What's new (or old) and interesting on your cookbook shelf?

I was perusing the cookbook shelf today at Barnes & Noble and I'm eyeing a couple new cookbooks. The first was Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles cookbook, which after a few minutes browsing, I could tell it was written with his inimitable wit, as well as kindness to home cooks who don't have a kitchen staff and butcher at their disposal.

I'm also intrigued by the updated Best Recipes from the folks at Cooks/America's Test Kitchen. It seems like a great reference, and I'm fully addicted to the overkill of information in the pages of Cooks.

I was looking for Jacques Pepin's new Fast Food book, but strangely couldn't find it on the shelf.

I do so little fancy cooking now that I rarely refer to recipes for dinner. Also, the availability of recipes on All Recipes or Epicurious has made recipe books somewhat obsolete. Most of my recent cookbooks have been for baking, which I really don't "wing" in any sense of the word.

My newest cookbook is the King Arthur Flour Baking Book, which has scored once with a great recipe for gingerbread men, and provided a slight disappointment with a strange too-liquidy scone recipe. I also purchased Maida Heatter's Cookie Book last year, as well as Joe Ortiz's The Regional Baker, which now has my standard challah recipe.

As for old standards, my brother still uses The New Basics quite a lot, so I pulled that off my shelf. It seems a bit dated now -- strangely its "new" late 80s style has aged worse than the revised (or even the older) Joy of Cooking. I love the New Joy of Cooking for its simplicity in tone and it reference.

I don't currently have a food science reference book (ala Shirley Corriher), but would be happy to entertain recommendations.
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I just got a first edition copy of the Betty Crocker Cooky Book (Their spelling) for my wife as a Christmas gift.

Franabanana wrote:I was looking for Jacques Pepin's new Fast Food book, but strangely couldn't find it on the shelf.
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I don't currently have a food science reference book (ala Shirley Corriher), but would be happy to entertain recommendations.

I have Pepin's "Fast Food My Way" and Corriher's "Cookwise", both of which I would highly recommend.

Pepin is one of my favorite celeb chefs, and with this book he really stresses simplicity and creates some intreresting dishes. I haven't made any particular recipes from it, but I've picked up a lot of good ideas.

"Cookwise" is the book on my cook-bookshelf that I open most often (behind "Joy of Cooking"). It is absolutely loaded with good information.

I also enjoy Alton Brown's books but don't find myself going back to them that often.

The Les Halles cookbook is high on my list.

Best,
EC

eatchicago wrote:The Les Halles cookbook is high on my list.

I read about half of it just standing in Border's one day a couple of weeks ago... Unfortunately, though I put it on my list, Santa didn't deliver... (But I did get more coal for the grill)... I guess I could have been better behaved this past year...

It really is a nice cookbook from a guy who is very smart and very funny and a pretty darn good chef too.

Antonius

One thing that's interesting to me is how at Christmas, the oldest of old standby cookbooks suddenly gets pressed into use: Fanny Farmer. From ideas for stuffing to fruitcake recipes to hard sauce for my mincemeat pie, that's where I go to at least see the classic version, even if I then alter it some myself. Dowdy old Fanny got more use in the last month than all the fancy NYC restaurant cookbooks put together.

Interesting that you should ask this question . . . .

This Christmas while at home in New York, I raided my mother's cookbook shelf. I have returned home with Bernard Clayton's bread book, the originial version, and the real treasure, Roy Andries De Groot's Feasts for All Seasons. De Groot was a European born journalist who moved to America with his British wife, an actress. The two of them lived and travelled throughout the U.S., including New Orleans, Chicago and San Francisco. De Groot perhaps is better know for his book, The Auberge of the Flowering Hearth, about a French inn and its proprietors - thinking about it makes me want a glass of Chartreuse. Feast for All Seasons is a summary of the cooking style and system of his immediate family (he, his wife and two daughters). In many respects, it feels as though it could have been written today, certainly not in 1966. What I found particularly refereshing was that it is not simply a celebration of French food, as many cookbooks from that time were, but instead a culling of recipes from a variety of cuisines, including French, German, Mexican, Lebanese, Indian and Chinese. I also like that it is uncompromising in quality, eschewing convenience ingredients and instead calling for things like freshly ground pepper and spices, and is strictly seasonal - an approach not much followed back then. Suffice to say, I would highly recommend the book if you can find it.

Newer things on my bookshelf are Bouchon by Thomas Keller, which looks great, and Alfred Portale's new book, which also looks great, but I have not delved too deeply yet.

My mom got me a copy of Pei Mei's Chinese cookbook. here's what Saveur has to say about it:

PEI MEI'S CHINESE COOKBOOK, VOL. I by Fu Pei-Mei (Chinese Cooking Class Ltd., 1969). For this book, Fu, a celebrated chef and teacher, compiled 100 of her favorite dishes from four regions of China: Shanghai, Canton, Sichuan, and Beijing. Written in both Chinese and English, this out-of-print book is definitely worth seeking out.

