Virginia City, NV on cast iron dutch oven cookery for it's sourdough recipes. Let's see if this one gets used...

Porthos Potwatcher

The Unrelenting Carnivore

[sugar plum]

As a gift, we received a dreaded Rachael Ray cookbook and I "made it disappear". I still don't think my SO has noticed it's not there anymore! Other than that, I really try to use all of the cookbooks I own. If I don't, I give them away to friends or donate them.

Before buying yet another cookbook, I usually try to see if I can borrow it first from the library. I trial a few recipes and then decide from there if it's really worth purchasing.

[Sararwelch]

I am most definitely a sucker for cookbooks with pretty pictures. I am trying to get into the habit of using my cookbooks more often. The problem is that, while I love to cook, I find it takes a lot more time to try to follow a recipe exactly. Most nights, I'm just looking to get dinner on the table in a reasonable amount of time and I don't want to be bothered with consulting a cookbook every 10 seconds.

Along the same lines, while I spend a good portion of my free time cooking, some of these restaurant cookbook recipes are extremely time consuming. One of my restaurant cookbooks has a chinese chicken salad that when you add up all of the parts of the recipe, you end up with about 50 ingredients. I really don't need any more $$ condiments in my fridge that I'm going to struggle to use past the original recipe.

That being said, my new year's resolution is to actually use my cookbooks. I think it's a good way to expand my culinary repetoire, even if I don't repeat the exact recipe again.

[snowangel]

Probably the most disappointing cookbook I ever bought was Barbara Tropp's Blue Moon Cafe book. The thing languishes, requiring all manner of "potions" that required a pick-up load of ingredients to make.

The true test of this book: I did some "home shopping" and gave it as a gift to someone who said that they were lusting after the book.

This book was re-gifted many times, and finally ended up back on my doorstep. None of us could wrap our hands around the bazillion potions that were required for any of the recipes. So, I hauled it Half-Price books, hopeing to get at least a cheesy mystery in excahnge. But, they had too many copies of this book on the shelf.

So sad, considering how absolutely wonderfl and essential her "Modern Art of Chinese Cooking" has been in my collection.

Oh, and think a re-gifting (home shopping!) of "A New Way to Cook" might be in order. Another one I can't wrap my arms around.

Hopefully, one of these days, my arms will randomly and blindly select this one for an entry in the Cookbook Roulette topic!

[suzilightning]

this reminds me of an axiom in my business "20% of all books make up 80% of your circulation".

i borrow books from the library or through Interlibrary Loan and decide if they are something i want to own (thank you Pam R. for the soup cookbook that i had to buy - and have turned a couple at my library who keep kosher onto - Randi demanded a copy for Chanukkah).

if i don't use them they go on the FREE Cookbook thread. i also do as many do and look at several books to synthesize a final recipe. but i HAVE to have my Fanny Farmers for my pot du creme and the banana cake recipe, the midwest cookbook for the cooked slaw recipe, the shelter island cookbook for - ok- sentimental reasons and the good recipe for crab imperial(sorry mom<looks up to heaven> but the bluefish baked with french salad dressing just doesn't do it for me)..

just read Black Forest Cuisine. would not bother buying it and it really needed some better editing for language and ingredients. one recipe listed 4 bottles of lager and only listed the use of 3 in the recipe... i guess you were supposed to drink the 4th?

[dockhl]

Oh, and think a re-gifting (home shopping!) of "A New Way to Cook" might be in order.    Another one I can't wrap my arms around.

Susan~

ditto. In fact, I've picked it up MANY times and started reading through it exclaiming, "Yes! Good! Maybe I'll start here!" only to put it back down for many more months. What is it about this book?

Once upon a time I'd had a discussion with some othe members about cooking our way through it, but it never came to fruition. Any interest?

[kieran]

[As for Deborah Madison: there seem to be VERY strong opinions on both sides of the camp on that one.  I made a good friend in grad school in a town known for its potlucks and vegetarians.  She hates Greens and thinks it's too fussy (and this is a person who bakes her own VERY good baguettes) and for that reason, never bought anything else by the author.  James Peterson is HER man.  While I never attempted the cannoli with beet greens and walnut sauce as described by the fat, bearded Russian specialist who sold me on the book, I have made more than 3 dozen things and own two other latter books by Madison. 

Over time, she simplified as many of us do. 

