Cookery books. Favourite, least Favourite and why?

Oliveciabatta

There are a couple of books I always go back to.
The good;
Deliah Smith complete cookery course. Its just a good basic guide to cooking and the recipes all just work.
Jamie Oliver 5 ingredients. Simple to follow and ideal for weeknight cooking for 1. Good calorie guide to each recipe too.
Nigel slater eat. So simple, quick and tasty. Ideal when cooking for 1 with limited ingredients or budget.

The bad
Anything by Joe wicks . All too complex, too many ingredients often hard to get hold of and give it a rest joe with the Tiny trees. Its broccoli ffs you are writing a cookery book for adults. I'm an adult id appreciate you calling broccoli, Broccoli. Even children don't call it tiny trees.

What books do you rate and why?

Chef_Barbell

My textbook from culinary school is my usual go to for technical stuff.

I do like anything by Alton Brown or America's Test Kitchen. I like science based cooking books. I like to learn techniques over recipes.

yirara

Hmm.. I have a love-hate relationship with cookbooks. I'm only interested in mains and don't care about breakfasts, lunches, starters, deserts, etc... and I like simple cooking. Thus I hate Ottolenghi with a passion as I don't want to spend an hour to cook greens, then another hour for potatoes, and another hour for some protein. All does look utterly delicious though.

Having said that I do love the books by Meera Sodha. Despite the things I don't really care about all sounds really delicicous, and I end up with a plate of food. Another favourite is Easy Soups from Scratch with Quick Breads to Match by Ivy Mannings. It's just the type of cooking that I love. I also love the diet books from the Hairy Bikers. I have to say that those tend to be too low calorie for me, but I can cook well enough to add stuff to turn those into hearty meals. I also love the vegan books of the Lotus and the Artichoke series. Here I would avoid the Mexican and mixed book as they aren't that special. And the Malaysian one if you really do cook lots of Indonesian food. Plus, this kind of food simply needs fermented shrimp paste and not a vegan alternative.

Still on my wishlist: A good, authentic Filipino cookbook. And something non-vegan Ethiopian.

CaffeinatedConfectionist

I like the Harold McGee's On Food and Cooking and also Food Lab cookbook (except the way Kenji Lopez-Alt writes about his wife -
I think he is aiming for humor but just comes Cross as smarmy and condescending) because like another poster I appreciate the science behind it - I like to know why techniques work, not just that they do.

There is a triple- or quadruple-fried French fry recipe in the food lab book that has been calling my name...

dragon_girl26

Salt Fat Acid Heat is great because it teaches new ways to approach those four elements
Indian-ish by Priya Krishna has been a favorite lately because the recipes are simple and delicious.
The South Diet recipe books have some good simple recipes that I gravitate towards...I don't follow South Beach but they're easy low calorie meals.
Anything by Ina Garten.
The good ol Betty Crocker Cookbook, because of nostalgia, and also because it has lots of good tried and true ideas.
Milk Street books, because they carry the concepts of ATK but with more ethnic flavors, plus I'm a fan of Christopher Kimball.

dragon_girl26

yirara wrote: »

Having said that I do love the books by Meera Sodha. Despite the things I don't really care about all sounds really delicicous, and I end up with a plate of food.

I have Fresh India in my room right now to look through and A Taste of India arriving Saturday from Amazon. I've heard many good things about these books so I'm excited to try them.

yirara

dragon_girl26 wrote: »

yirara wrote: »

Having said that I do love the books by Meera Sodha. Despite the things I don't really care about all sounds really delicicous, and I end up with a plate of food.

I have Fresh India in my room right now to look through and A Taste of India arriving Saturday from Amazon. I've heard many good things about these books so I'm excited to try them.

I really like East and Fresh India. Have not bought the third one yet. The first things I did from East was a szechuan pepper oil and a mash up of her various pickle recipes. Note: most recipes are not really low cal, and I wish she'd provide nutritional info. But really, all is super delicious.

sgt1372

I have many cookbooks of all types, including old standards like the Joy of Cooking, Fannie Farmer/Boston Cooking School, Julia's Mastering the Art of French Cooking, a version of America's Test Kitchen, books by various celebrity chefs and a specialized Chinese cookbook collection, but hardly ever use any of them anymore because when I want to cook something "new" I just Google it and scan the various recipes online, select the ones I like, print them out and, after using one or a combo of them, put the in a file folder for future reference.

Some of my really old go-to recipes are clipped from newpaper articles (that's OLD) which are also in the folders or in various cookbooks marked w/a small yellow post-it but there isn't any single cookbook that I use for reference.

As an aside, one of my favorite celebrity TV cookbook writers was Jeff Smith, "The Frugal Gorumet", whose show was cancelled because of alleged improprities that I won't go into here, but the recipes in his cookbooks (I've got 4 of them) are solid, particularly his "Whole Family" and "Cooks Italian" cookbooks that are littered w/many yellow post-its marking recipes that I've used and enjoyed.

