Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with cookbooks

Delicatessen for Dilettantes & Greenhorn Cuisine

byanyothername — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 14:59:17 -0800

Please recommend outstanding recipe books and resources for clueless cooks! So, I come from a family which, for the most part, hasn't done its own cooking in generations. A few hodge-podge recipes (what do spaghetti, squash stir fry and fajitas have in common? I can cook them!) have been handed down to me, but I'd really love to expand my culinary horizons. In contrast to other members of my family, I truly enjoy cooking, and the cultural dimensions of cuisine are fascinating to me (I naively and sincerely believe sharing food is a path of peace). I'll try anything once, but have a preference for Mexican and Japanese foods light on meat and heavy on rice, peppers and assorted veggies. I've been dabbling a little using cookbooks I already own, but I'd like to add to my collection and branch out a little bit.

Currently I'm looking specifically for books that focus on Mexican cuisine (because of my location, it's easiest to find fresh ingredients for and I'm closer to the culture which is something that adds to the flavor, somehow), but I'm open to just about anything here. Relatively simple stir-fry and vegetarian recipes are also very much ideal. Again, I'm not a big meat eater, so Beefsteak McBurgertime's 80 Things to do With Bacon isn't going to be quite up my alley, but I do eat some meat and I'm willing to consider heavily meat oriented recipes in outstanding cases.

I'm interested in stuff that gets a little into the cultural aspect of cuisine, as well, or just something that has a unique character. Hugo Ortega's Street Food of Mexico looks like it may be something well worth looking into, but I'm not super familiar with culinary literature and I'm sure there are whole worlds I'm overlooking!

Your favorite online resources for recipes and stuff are great, too!

The Authority on Asiatic cooking methods...

mary8nne — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 01:45:30 -0800

Larousse Gastronomique and Julia Childs cookbooks are in some sense considered reputable authorities on French Cooking, similarly The Silver Spoon is a reputable encyclopedic study of Italian cuisine and cooking. Are there similar reputable and exhaustive books for various Asiatic Cuisines such as; Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Indian, South East Asia etc? I'm particularly interested in Chinese and Japanese cuisines as these are more familiar to me and my attempts at home have been rather pathetic. Also Korean classics would be good - I love a good Beef Bulgogi.

Generally the cookbooks I"ve seen are a bit well dubious and seem to focus more on odd westernized interpretations. That I wouldn't trust if I was reading the equivalent of this for French or Italian cooking.

Ok, it's possible I am just grasping at straws to find an excuse to own an iPad.

pupstocks — Sat, 09 Jun 2012 18:37:49 -0800

I'm trying to figure out if a iPad is what I'm looking for to help me reduce my physical books, particularly cookbooks and printed (from the internet) recipes. I want to know first whether iPad is the way to go for my specific needs (details within) and then, if an iPad is what I want, which generation iPad & apps would help me do what I want. Or maybe there is a better solution? I'm an avid cook with a large cookbook and cooking magazine collection that grows every year. I also bookmark and/or print recipes from blogs etc. My typical procedure when trying a new recipe is to print the recipe or make a photocopy of the cookbook page. I then make copious notes on the page during and after cooking the recipe. I halve (at least) most recipes, so I always write that information on the page as well.

What I would like to do with an iPad (or whatever) is have my pulled-from-the-internet or page from a book (this could be an ebook from which I PDFed the relevant page) and then be able to make handwritten notes on it with a stylus AND, preferably, attach typed notes as well (like... maybe with a post-it type of thing?) and possibly also attach photos. It would be awesome if it could coordinate with my main computer (a MacBook Pro) in some way, too! For example, if I want to type notes, I'd love to be able to do that easily from my computer and have it zap on over to the iPad. In case it's relevant, I also have an iPhone. I'm an iPerson, apparently. And if the data could be stored in such a way that losing the iPad wouldn't result in me losing all my data, that would be ideal.

I have a Kindle already, and I absolutely love it ... but only for reading novels and the like that don't use images. (My Kindle is a model from a couple of years ago with a keyboard.) I continue to buy physical cookbooks despite my desire to save space in my home and trees primarily because I enjoy seeing the beautiful photography and find it instructive. My goal with the iPad would be to reduce future purchases of physical books and to reduce the amount of paper and toner I'm using by printing physical copies of recipes all the time.

