s/d: cookbooks!

I have a tablet but it is not an iPad (which is annoying bcz How to Cook Everything app is IPAD ONLY, fuck that); i will check otu Modernist Cuisine at Home though!

these are my standard reference cookbooks that i consider authoritative and consult almost every time i cook the cuisines they cover, they are all text- and recipe-heavy with little photography (sometimes the marker of whether i think a cookbook is any good -- the more photos, the less i tend to use it):

mexican: "art of mexican cooking", diana kennedy. this is authoritative, exhaustive and such a beautiful, well-designed book. she is so thorough and detailed and at the same time very accessible. she is very particular and doesn't tolerate bullshit and i love it. you could also probably get "the cuisines of mexico." she is similar to julia child in that her husband worked abroad and she mastered the cooking.

indian: "classic indian vegetarian and grain cooking", julie sahni. more fun and interesting than madhur jaffrey imo, even though jaffrey is great too, it's just that jaffrey has so many books and many of them are "cooking of the orient" and "world vegetarian" and with sahni i know that i am getting all india.

vegetarian: "vegetarian cooking for everyone", deborah madison. another beautiful, unpretentious book with tons of background on handling all kinds of vegetables. i'm not a huge fan of the vegan pop-chefs like the "veganomican" or "vegan cupcakes take over the world" authors. madison is a more classic vegetarian who learned her cooking at chez panisse and the san francisco zen center, then started greens (an early local-sourced, seasonally-based restaurant).

fermented foods: "art of fermentation", sandor ellix katz. this is a fucking phenomenal and exhaustive book covering fermented foods and beverages from hundreds of different cuisines. katz runs workshops all over and does intensive training sessions at this queer community in rural tennessee where he lives. it's super fun to read, too.

good god it's $80 for an app! EIGHTY

will second 'vegetarian cooking for everyone' - was super helpful to me when i was really inexperienced in the kitchen and i still use it probably weekly

'how to cook everything' is similarly useful although i would balk at paying $80 for the ipad version

i bought my bf a copy of maida heatter's 'book of great desserts' because it was on a list of best cookbooks and he swears by it - ive never cooked anything from it but have eaten enough to agree its p good

feel like i am not interested in ipad versions of any cookbook. part of the fun is to gradually end up with a super-worn-in and weathered book that shows evidence of use and love and has stains and swelled pages and bookmarks and hand-written annotation. we've had some books for years and years that i will probably hand down to my kids.

I dig Saveur, never really read any other similar magazines. A lot more travel or place focused than strictly recipes but I find it pretty useful. Seems like most of the ads are actually about food or kitchen stuff too, other cooking magazines feel like they're all luxury SUVs, shiny Vegas hotels, $15,000 ranges, etc.

Other books I've really loved or cooked a lot from:

Plenty (mentioned above)
Thai Food - David Thompson
Classic Indian Cooking - Julie Sahni
Cradle of Flavor - James Oselund (former Saveur editor, this book is all Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia)
Hot, Salty, Sour, Sweet - Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid (Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar, Cambodia, Thailand)
The Border Cookbook - Cheryl Alters Jamison (my first cookbook after Joy of Cooking, when I lived in Arizona and the one that really got me interested in cooking)

ooh i need to get the border cookbook, rad

I am a niche market:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51Q0o0T5NFL.jpg

Hot, Salty, Sour, Sweet

I have this one -- need to take another look at it.

this thread rules

whenever we're going through a vegan phase this cookbook is pretty essential:

http://www.vrg.org/bookstore/images/vrg/vegansoulkitchen.jpg

Vegan Soul Kitchen is a great title. In this vein I'd also recommend the Donna Klein books The Mediterranean Vegan Kitchen and Vegan Italiano, as practical regional veg cookbooks.

A lot of the stuff on this shelf is better suited to a coffee table (yes, I've a copy of Great Chefs Cook Vegan), and I don't have the hours for then entrees in the Moskowitz/Romero books.

And no, I don't have the Sriracha cookbook. Its sat there on my wishlist for a couple years.

yea i'm not a fan of moskowitz and romero. i find their whole style really grating and (that "hip", informal, jokester writing with no funny jokes) and tbh i don't find their recipes that good.

great chefs cook vegan has beautiful photographs but fuck it is a SHITTY fucking cookbook. nothing in there that i want to eat. makes me think of every fancy restaurant that doesn't have anything vegan or vegetarian on the menu and the chef whips you up something pretty but that provides basically no sustenance and never has any legumes or other foods vegetarians rely on for fat and protein. that comes off shitty i know b/c any chef whipping you up something on the fly that is not on the menu based on a special request is SUPER FUCKING GENEROUS, but that doesn't mean i want a cookbook of that shit.

'how to cook everything' is similarly useful although i would balk at paying $80 for the ipad version

$80 is the Modernist Cuisine App - not too bad since the book is over a hundred. Lots of neat little touches in how it works - videos, recipe scaling, etc..

i will rep hard for MAOFC

you will never have a better boeuf bourguignon than jc's version

if you are super against the datedness though i get it

bourdain's les halles cookbook is a good option instead. lots of all-day French classics that are daunting but fun to master

i have both, dig them equally

feel like i am not interested in ipad versions of any cookbook. part of the fun is to gradually end up with a super-worn-in and weathered book that shows evidence of use and love and has stains and swelled pages and bookmarks and hand-written annotation. we've had some books for years and years that i will probably hand down to my kids.