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this is an interesting thread and pontormo brings up very good points. i just wanted to add that different books serve different purposes. the madison books are a good example (obligatory disclosure once again: she's a very good friend and in fact wrote part of the greens book at my house). Greens is a very specific book: written about the cuisine of a restaurant in the first place, and a restaurant that was famous (justly i think) for breaking teh nutloaf and tabbouleh image most people at that time had of vegetarian cuisine. her later books are simpler because they are reflective of her home cooking (as opposed to restaurant cooking).

there are authors, like st. marcella, who mine the same vein through their whole career (and still come up with gold). but i think there are just as many whose work evolves over time.

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Okay, somehow I missed this thread the first time around, but the recent bump brought it to my attention. We're not vegetarian in our house, but we've made more recipes from Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone than from any other cookbook. It's certainly a great compendium of information, but that's not why we keep going back to it. We keep going back to it because the recipes are achievable and because we have yet to try one that hasn't turned out great (and we've probably tried 50-60 of them over the years). We do have three of Deborah Madison's other cookbooks and we don't turn to them as often. If I had to pick a number two I'd go with Local Flavors.

My husband uses Rick Bayless's Mexican Everyday pretty often and has been very happy with it. I haven't used it myself, but I've been very happy with his results.

The other cookbook I find myself turning to is Mark Bittman's Fish. I love seafood, but for a long time felt that it was too intimidating to cook. His book helped me get over that, and it's still a favorite.

Cookbooks we still have but could do without are Mario Batali's. Love the idea of his food, and I've enjoyed trips to his restaurants, but we're not able to really execute on the recipes.

[JacobCooks]

I have Gisslen's "Professional Cooking," and I'm always reading it to look back on basic techniques, yet never use the recipes in it. Almost every single recipe makes 12-20 servings, and I haven't had that many people over yet, or have the desire to eat that much LOL.

[Pontormo]

Probably the most disappointing cookbook I ever bought was Barbara Tropp's Blue Moon Cafe book.  The thing languishes, requiring all manner of "potions" that required a pick-up load of ingredients to make.

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Interesting Freudian slip, Susan! If once in a blue moon you decide to use this book might I suggest the following:

-Chili-orange oil

This is the only infusion I bothered to make; takes a while, like ragu & stock, and just as worthwhile if you're going to try any of the recipes from China Moon. Last bottle got used regularly one hot summer, oh maybe 2-3 years ago. Not sure. It's been sitting in the back of the refrigerator since then despite its reported versatility.

-Stir-fried orange beef with chilis and wild mushrooms

As with every dish (five?) I've prepared from this book, I made lots of substitutions for ingredients I didn't have, buy or like. I modified amounts and noted that the red peppers and red onion were the best of the tons of vegetables required to counter-act a tendency towards soupy results that one achieves with many of the recipes unless your stove has professional-level heat or far-reaching flames that will flare over the broad flat surface of the pan you use instead of a round wok. Made with flank steak, this is a delicious dish nonetheless.

-Stir-fried pork ribbons with asparagus, orange and hot bean paste

My favorite. The only recipe I've made over and over again, with many, many omissions, adding red peppers, though.

-Chili-orange cold noodles

The reason I made the infused oil in the first place. I've made variations with rice noodles and slivered Chinese BBQed pork. As is the case with so many cold Asian noodle dishes, I ate it so many times that I can never again. Thus, the bottle of untouched chili-orange oil in my fridge.

* * *

We're told recipes are merely guidelines, so you're supposed to not feel inhibited by meticulous, wordy instructions or long lists of ingredients divided into sections for different components of the dish. However, it's hard not to feel that there's a wide divide between the author's approach to food and your own when recipes appear more daunting than fun. Cf. what Russ Parsons says about Madison's Greens vs. VegC4E. This is Tropp's restaurant book, too.

[djyee100]

I have three shelves of cookbooks, and like everybody else I have my heavy favorites, my occasionals, my old buddies I can't throw away, my disappointments with one redeeming recipe, and my disappointments, period.

Heavy favorites: Something just clicks when I cook out of these books. I understand what the author is getting at and the recipes turn out wonderful. Also, many of the recipes are for meals: I can sit down and eat dinner!

I've cooked 30 recipes or more out of these books: Judy Rodgers' Zuni Cafe cookbook, Paula Wolfert's Slow Mediterranean Kitchen, Annie Somerville's Everyday Greens, and Beverly Gannon's Hali'imaile General Store Cookbook.

Occasionals: Joanne Weir's cookbooks fall into this category, although her From Tapas to Meze may make it to the Favorites someday. Weir's recipes are good, but somehow the recipes are never just right for me. They always require some serious tweaking.

My old buddies: Once I cooked a lot out of these books, but now I almost never do. The Vegetarian Epicure books by Anna Thomas, during my vegetarian fling days. Ditto the Tassajara cookbooks. I loved Darra Goldstein's A La Russe (still do) but I moved from the wintry East Coast to balmy California, and I no longer eat that kind of food. I don't discard these cookbooks, though. It would be like throwing away part of my history.

