My top ten this week is all about cooking. My best cookbooks. I cringe when I hear of people getting rid of their cookbooks because "every recipe is on the internet." Is that true? So what if it is? I love cookbooks. Don't you love cookbooks?
I do have a bookmark file of recipes too, and a binder full of recipes pulled from newspapers and magazines, printed off the 'net, and handwritten. But I do love to sit down with a cookbook and browse.
1. The King Arthur Flour 200th Anniversary Cookbook/Dedicated to the Pure Joy of Baking: Anything you want to bake. Great instructions for making yeast bread, and how to use alternate ingredients. The best scone recipe ever.
2. San Francisco Chronicle Cookbook (Volumes 1 and 2) OK, that's two books, I know. Volume 1 is really the best, but I have to count Volume 2 as well because of Super Rica Rajas and its spinoff, Arroz con Rajas Y Crema. Heaven on a plate. Serve as a side dish to some healthful main course and finish off with the Spanish Flan from Volume 1.
3. Madhur Jaffrey's An Invitation to Indian Cooking: The one that got me started cooking Indian food. The seminarian owned this before we were married so it's a sentimental favorite too.
4. Madhur Jaffrey Indian Cooking: We love Indian food the best.
5. Wholesome Cookies by Jane Marsh Dieckman: Out of print but worth picking up used. It's just a little book full of good cookie recipes using whole wheat and other flours, fruit, granola... just a little more healthful than your everyday tollhouse cookie.
6. Better Homes and Garden's Biggest Book of Cookies: Just about every cookie you could want to bake.
7. New Basics: Just a great all-around cookbook. I'm on my second copy; the first fell apart because I used it so much.
8. Cook's Illustrated Magazines Best Recipes: Oh, the carrot cake.
9. Cover and Bake, also by Cook's Illustrated: Quick and/or easy. Crockpot meals too - good ones, which are not always so easy to find.
10. Flavor it Greek!: Purchased at a Greek Festival in Portland, Oregon; put together locally. Eggplant salad, tzatziki. Octopus recipes, too - maybe someday I'll try one of those.
More top tens at Oh Amanda Top Ten Tuesday. Join the fun.
6 comments:
If you make some thing with octopus you have to blog about. :)
I've wanted the King Arthur cookbook for a while. Maybe I'll put that on my wish list now that you mention it. Thanks for stopping by my blog too : )
I love Cooks Illustrated because they test the recipes and then tell you why they chose each ingredient. That can also help me tweak it if I wan to.
I also use Fanny Farmer a lot. My FIL who was a fabulous cook always says when he wanted to try something new he would try Fannie because he knew it would be the most basic, sensible way. He would usually tweak it or look at other recipes too, but he would refer back to her for the "original idea" of the dish.
I'll have to try that Indian one. I would like to try more Indian dishes but we don't live so near those wonderful Asian markets anymore and if there are different ingredients I usually skip over them.
I love cookbooks, too. I read them just for fun. Even though you can find lots of recipes on the internet, it's not the same ...
I love cookbooks that churches or organizations compile and sell for fundraisers. Church ladies can cook, and people only put their favorites in these books!
I do love cookbooks! I have an entire shelf of them. I mean a big, linen closet sized shelf of them. And that's after I got rid of some... I don't have any of these though, the Indian ones especially look really interesting!
I love my cookbooks! One I use often is a cookbook put together by my little sister's (boy, would she cringe if she read that!) elementary school c.1979. It was published as a fundraiser and boasts that your school could raise upto $6,000.00! I like to see my own notes next to recipes like "this is the banana bread recipe you really like"...since there are no less than 14 banana bread recipes, or "kids love!" or ones that I simply put a big "X" through. This cookbook reads like an old diary :) Thanks for the inspiration to use my cookbooks this week.
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