So to reiterate, my questions are:

1. Is an iPad what I want for this? If so, what apps do I need? Or do I want something else entirely (Kindle Fire??)?

2. If I want an iPad, would I be happy enough with an older model? Anything else I need to consider here? If having an original version iPad would be slow/irritating in some way, I'll just wait until I can afford the latest.

I don't really want applications specific to recipes because I think I would like to use this same method for things like art/craft instruction books, textbooks, etc. I usually have a lot of studying going on, typically on a wide variety of topics!

Thanks guys!!

Can you tell me the title and author of this book?

laskagirl — Fri, 11 May 2012 22:56:25 -0800

Help me ID a book about food! (More below.) Hey, folks. I'm hoping you can he me identify a book someone lent me years ago. It was NOT a cookbook, but it was a book about food--vignettes really--and was interspersed with recipes. One of the chapters discussed how the author was given an old-looking cast-iron skillet as a gift and then learned how to season and love it. Of course, there were recipes of what he made in the skillet. There was a recipe for a whole chicken with 30 cloves of garlic--or some large number like that. (But many simliar recipies exist in recent cookbooks. Again, this wasn't strictly a cookbook.) There was also a section about how (in th author's view) to properly eat an acocado. That is the part I remember best. THE way to eat an avocado, said the author (who I seem to recall was a man, but I'm not sure), is to cut it in half, put some oil and lemon juice in the cavity of the pit and scoop with a spoon--getting some of the dressing on every bite.

At any rate, can you help me to identify this book?

Thanks!

Counting the Elderly

jrb223 — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 15:33:34 -0800

"Fewer persons alive at 70 today survive until 90 than forty years ago." True or False? On the first page of the Introduction to the cookbook Nourishing Traditions (published in 2001) the authors claim, "Fewer persons alive at 70 today survive until 90 than forty years ago," but do not cite any sources or offer any explanation as to how they came by this statistic (at least as far as we've gotten on our reading of the book). Is this true? How would one support the claim or disprove it?

Imagine if Alton Brown or Mark Bittman wrote an Indian cookbook

matildaben — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 10:58:42 -0800

MisterBen needs recommendations for a very specific kind of Indian cookbook – one that’s organized by technique, not by course or ingredient. Imagine if Alton Brown or Mark Bittman wrote an Indian cookbook. The idea is to learn reusable techniques and general concepts of what flavors are used together. What he already has: Madhur Jaffrey’s classics, Raghavan Iyer’s “660 Curries”, and Vikas Khanna’s “Flavor First”, which are used as bibles. Almost all Indian ingredients can be found in our area, and he is comfortable at making his own masalas, so feel free to recommend books you might think of as advanced.

Working backwards from the tools...

Buffaload — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 20:24:38 -0800

What should I cook with all these kitchen tools? There are some nifty kitchen tools (that came into my household when I married my wife) in our kitchen, but neither of us use them. I'd like to start, but where to begin? I'm definitely not a cook -- I come at this as a general tinkerer and liker of using gadgets and tools. But I can generally follow a recipe and I'm not scared of anything coming out disgusting the first few times. I'd say we're both unpicky eaters and omnivores.

Here are the things I'd like to press into service:

Stand mixer
Food Processor
Blender

How do i find recipes? Any gadget-specific resources?

Thanks.

My body decided it hates food. My mouth disagrees.

Neekee — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 08:29:29 -0800

Food allergies have taken away my staples. Please help me eat! Gluten, dairy, and grain free (maybe Paleo) people, this means you. I've been developing and discovering food allergies and intolerance left and right. Right now, I know I cannot eat any gluten, soy, corn, rice, or dairy products. Legumes (beans, lentils, peas, etc) are off the menu too. Even quinoa and sunflower seeds have not been kind. Except for the soy and corn, which I've known about for a few months, cutting out the above is all new to me, so I'm often stumped on what to eat.

Unfortunately, I don't think I can afford a dietician; I'm already paying for my allergist out of pocket.

I'm concerned that I may be loading up on the same foods: mainly sweet potatoes, cassava, meats, fruits, and occasionally homemade almond milk.

Any cookbook or blog recommendation? I'm not looking for "yay, stick with the program" weight loss ones. Eating any of the above puts me in a lot of misery and I'm not concerned about my weight or falling off the bandwagon. I need more lifestyle help. I thought about getting Elana Amsterdam's Almond Flour Cookbook but I'm afraid I'll load up on too much almonds. Plus, almond flour is expensive!
Most gluten free blogs and books don't help since they rely upon other grains I cannot eat. Plus, going to regular food blogs or my favorite cookbook is depressing since I can't eat most of it.