It looks like it has some great stuff in it, I can't wait to try some of them.

The Breath of a Wok by Grace Young.

Truly enjoyable to read. Haven't tried any recipes yet, but I suspect my wok will be breathing heavily the coming year.

Hi,

Roy Andries de Groot was blind, though I don't know if it was congenital or by disease, who long ago had a cooking column in the Chicago Tribune. His column came to a close after he took his own life. I have a number of clippings of his articles, which I have begun to slowly reread when I come upon them in my files. I also have a number of his books, though not yet all.

I always have a list of cookbooks I want to acquire, which I eventually do though my favored sources are the Brandeis annual sale and used book stores. The only time I buy new is when I have an opportunity to have it autographed by the author. For the $40 spent on a new book, I can buy quite a few used for the same money, which is great for me. If I am impatient, then I buy via e-Bay.

I have Gourmet and Bon Appetit magazines from early 70's until I tired of their direction in the last few years. I have Cook's magazine from the early 80's when Kimball started it to the bitter end in the early 90's when it died with another editorial direction. I have all the Cook's Illustrated, which are getting dog eared from my repeated referencing. The earliest Cook's I have is 1981, which I started reading the other night. They had an article by Peter Kump on poaching; a comparative article on cooking oils and one involving starting a restaurant. The early Cook's seems a bigger budget magazine than Cook's Illustrated we know today; simply because it has advertising revenue. Where Cooks Illustrated has anonymous staff writers, a lot of cooking experts were engaged to write articles for Cook's. I probably haven't read the early Cook's since they arrived in my mailbox, though I plan to work my way through them this winter.

I keep finding so much useful stuff in my clipping files, much predating the internet thus likely unavailable, I plan to reread those also, slightly reorganize and add to them.

I guess I have a few projects to complete before the June book buying season begins for me.

Cathy2 -

My MIL just committed about 400 pages of clipping recipes into a photocopied book that she gave to each of her daughters. Also, she had many handwritten ones from the past 100 years from various relatives.

I offered to retype them or to scan and print them but was refused. I guess she does not trust the new technologies.

Ever thought of scanning them??

Roy Andries de Groot was blind, though I don't know if it was congenital or by disease, who long ago had a cooking column in the Chicago Tribune. His column came to a close after he took his own life.

He was partially blinded during the blitz in London during WWII, which eventualy became total. I had not realized that he took his own life.

jlawrence wrote:Ever thought of scanning them??

It is certainly something to consider. Though I have very good OCR software, you still have to make corrections. Or they could all be image files. I think eventually it will come to this, when this is fast and easy to do. Even if I do images, then images need at least some cropping. I have literally thousands to account for. Of course, I could do my greatest hits now and fill in later when it is more convenient to execute.

***

After de Groot died, his articles continued for a while longer. It had the same sad feeling reading the Ann Landers columns publshed after her death, where you read them looking for veiled hints and statements. If my memory is correct, he was suffering a long term illness where he wanted to cut it off before it did. Fortunately, he left an interesting body of work for us to continue to enjoy.

Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles cookbook is on my list as well for the very same reasons that everyone else has mentioned.

My Mom bought me the new Gourmet cookbook which I am very excited about. It's not one of those things that I would've bought myself, but it's an awesome collection of classic recipes.

Kim

The Les Halles sounds like a winner to me too.

My perennial fave for party fare is "Cooking Under Wraps" by Nicole Routhier -- a vietnamese woman with a french husband who's part Jewish: you've got everything from kreplach to venison in salt crust to turkish manti to empanadas to bisteeya to.... its ALL good. So we went and found the "Best of Nicole Routhier" which is mostly Vietnamese. I haven't tried anything from there yet (partly because I can't figure out where I buried the darn thing).

I also managed a coup: I bought a cookbook for Mrs. F. Why is this difficult? Because she runs a children's online bookstore and shames me for buying even discounted retail. The King Arthur Baking book is available at Costco for around $19 -- less than we can get it wholesale.

(Edit: It's "Routhier" not "Routhvier" JF)

What Santa brung:

The Les Halles book is everything it ought what with Bourdain's wit an' all.

And my revised McGee promises depth not matched outside of Larousse.

I look forward to thumbing through the Les Halles cookbook as I was always a fans of their very reasonable downtown restaurant during my years in New York.

However, I must say that I was quite disappointed with Pepin's latest. The few recipes that I tried from there neither stood out nor shined.

On the other hand, the less regarded Tyler Florence's "Real Kitchen" has produced some marvelous results for me including a lamb curry that has become a regular part of my regular menu production.

After spending a few hours at Barnes and Noble in early Dec., I bought the America's Test Kitchen Live!- 2005 cookbook. So far I've made about 6 of the recipes and they are all terrific. A few great and the rest really good. Love all the overexplaining which helps with other cooking as well. Would be a great book for a new cook, but also wonderful for a fussy-semi gourmet cook like myself. It's a good learning tool with solid recipes.