cookbook gifts for overseas foodies?

My Aussie brother in law is a food lover, and he's hinted he'd love some new cookbooks for the holidays (as gifts). Obviously there is a whole range of cuisine unavailable to him in Sydney, from Mexican to BBQ, so I could always go with, say, a Bayless book, but does anyone have any other good recommendations?

I'm loving Alinia , but most of the recipes end up with me getting to the sixth or seventh prep and going "yeah, right."
The Alinea At Home blog has been doing the easy ones -- only two two four preps per dish. I'm waiting for her to get to "Chestnut, too many garishes to list" or "Liquid Chocolate" and see how she's been spending three weeks on it.

Um, don't know a whole lot about Sydney, having never been. But a visit to a Sydney tourism website just returned four pages listing Mexican and BBQ restaurants (about 40 of the former and 10 of the latter). It's a city of over 4 million, the largest in Australia. While I don't doubt that they have gaps--just as we do--you might want to do a little sleuthing before deciding on which cuisines to focus on. (That said, I love my Bayless book to death; it's one of those great books where everything works!)

I also know next to nothing about Australia, but are you sure that the ingredients for Mexican food are readily available there? The cookbook could end up being frustrating.I remember when I bought Bayless' Authentic Mexican book when I lived in New England, some of the ingredients were difficult to find locally.

Well I actually know a lot about Australia, so I do have a few thoughts on this.

First, I'd try to find a cookbook that has both U.S. Standard and Metric -- and, if you can find it, British Imperial. If not, maybe print out a conversion chart from the Internet and insert it in the book. In Australia, they use a combination of British and Metric, so it's important for them to realize that, for example, our cup is 8 oz, while theirs will be 10 oz.

Asia is almost spitting distance from Oz, so the country was inundated with great Asian food long before the first Mexican place popped up. (On my first trip down, 20 years ago, every shopping mall had a food court with Malaysian, Cambodian, Vietnamese, and Indonesian food, and you could even find street vendors selling hot goat curry or grilled octopus). So I'm thinking Rick Bayless would be a much better choice than, say, anything from Asia (though Indian cuisine is not an overwhelming presence in Australia, like SE Asian is). They may have Mexican restaurants now, but it's not ingrained, like it is here. So any of Bayless's books are a good idea.

Anything North American is cool, in fact -- Cajun, Creole, Southwest classics, New England, Old South -- stuff that is present to some degree but less familiar.

There was a huge influx from Europe after World War II (for example, Melbourne has the third largest Greek-speaking community in the world, after Athens and Thessolonica), so most of Europe is well represented, both in restaurants and cookbooks.

So my top recommendations would probably be to go with the Bayless and (depending on how many books you're sending) some other North American regional cuisines, and maybe dip into something nouveau or artistic -- not a particular ethnicity, but just something that makes your mouth water.

rickster wrote:I also know next to nothing about Australia, but are you sure that the ingredients for Mexican food are readily available there? The cookbook could end up being frustrating.I remember when I bought Bayless' Authentic Mexican book when I lived in New England, some of the ingredients were difficult to find locally.

Good point. But if the restaurants are there, it can't be impossible to find the ingredients, at least not all of them.

Another thought would be South American cuisine. I didn't think of it before, but I can't remember seeing a lot of South American places in Australia, but much South American cuisine relies on foods that are abundant in Australia -- avocado, corn, beef, fresh seafood, citrus.

I actually know what they have there, cuisine-wise - I've been to Sydney a couple of times and I know the differences in measurement (two of my fave cookbooks, in fact, are my Bill Granger books, which helpfully include both metric and US friendly measurements). So, yeah, I know what food they have there that's readily available, and I know what food they have there generally. It's Sydney, not Alice Springs, and like any big cosmopolitan city, they have pretty much everything (albeit to different degrees than they do here, of course - more Asian, less Mexican, though the latter does indeed exist).