So, what should I eat and where do I go for recipes?

Giftable Cookbooks for Beginners?

rhiannonstone — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 17:05:55 -0800

What's the best wedding-present cookbook? I'm looking for a nice, practical cookbook to give my sister & her fiance as a wedding gift (along with a starter set of quality knives), but I'm a little stumped, because the cookbooks I love are not really their style. They're early-20s non-foodies who are just discovering that cooking for yourself is awesome but don't really care about the art/culture/philosophy of cooking or fine dining, so the expensive, impressive books I'd give to one of my peers (Alinea, French Laundry, A Day at El Bulli, etc.) aren't appropriate for them. I've already given them Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything and my favorite Betty Crocker book from childhood, so those are out. Mastering the Art of French Cooking isn't practical enough. Joy of Cooking is of course a classic, and failing other ideas that's what I'll go with, but I was hoping someone here could offer better suggestions. I'm looking for something suitable for beginners and available in a nice hardback edition. Any ideas, Ask?

Come To Me, Red Cookbook!

lonefrontranger — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 09:51:22 -0800

Help forgetful me locate this red, science-heavy cookbook! O hive mind, I am an idiot.

I was recently visiting friends in Europe, and an expat friend-of-a-friend had a cookbook / cooking reference that I desperately want. I do know that it was purchased in the USA and taken to Europe, and it was definitely written in standard American English. I want to get a copy for myself, but stupidly I forgot to write down title/author or even shoot an iphone cap of the cover, and the 8 hour time difference is making it difficult to get in touch (my friend is working 12+ hour days in a grad program whilst simultaneously trying to learn German, rarely uses IM or answers emails anyway, and I can't really just shoot her a text message).

So I'm going to throw it over to the AskMeFi detective crew in hopes that one of y'all will know which one of the millions of cookbooks / references out there it is. Yep, one of THOSE questions.

What I do remember about it, and why I want it, is that it was not actually a recipe-book, but more like an encyclopedia of food, and was chock full of science and chemistry info. It was more like a college textbook for culinary school, but it wasn't this thing OR this thing either. It had stuff like all the different kinds of wheat flour and their protein contents, and then how exactly the chemistry of that relates to the texture of your bread/cakes/etc, and how temperature / pressure / chemical reactions between different ingredients affects the outcome of your recipes.

Of course now I'm back stateside and want to throw this thing in my Amazon cart, I can't even recall the author, much less the title. All I remember is that it was roughly 500 pages hardbound, had a bright red jacket, titled in a bright white serif font that was probably in the Century family. It didn't have many pictures (if at all), and most of the illustrations were engravings / line drawings. It was well organized into sections and well cross-referenced. It was not by Alton Brown or anyone I'm familiar with. Maybe the author's surname began with "H"? I fail at teh Googles but "red cooking encyclopedia" only brings up Food.com, websites about Chinese red pork, and a bunch of Wikipedia links.

Thanks for the help, and hope this is useful for someone else!

Cooking for one

smilingtiger — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 15:52:01 -0800

I'd like to start cooking for myself more, and cut back on the takeout. Please recommend your favourite cookbooks that feature quick, easy single-serving meals. I'm not interested in cooking on the weekend and freezing things. I'd like to choose a recipe, stop at the grocery store on the way home from work, and whip up some dinner when I get home. My favourite book for this purpose is Frugal Feasts, more for the variety of flavours than for the 'frugal' aspect. (Saving money isn't an important factor.) There seem to be a lot of "cooking for one" books out there. What are the best ones? Are there any good websites that specialize in this sort of thing?

One Pot, One Love?

codacorolla — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 12:29:11 -0800

I'm looking for cook books that present easy to follow, one pot rice cooker recipes for complete cooking novices. Shopping and freezing guides would also be nice. I have a 3 cup cooker with a steamer tray, and I'm cooking for 1. I'm more interested in complete books than individual recipes or hints, but I'd also be open to those.

Cook's Illustrated/America's Test Kitchen: Which book(s) to buy?

yankeefog — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 06:45:12 -0800

Help me decide which cookbook(s) by Cook's Illustrated and/or America's Test Kitchen to buy. Too much consumer choice has left me paralyzed! I love their scientific approach to recipes and want to buy one of their cookbooks, but I'm a bit overwhelmed by the all the variations. I'm also a bit concerned about this review, which suggests that there's a lot of overlapping content among the various books.

