Which cookbook to cook through?

LTHers--

I have a request for a young colleague of mine. He's just entered a rough break-up period from a long-term relationship. Today he mentioned to me that he'd like to have a project, maybe cooking his way through a cookbook--and did I know one? Here's the back story: he's had some experience as a chef at a decent level. He'd like to do something with a fair amount of meat in it. And he'd like something with some real variety, and a bit challenging. Any ideas??

Geo

One of Fuchsia Dunlop's books. I'd recommend the 'Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook,' both for its prose and its top-notch recipes; 'Land of Plenty' is mighty fine, too.

Ad Hoc At Home, or just about any Keller cookbook popped in my head first. Bottega by Michael Chiarello, Cooking By Hand by Paul Bertolli, and Zuni Cafe Cookbook would also be good IMO.

On the meat front, I have heard great things about several recipes already from April Bloomfield's A Girl and Her Pig.

Any old Farm Journal Cookbook is good, this is my wife's favorite from 1959



It has recipes for real food you'll recognize, and also game recipes for coon, venison, etc. It's fun to just sit and read some of them once in awhile.

It's kind of old fashioned/sexist the way it's written, but that's fun too....... at least to me.

Tim

Geo,

I am sorry for your friend's misfortunes. It sounds like he is taking a sure-fire approach to beat back the blues, however. One thing that might concentrate the benefits of cooking for this purpose is to share the shopping, cooking - or just the eating - with a good friend. Works like a charm.

I second the recommendations for A Girl and Her Pig and the Zuni Cafe Cookbook by Judy Rodgers. From the current cannon, I'll add David Chang's Momofuku, already a topic on this board. All of these books recommend themselves by including dishes that could be described as comfort food, but which offer important lessons in technique.

I have another suggestion that might serve if your friend has a robust sense of humor and is not yet at the point of having a great deal of energy for a new enterprise. It is the truly hilarious, illustrated, "Eating in Bed Cookbook" (1962) by Barbara Ninde Byfield. The author is/was quite the wit. And the focus on luxuriously comforting recipes for all the woes that plague us is just the thing to cheer one up, even if one only reads the recipes.This blog post catches the spirit of the book, which I cannot recommend highly enough. And don't take my word for it. The book made the Saveur 100 a few years back.

Perhaps Fergus Henderson's The Whole Beast.

Freezer Pig wrote:Any old Farm Journal Cookbook is good, this is my wife's favorite from 1959



It has recipes for real food you'll recognize, and also game recipes for coon, venison, etc. It's fun to just sit and read some of them once in awhile.

It's kind of old fashioned/sexist the way it's written, but that's fun too....... at least to me.

Tim

Whenever I come upon a Farm Journal cookbook, I buy it. There are specific books on a variety of topics from cookies, canning (I have the early and later editions, because it is not precisely the same), pies, vegetables and such. Farm Journal magazine's website has a section devoted to recipes from their books, staff and friends: http://www.agweb.com/farmjournal/country_kitchen.aspx

Looking through website I found articles on how farmers use twitter and a rather dismaying report on drought affecting winter wheat.

Regards,