My disappointments with one redeeming recipe: For example, Homebaking by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid. I tried 14 recipes from this book, with too many mediocre results and a few crashing failures. Yet the ciabatta recipe is just great. So the book stays on my shelf. Besides, the pictures are wonderful.

Disappointments, period: Chez Panisse Vegetables and Chez Panisse Fruit. I bought Chez Panisse Vegetables in a fit of ambition. Now I wonder, Why did I buy a vegetables (you know, green) recipe book with a black cover? That black cover should have told me to stay away from the get-go!

Both books stay unused because the recipes can be a tad complicated, with ingredients I don't have, and with more steps than I want to deal with sometimes. I hate to admit this, but I would be more inspired to cook out of these books if there were a few nice pictures. Also, I want recipes to cook a meal, and these books include mostly side dishes, or in the case of the Fruit cookbook, desserts. But I don't throw them away because I sometimes use them for reference.

Last month, in my pre-holiday end-of-the-year cleaning, I went through my cookbooks again. I found two cookbooks from which I have never cooked anything. One was The International Cookie Jar Cookbook by Anita Borghese. I bought it in 1975. The cookbook was intended for children no less, but it is fearsomely complicated with hard-to-find ingredients. I reread the cookbook, and after 30 years of dedicated cooking, I can now probably handle the recipes. So I put the cookbook back on the shelf.

The other never-used cookbook is Marc Cramer's Imperial Mongolian Cooking. When I perused the book at the store, I came across a recipe that requires mare's milk (you can substitute goat's milk). How could I resist? And it was on sale! 75% off! Imperial Mongolian Cooking is still on my shelf. I have high hopes for it.

[cfm]

The stripey hardback edition that I have of "A New Way to Cook" is such an attractive book - pretty in a businesslike way - but so difficult use. It feels as if you'd have to make notes from several different bits of the book onto one sheet of paper so that you would have something to refer to once your hands were dirty. Lifting it off the shelf, I see that I have put some post-its in it - this is a sure sign I'm trying to will myself to use the book. One thing that worked very well was Slow-Roasted Stone Fruits, but to follow the recipe, you have to study the "guide to improvising" for roasted fruits on the previous page, making some omissions that turn out to be re-added later on. After this, the recipe comes down to the insight that "peaches taste good halved and roasted at 275 for 2 hours with a little butter and sugar and maybe lemon juice." Which insight is almost completely obscured by the presentation.

Anyway, the reason I wanted to add this post was to ask if anyone had participated in the Barnes and Noble BookGroup for this book and if that had helped? I noticed that B&N had had this in the past, but couldn't find any storage facility on their site which would allow me to refer to it now that it is finished. It seemed an unusual choice of book for a bookgroup, but I was intrigued to know what went on because of my long evenings putting post-its in the book while watching TV which were later put to no real use in the kitchen.

Catherine MacColl

[Aileen]

Besides The French Laundry Cookbook, which I don't use because most of those I cook for wouldn't care for the food, I've had a lot of problems with Tyler Florence's Real Kitchen. I had downloaded quite a few recipes from the Food Network site and made them with great success, but after buying the book I realized that the recipes in the book are different from the ones on the site, by just enough to sometimes ruin the dish (for example, calling for a 15 oz can of diced tomatoes in the online version and a 28 oz can of the same in the book. Didn't realize it until it was too late.)

[PaniniGuy]

Somebody bought me an Emeril book as a gift for my last birthday, not knowing my personal rule of never buying any cookbook that references a chef's special spice mix in any recipe (and Bayless is becoming guilty of this).

I felt the same way about Prudhomme and I think Bayless is becoming guilty of this as well - saw him at a recent local appearance and the recipe handouts all included Frontera sauces.

That ain't cooking.

I never liked the Silver Palate books because they seemed too "precious". I've also learned greater appreciation of books that include technique and stories behind the recipes instead of simply a compilation of recipes.

I use Deborah Madison's and James Peterson's soup books quite often in our shop. For home cooking, the book that the biggest stained, dog-eared mess is "Madhur Jaffrey's Indian Cooking". Must've tried 40+ recipes out of that one and they all work.

After Jaffrey, probably my most used are Vincent Gueritheault's "Vincent's Cookbook" (still love that place); Hazan's "Essentials" and Joyce Goldstein's "Mediterranean Kitchen".

Still haven't cooked anything out of French Laundry yet.

[Elrushbo]

I have my mom's old Time-Life cookbooks. They have beautiful pictures, I have used them, but I admit I rarely use them anymore since I started getting celeb-chef books. The Italian one has a great recipie for pizza dough and sauce.