Ideally I'd buy one book of easy recipes for weekdays, and then one comprehensive book-- but would I be buying the same recipes twice? And should the simple recipe book be Cook's Illustrated's The Best 30 Minute Recipe or ATC's Best Simple Recipes? Should the comprehensive book be The Best Recipe or The America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook? For that matter, should I take a MeFite's advice and find a used copy of the original best recipe?

Ones and zeroes in the kitchen?

A Terrible Llama — Sat, 27 Nov 2010 08:16:43 -0800

Do you use digital media as a reference while cooking? I've been curious about this for a while, when I see things like Epicurious's iPad app. Does anyone actually use these devices in an actual working kitchen, as a reference on a routine basis?*

We're a pretty nerdy household, but I have a hard time imagining chucking out the Art of French Cooking or ten years' worth of cooking magazines in favor of a more modern solution, regardless of what awesome library of recipes I could have in digital storage.

So I'm curious -- does anyone actually use any sort of computer in the kitchen to do live cooking with--i.e. iPad out on the butcher block as you make a pie crust, laptop open as you make bolognese sauce, etc? Am I missing out on something by clinging to the old paper versions? Is this an early sign of old crank-dom?

*Printed recipes from the web don't count.

What Recipes Should I Digitalize?

Elsie — Sat, 27 Nov 2010 05:52:17 -0800

I'm culling the (cookbook) herd from a certain era (mainly 70s-mid-90s). What are your favorite recipes from my canon of James Beard, Marcella Hazen, Silver Palate, et al that I should digitalize? Here's my downsizing list:

James Beard Cookbook
James Beard Menus for Entertaining
Joy of Cooking
Classic Italian Cooking (Marcella Hazen)
More Classic Italian Cooking (Marcella Hazen)
The New York Times 60-Minute Gourmet (Pierre Franey)
Microwave Gourmet (Barbara Kafka)
Any of Patricia Wells's Bistro/French cookbooks circa 1970s-1990s--I have three of them.

Simple and beautiful cookbook layout examples?

Ahab — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 09:08:53 -0800

I'm writing an Asian cookbook. The recipes are mostly finished, and I'm currently testing and narrowing them down to the truly tasty. It'll be self published for friends and family, so won't need to look truly fancy. But I'm stuck for inspiration as to design and layout. So I'm looking for examples of simple but beautiful cookbook page layouts. Preferably viewable online. Suggestions?

Bake me a cake as fast as you can.

santojulieta — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 06:47:22 -0800

I can't afford Pastry School, but I can afford Pastry Textbook School. What should I buy? I want/need to get aaaaawesome at baking without dropping $16k on Pastry School. I want to get the most awesome texts possible to help me do this.

I'm not just looking for cookbooks. I want to understand the science behind baking as well, so I can learn to make recipes, not just regurgitate someone else's recipes. If something fails, I want to understand why it failed.

What do you home bakers/professional bakers/pastry chefs suggest?

Cookbooks that explain the entire process?

archagon — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 19:54:52 -0800

For me, the most satisfying part of learning a new recipe is figuring out why a particular step is needed. Are there any recipe books that explain the function of each step and ingredient? (Incidentally, does anyone know why most pie recipes call for dotting the top of the filling with butter?)

International standard cookbooks?

cgc373 — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 10:26:32 -0800

When a friend online noticed Joy of Cooking referred to as "one of America's standard cookbooks" and wondered about internationally analogous "standard cookbooks," I immediately thought, "What a great question for AskMe!" And here we are.

Help I need pretty food pictures

bookdragoness — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 11:20:12 -0800

Help for the food-imagining-impaired: cookbooks and sources of recipes with pretty pictures? My husband doesn't consider food FOOD until it's cooked, so I generally decide and make what we eat. He wants to start putting together meal plans, so to help I want to surprise him with cookbooks (or other recipe sources) with pretty pictures that make him salivate.

This realization came from the other day where he was looking at canned soups and was easily biased by their food photography. I'd like to help him with his food decision-making abilities, and he has basically no ability to imagine what food tastes like from a recipe, so I thought that getting him some resources with food photographed at its tastiest might help.