What I was looking for was a specific recommendations, beyond my own Bayless idea. Does anyone out there have any faves that should be on every bookshelf, US, UK, Aus or elsewhere? The Alinea book isn't a bad idea, but it seems less practical than coffee table. Also, ideally, the lighter the book, the better. There's no Amazon.au, so shipping's on me!

Vitesse98-

Here is a thread that discusses cookbooks generally.

FWIW, I really like The Zuni Cafe cookbook, but that's because I like that type of food and the results surpass the amount of work I put into the executing the recipes, which for me, is a good thing. Few things are worse than the feeling of, say, meticulously spending 4 hours carmelizing onions (think: Keller's Bouchon cookbook) only to get onion soup that's just-as-good as the one from the Les Halles cookbook, which takes half the time to make. I anticipate that, the type of cookbook your giftees will enjoy is largely based upon (1) the type of food they like and (2) the type of food they like to cook. As I intimated above, some foods taste much better if someone else puts in the labor in to make them.

Vitesse98 wrote:What I was looking for was a specific recommendations, beyond my own Bayless idea.

Okay, this is partly my fault. I unintentionally hijacked the thread by reacting to your comment about cuisines that weren't represented there. Sorry 'bout that.

In answer to the precise question, therefore, let me offer some suggestions, beginning with one of the most well-used cookbooks in my collection: Huntley Dent's "The Feast of Santa Fe: Cooking of the American Southwest." While it doesn't contain measurements as recommended by Cynthia--a really excellent point, btw--her suggestion to print your own conversion table should solve that problem. I have found Dent's book to be not only very informative but the recipes to be authentic and do-able without spending an entire day.

In that vein, I'd also recommend Katharine Kagel's "Cafe Pasqual's Cookbook: Spirited Recipes from Santa Fe"--a little fancier than Dent, a little more work, but also top-notch recipes from one of the best restaurants there.

Staying in the U.S., I only have Paul Prudhomme's first book, but it is also one of the most well-used books in my collection and his recipes are straightforward, fascinating, and uniformly delicious.

For something off the beaten track, how about:
1. George Lang's "Cuisine of Hungary," a classic if ever there was one;
2. any of Lesley Chamberlain's multiple works on Russia and/or Eastern Europe? He has several, all uniformly excellent and informative (and also likely to include British and/or metric measurements since he is British and his recipes are written that way); or
3. Mary Taylor Simeti's "Sicilian Food" (originally published as "Pomp and Sustenance"). She's a wonderful writer and eminently reliable; and, finally,
4. If you can find it, Christiane Nasser's "Classic Palestinian Cookery" is excellent on a little-known cuisine.

Hope this is a bit more helpful. Good luck!

Great suggestions, thanks! Now I need to whittle some ideas down to what's available on paperback. Otherwise it will cost me as much to send (or more) than to buy!

Vitesse98 wrote:Now I need to whittle some ideas down to what's available on paperback.

I know that both the Dent and Kagel are (or at least were) in paperback. The Prudhomme, I can honestly say I've never seen in pb, though I might have missed it.

The Lang, Simeti, Chamberlain, and Nasser are all in paperback as well (I know because my copies of each are paper).

Happy buying!

Hi,

Personally, I would haunt used book stores. The savings in cost will pay for the transportation. It may not be the cutting edge book, it will certainly be vintage.

Since the Frugal Gourmet had his personal scandal and disapeered from television. His books are often found cheap in used book stores. I would certainly get the books: The Frugal Gourmet Cooks American and The Frugal Gourmet on Our Immigrant Ancestors on American Food.

The guy may have a messed up personal life and a crank off camera. However those books celebrate American culture plus his books are in hardcover and paperback. Another book celebrating our culture with lots of history is American Food by Evan Jones. It's a book from the 1970's recently republished in paperback.

When I was in Moscow years ago, I had maybe 20 cookbooks with me. Amongst those was American Food, the Joy of Cooking, several Russian cookbooks, two books on Chinese cooking: a general book and one specific to dim sum.

Regards,