I rarely use my Mahdur Jaffrey's Indian Cooking book cause my wife hates Indian food. I'd be making stuff from that all the time otherwise. Butter chicken...mmmmm.

I actually made four things from my Mario Batali book last night, all were hits, so that book might get some more use.

[apronstrings]

Silver Palate may be precious, but they have some kick ass recipes. Chili, lime mousse, cold crab claws, chicken Mirabella. The books I never use are Paul Prudhomme's. And I have over 400, not counting the magazines. I try to utilize 3 recipes from each cookbook I buy.

I'v gotten a lot of nice ones at COSTCO...New York Times Desserts, Kafka's Roasting, Martha Stewart Baking, Gourmet, Dorie Greenspan. If I don't care for them after a week or two, I just bring them back with no problem!

[Torrilin]

I hid all the cookbooks I don't use in my mom's book boxes when we moved. She moved "into town", and I moved across the country.

I don't miss them. Among them was a compilation of Mark Bittman columns (never used), an Asian vegetable identification guide, a rather slender in utility Chinese cookbook, and a few others I can't recall now.

The ones that came with me have all seen use, tho in some cases not as much as I'd like.

[birder53]

We're getting ready to move, which means making decisions about what to take and what to ditch. There is a box of cookbooks ready for a niece who collects any and all cookbooks. (Just wait until she has to move!) At the end of the day, we kept very few cookbooks. They've been replaced by Fine Cooking magazine since 2001. We still refer to the Joy of Cooking for information on ingredients and cooking methods, but not the recipes. We bought Cafe Pasqual's Cookbook, mostly because we enjoyed the restaurant so much, and made one dish. Most sound wonderful but involve more work and ingredients than we care to take on. Julia Child's The Way to Cook was purchased because of recommendations on this site, but a lot of the recipes seem dated and don't really appeal to me. It hasn't been used at all! Many years ago we were big fans of The 60 Minute Gourmet recipe collections from the New York Times, but we hadn't used them in quite a long time. They always took much longer than 60 minutes and now they will belong to the niece. It feels great to get rid of things we don't use. Many of the unused books were also gifts. I vow to never give the gift of a cookbook unless the recipient has specifically requested that book.

On the other hand, the collection of cocktail books continues to grow and they all get used.

[Rebecca263]

I used to sell 'used' books and have had an alarming number of mostly older cookbooks come through my life. I love so many of my cookbooks, but had never felt drawn to The Joy of Cooking book. Last year, I got a copy during one of my forays, and kept it, instead of diverting it to epaY. Everyone on the how many cookbooks thread raved so about it, what was I missing?

UGH. I apologize, but it just has no charm for me. I have actually used it not ONCE. AND, it is banished from the bedside, too.

I DO actually use my facsimile of the Buckeye cookbook, though. I guess there's no accounting for taste, sometimes.

My standbys are Deal Delights, my James Beard paperbacks, Michel Guirard books, New York Times Cookbook- and then maybe 50 others. All of the rest are used for just a few recipes apiece, or the writing style of the author.

Of course, the Gourmet annuals are for holding up lamps on sidetables!

Rebecca (who finds the writing style of 'receipts' in the Buckeye book to be the same as that of her relatives- full of assumptions that you already know everything! )

Edited February 6, 2007 by Rebecca263 (log)

[takomabaker]

Gosh, I just stared exploring other areas of Egullet (I usually hang out in pastry) and I really like this. I have three Ikea shelves full of cookbooks, and my guess is that I'm an amateur collector by some standards.

I have a really nostalgic connection to cookbooks. When I was in college, I used to go to a local book fair that sold overstocks and seconds. I went for class books (I was an English and theater major so I saved a LOT of money buying paperback seconds rather than buying them from my college bookstore). I was living in a dorm with a shared and completely useless (except for microwave popcorn) kitchen, but I used to buy cookbooks and keep them under my bed and make up dinner menus for after graduation. I still have a lot of those books, even though I don't use them, but I could never give them up. My 21-year-old signature is still in them on the first page. I have Piret's, New Carry Out Cuisine, and other obscure but pretty decent old 80's classics. I bought a book on Christmas feasts throughout history, and we were studying Roman festival theater at the time, and the theater department put on a Saturnalia feast complete with a phallus on a pole and I provided the "authentic" food.

After graduation, I worked for a theater that rented space for its costume shop next to a used bookstore. I bought both Silver Palate cookbooks. I shared a house with all vegetarian company members. The first "dinner party" I had was the Quattro Formmagi and chocolate mousse from the first Silver Palate. And on a visit home, I got my mother's dog-eared Vegetarian Epicure. My sister, who still lived at home, was so mad at me for taking it that I had to buy another copy and send it to her just to shut her up.