I'm rather cookbook retarded - I have the Joy of Cooking, an Italian and two crockpot cookbooks - all of which were gifts. When I think of something to eat, I generally go cruising on the internet and amalgamate several recipes into something tasty.

Bonus for food that is fairly simple to make - while I like to try fancy recipes sometimes, I tend to stick to fairly simple things on weekdays.

Extra bonus for things HE could make - he has a mastery of the microwave, can make pasta (and reheat sauce), chop/slice/peel things, etc.

We have a fairly well-stocked kitchen, including a multitude of spices, blender, mixer, full set of pots/pans, good knives, rice cooker, fondue pot, and a crock pot, if that helps.

I am planning on stopping by a used bookstore on the way home - what should I look for?

Searching for roast saint recipe

kenko — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 16:21:53 -0800

I once read an old cookbook that, at the end, had a recipe for saint. I want to find it again. Any clues? It was for the most part a serious cookbook, though either old or eccentric enough that its recipes included instructions like "shoot the pheasants and hang them for several days", but at the end it had several tongue-in-cheek recipes, one of which, as mentioned, was for saint; it advised the chef that, if the saint was genuine, he would advise the chef as to when he was done (like St. Lawrence). I haven't been able to google it up.

Where can I find a database of cookbook indexes?

chefscotticus — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 09:13:28 -0800

Where can I find a database of cookbook indexes? Is there a website that contains a recipe directory for printed cookbooks?

I own lots of cookbooks. It's annoying to have to look through each individiual index, however, when I'm looking for a recipe for a common dish. Is there a website, or other service, that has a searchable collection of what recipes can be found in what cookbooks? (Note, I'm not looking for the recipes themselves, but instead a collective, searchable index.)

NOTE: I posed this question to the internet two years ago and didn't get any responses. Now, with my recent discovery of the AMAZING Delicious Library media cataloging tool, I'm inspired to find a new solution. Bonus if it can plug-in with my Delicious Library catalog of cookbooks. (Fat chance, I know...)

I need a serious, simple, general-purpose cookbook.

BostonTerrier — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 15:55:40 -0800

What is an example of a cookbook wherein the recipes have had the hell tested out of them? After seeing "Julie & Julia" I have a hankering to get back into the workshop and start cooking again. But I've been burned (ha) many times in the past by recipes that don't seem to have been tested on a five year-old, let alone a gourmand. Some cookbooks suffer from poor or nonexistent editing, and I hate the whimsical drifty line drawings which illustrate some of lamest of them.
My current stand-by is a 1980 edition of Fannie Farmer; a serious, tried-and-true gem. But I want something in addition, and nothing too terribly difficult.
I'm looking for a general cookbook; not a particular cuisine. And actual photos of the process, in addition to the end result, is a plus.
In short: if a cookbook were a personality, I'm looking for a Type A.

The Rest of the World, One Plate at a Time

chrchr — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 23:00:36 -0800

Rick Bayless' Mexican Everyday is my go-to cookbook. Can anyone recommend any other cookbook authors that can teach me about other traditional world cuisines? Who's the Rick Bayless of Indian food? The Asian Rick Bayless? Who's the Mediterranean's answer to Rick Bayless? Let me explain what I admire about Bayless. First of all, he ain't a famous TV chef slumming in ethnic food. Bayless has made Mexican food his life's work. That means that I trust the authenticity and integrity of his recipes. He does an excellent job explaining how they fit into the culture of Mexico, and his books provide a foundation for understanding the system of Mexican cuisine.

At the same time, he makes these recipes accessible to ordinary Americans. These are simple recipes that don't use too many exotic ingredients and don't take all day to make. They're mostly "week night" recipes.

I'm looking for similar cookbooks about other parts of the world.

Looking for some healthy recipe resources

Afroblanco — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 11:15:58 -0800

Looking for cookbooks, blogs, websites, and forums that specialize in simple, healthy recipes. I'm a single guy who doesn't have a whole lot of time to cook or wash dishes. But I'm tired of eating out all the time, and would like to change my eating habits.

I'm not looking for a "diet." I want to make a permanent change in the way I eat.

I like healthy/vegetarian food, but am not myself a vegetarian. So no dietary restrictions really, except that the food must be healthy, nutritious, low-fat and low-calorie.

I don't mind putting some effort into my meals, but ideally these recipes wouldn't require a lot of time-consuming preparation or cleanup.

Assume that I don't know anything at all about cooking, because, well, I kinda don't.