AnnPT77

I'm not a big cookbook user any more, because I only rarely use recipes (I "just cook"). But I really like Cookwise by Shirley Corriher (it's food science, with recipes); for fancier or more unusual stuff Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone.

AnnPT77

AnnPT77 wrote: »

I'm not a big cookbook user any more, because I only rarely use recipes (I "just cook"). But I really like Cookwise by Shirley Corriher (it's food science, with recipes); for fancier or more unusual stuff Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone.

I guess I skipped the reasons: Apologies.

Cookwise: This book does a great job describing what the role of certain ingredients or methods is, in the success of recipes, including some quite subtle stuff. As I mentioned, I like to "just cook", rather than literally follow recipes. My general approach is to consult recipes when things seem to me to have "structural ingredients" that need to present and perhaps in certain proportions for the dish to come out OK. (This applies to baked goods more often than to mains/sides kind of stuff, IMO.)

For example, in standard raised bread, flour and yeast are structural ingredients. The yeast needs sugar, or it won't work. There needs to be liquid, also structural, but more flexible as to type. More or less oil/fat leads to very different bread-type stuff.

Corriher's book clarifies which things are structural ingredients, what the tradeoffs might be with substituting, and fills in some minor things that make a surprising difference. (For example, in some things, salt is not just about flavor.) She gives rules of thumb for the proportions of ingredients, in different sorts of end products. All of this is useful to a "wing it" cook like me.

As a bonus, there are some great, varied recipes illustrating the points.

Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone: I'm pretty happy with what I make at home for myself on a "wing it" basis, generally. I read around, try new ingredients or dishes, and that sort of thing. But sometimes, especially for guests, I want something that's a little more refined, not too experimentally risky, and I'm willing to spend a bit more time with it. I'm vegetarian, most of my friends aren't.

Madison's book has some interesting dishes and flavor combinations, and recipes that generally are not off-putting to non-vegetarians. They're not super fussy, generally don't require exotic ingredients. They cover all the courses, from apps to desserts and beyond. It also has a bunch of useful basics, like a nuanced discussion of vegetable stocks for different uses.

yirara

AnnPT77 wrote: »

AnnPT77 wrote: »

I'm not a big cookbook user any more, because I only rarely use recipes (I "just cook"). But I really like Cookwise by Shirley Corriher (it's food science, with recipes); for fancier or more unusual stuff Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone.

I guess I skipped the reasons: Apologies.

Cookwise: This book does a great job describing what the role of certain ingredients or methods is, in the success of recipes, including some quite subtle stuff. As I mentioned, I like to "just cook", rather than literally follow recipes. My general approach is to consult recipes when things seem to me to have "structural ingredients" that need to present and perhaps in certain proportions for the dish to come out OK. (This applies to baked goods more often than to mains/sides kind of stuff, IMO.)

For example, in standard raised bread, flour and yeast are structural ingredients. The yeast needs sugar, or it won't work. There needs to be liquid, also structural, but more flexible as to type. More or less oil/fat leads to very different bread-type stuff.

Corriher's book clarifies which things are structural ingredients, what the tradeoffs might be with substituting, and fills in some minor things that make a surprising difference. (For example, in some things, salt is not just about flavor.) She gives rules of thumb for the proportions of ingredients, in different sorts of end products. All of this is useful to a "wing it" cook like me.

As a bonus, there are some great, varied recipes illustrating the points.

Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone: I'm pretty happy with what I make at home for myself on a "wing it" basis, generally. I read around, try new ingredients or dishes, and that sort of thing. But sometimes, especially for guests, I want something that's a little more refined, not too experimentally risky, and I'm willing to spend a bit more time with it. I'm vegetarian, most of my friends aren't.

Madison's book has some interesting dishes and flavor combinations, and recipes that generally are not off-putting to non-vegetarians. They're not super fussy, generally don't require exotic ingredients. They cover all the courses, from apps to desserts and beyond. It also has a bunch of useful basics, like a nuanced discussion of vegetable stocks for different uses.

I have one such German book. I think it's been used in household classes for centuries. As such, the recipes are rather dated, but it does give some good explanations.

paperpudding

I have an old cook book from my high school days ( about 40 years old ) some of the language is quite cringey: "Housewives should be organised to have dinner ready for the family" sort of thing - but if I want to look up basic cooking information, it is very handy.

most of rest of my recipe collection is written down on bits of paper or torn from magazine pages - although many basic recipes like spaghetti bolognaise or potato salad or various soups or roasts I just cook from memory and experience.

My daughter does not own a cookery book - if she wants to cook something she just googles it and then follows recipe on her tablet.
Probably the way most young people will go now.

yirara

I found an interesting cookbook in a store yesterday, about cooking with fish from tins. Have to say that it sounds rather intriguing as I hardly ever cook anything with tinned fish other than tuna or anchovy pasta.