― marcos, Wednesday, October 22, 2014 3:56 PM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^^

this is right on,
i am not together enough to have done this for myself, but, it would be nice, too, to buy a nice cloth-bound book to be copying recipes into, & to eventually have the soup-spattered master list, frayed & unbound, pages steam-buckled, cycles of ballpoint pens come & gone, a casual record of time passing

fyi there are several <$1 copies of the border cookbook on amazon, it looks rad and i just ordered one.

Did I mention it already? Gran Cocina Latina: The Food of Latin America, by Maricel Presilla, is a freaking tour de force, and I've yet to be disappointed by its recipes. The grilled skirt steak with chimichurri is just one particularly sublime yet simple example along many.

ooh i need to get the border cookbook, rad

I haven't opened this one in probably ten years but it really was the first "specialty" cookbook I owned and I had pretty good luck with a lot of the recipes. I used to make the carne seca a lot and should do that again.

It's also one of those books where certain pages are all stained and and beat up so I can open to recipes I've made a lot right away.

border cookbook is really really good, i got it as a christmas present in 2014 and it's become one of my favorite cookbooks

like "southwestern" or "border cuisine" has become such a watered-down concept so it is really nice to be reminded (since i don't live in the southwest) that this is an incredibly rich & varied cooking tradition

yeah we love that book around our place

Topopo Chicken Salad is a classic

this one, pray tell?

http://www.amazon.com/The-Border-Cookbook-Authentic-Southwest/dp/1558321039/ref=zg_bs_4315_24

been tryna up my SW game since I realized all I ever cook is like pasta

should be taking delivery of Jerusalem today --- any recs on what to start with

not sure if its in that one but the meatballs in tahini sauce are amazing

yea that's the one stevie

xxp

i'm gonna get it

cool! iirc there are copies on amazon for like a buck

Just snagged it for $0.01 with $3.99 shipping and it was freeeee bcz I had Amazon credit!!! v cool

should be taking delivery of Jerusalem today --- any recs on what to start with

― jason waterfalls (gbx), Tuesday, September 29, 2015 11:56 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

***parsley and barley salad***
salmon steaks in chraimeh sauce
beef meatballs with fava beans and lemon (best in spring with fresh favas but make it anyway)

kewl

may have to pick up supplies on the way home

everyone should get the honey & co cookbook btw fyi

hey has anyone fucked w/ Thai cookbooks Pok Pok or Simple Thai Food? From what I understand David Thompson's Thai Food was the definitive text but was also idk like crazy complex? I've never fucked w/ it. I want something that is authentic and NOT Americanized w/ curries that actually use tamarind, cane sugar, kaffir lime, etc., but I am fine if they don't take 6 hours and an entire afternoon to prepare.

also should I get the Smitten Kitchen or The Kitchn cookbooks? Also ppl just give me tips for quintessential cookbooks always, I want all of the best cookbooks!!!

Might be worth looking at Jean-Pierre Gabriel's Thailand: The Cookbook as well. I find Thompson's books too much work but from what i've seen of the Gabriel one, it's less fiddly.

i was curious about pok pok but i imagined it would be one of those impractical books where you never use it.

i recently bought claudia roden's spanish book and it's brilliant, had been looking for something like this for some time, really recommend it.

I want the Pok Pok book, a chef friend of mine has it. I will ask her abt it next chance I get.

This is my favorite and most used Thai cookbook: http://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/0962878308?keywords=thai%20cooking%20ravadi&qid=1445534366&ref_=sr_1_2&sr=8-2
Written by the owner of the Emerald of Siam in Richland WA (I used to eat there all the time).

Instead of smitten kitchen or thekitchn get Kenji Lopez-Alt's Food Lab cookbook, he's the guy behind Serious Eats Food Lab section

we found these in a thrift store last weekend:

https://www.whisknyc.com/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/i/m/image_3983.jpg

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/5103KJYfN-L._SL500_SX350_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

i would never call kenji's book an either/or with something like the smitten kitchen cookbook, like it's a technique-driven book mostly for carnivores with no sweets, so pretty much the opposite of what smitten kitchen is up to.

chef friend re: Pok Pok:

"It's complicated but really pretty. I have it but have never cooked out of it yet. If I had time to execute the recipes in there I would."

That's how I feel about the Thompson Thai book - really pretty but everything's waaaaay too complicated, like "how dare you use a food processor to make this curry paste, you need to do everything in a mortar and pestle and IN THIS EXACT ORDER". I just don't care enough anymore.

the pok pok is less ridiculous than the thompson book (which is just crazy)

also pok pok book has some recipes that take multiple days; but also quite a few that dont.

i recommend it!

but thai food is my favourite food; i might have more patience than others

I think I've already promoted it here, but Steve Raichlen's "Miami Spice" is a little gem.

I also really like Deborah Madison's original "Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone" (haven't seen the updated version). It is my go-to when I come home from the farmer's market with something I don't have a clue what to do with.