And I kind of segued from theater into advertising, and I was working in the creative department of a large ad agency that was on the same street as a little French cooking school. I used to pick up their catalogue and circle classes I wanted to take, but I was working 75 - 80 hours a week and had no way of actually taking them. And I never cooked a meal for myself. I was the stereotypical person who had moldy carry-out and water in her fridge. ALL of my meals were take-out, usually consumed at my desk. But I still collected cookbooks, and still read them like bibles. But after working in advertising for 12 years, the agency I worked for closed and I started working a normal workday in the marketing department of a non-profit, and I started taking classes at that school at night in their recreational division, and after a few years I bit the bullet and enrolled in their professional evening pastry program.

And so now, all I wanted for Christmas was Patisserie by Pierre Herme and Grand Livre de Cuisine by Alain Ducasse. And my mother gave me my grandmother's very old and falling apart Joy of Cooking after my grandmother passed away. It has an inscription from her older sister that instructs, "The way to a man's heart is through his stomach". Gone are those days of being able to get excited about the cookbook I bought for two bucks on an overstock table. Every once in a while, I drop off a few boxes of cookbooks that turned out to be duds to my local charity used bookstore. But I still have many of the books that I have bought throughout my life. Let's face it, cookbooks are a lot more than just pages filled with recipes. Every book on my shelf brings me back to a certain place in my life.

[Jujubee]

I have A New Way to Cook too, and I also very rarely use it. On the occasions I have, though, the food has actually been pretty easy and surprisingly tasty. So why don't I use it more? My theory is that books that are written to look more novel-y and less cookbook-y seem harder. I include books like Zuni Cafe and Chez Panisse in this category. Somehow, in my brain it seems like something I have to sit down and study, and less easy to read a couple of sentences at a time while puttering around in the kitchen. Seemingly insignificant things like numbering the steps and generous use of boldface, italics, and blank space really help to make the recipe seem more user-friendly to me. I think subconciously if it looks like a recipe I think "do" and if it looks like a lot of text I think "read and learn." Also, even if a cookbook technically employs a traditional recipe format, sometimes the look and feel of the book (paper type and color, width and height, etc) can make me subconsiously relegate it to non-usable status.

Shallow? Yes. But as much as I try to get over this, I can't.

[CaliPoutine]

I've never used Death by Chocolate, by desaulier(sp?). I've always intended to, but just never got around to making any of the desserts.

Edited February 16, 2007 by CaliPoutine (log)

[mrsadm]

My cookbooks are a sign of HOPE and Confidence.

Hope that someday I will use them. Confident that I will learn something from most of them.

Until then - perhaps in retirement, someday - I must beat my husband off with a stick so he won't sell them on e-bay!

[DMS]

Unburying a thread to confess. I am looking at my bookshelf right now and realized I have never used:

The Italian Country Table by Lynn Rosetto Kasper

Lidia's Italian-American Kitchen by Lidia Matticchio Bastianich

Molto Mario by Mario Batali

The New Way to Cook by Sally Schneider

A bit of a theme there it seems.... I echo the previous comments on The New Way to Cook - it seems like every time I've pulled that book out the make something, I have to back refer to four other recipes or concoctions that I should have done days ago. I have really tried to like this book but am failing miserably. I think every time I hear her on Lynn's NPR show, I like what I hear, pick up the book again and meh.

I can't explain the Italy-phobia on the first three, I should probably take another look in guilt. Might have something to do with finding specialty ingredients is my guess (except for Lidia). Cooking regional Italian is all about the ingredients, obviously. I'll add that those are four books alone in a sea of about 40 other pretty solid cookbooks (various Peterson, Madison, Pepin, Cooks Illustrated, Bittman, etc...) which I use fairly often for one thing or another.

Dennis

[heidih]

I find that I usually use cookbooks as ideas rather than recipes. Up thread there was a bit of discussion about Barbara Tropp's "China Moon" cookbook. Oddly I read a review of it and was intrigued by the idea of having to make all those "potions". Of course I never did, but I count this one with my anecdotal books- her side-bars are great - Jacque Pepin drinking champagne and helping in the kitchen, reviving her double stocks after the earthquake. The book inspired me to try alot of stuff like the pickled ginger, things using fermented black beans, her Mandarin bread twists (I was at my local Chinese market Ranch 99 on mother's day morning when my son was 2 getting black & white sesame seeds). I have a ton of those "x" The Beautiful. I love the pics, but don't follow the recipes.