Cookbooks that changed your life.

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baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
mistersloane said:
Did you get the Sichuan book or the Hunan one? Favourites in the Sichuan one are the Dan Dan Noodle recipes (all of 'em! I use the extra thin dry egg noodles in the packet with the green and yellow flowers down the right hand side, you can get em in the Chinese shop on Electric Avenue); twice cooked pork; fish fragrant pork; red braised pork; chicken with chillies; dry fry chicken (chicken ones take ages tho cos you do it in batches); did the rabbit one cos they're doing farmed rabbit at borough market now - I don't like the wild one, too gamey; and done pretty much all the veg ones except for the weird vegetables, tho got a book recently with pictures of all of them so I can go foraging now.

I went to the supermarket and just bought as any of the ingredients as I could find first so it feels like less of a big deal making the stuff now, does that make sense? I know I can just buy some pork and some aubergine and chances are I'll be able to rustle something up. Haven't been cooking it so much recently as been trying to support our local Chinese place - went by there a while back and it was shut (just for a day) but got this panic that if it shut and it was cos we hadn't been goin there enough, I wouldn't be able to live with myself.
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Thank you! Will give this all a go when I have some more time. Yeah, definitely I will go and buy a bunch of ingredients, else it's all too overwhelming. I have lots of sichuan pepper now, but apparently the stuff you buy in supermarkets is shite, according to Ms Dunlop. Damn. Twice cooked pork is boiled then fried, right? I always fancied learning how to make that.
 
Slothrop

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
Bang Diddley said:
I got the 'Vegetarian Dishes from the Middle East' one. There's no pictures, somehow I find this puts me of deciding what to make. Its kind of odd really. The dishes I made tasted good but I don't know they look right. Maybe it doesn't matter . . .
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I got it recently and am liking it so far. I kind of grew up on second hand Madhur Jaffrey, Kenneth Lo, Elizabeth David etc books, so I'm pretty much used to no pictures, and certainly prefer it to forking out loads of money for a cookbook that has loads of pictures of bowls of fruit on rustic wooden tables taken with narrow depth of field and slightly saturated colours but only about a dozen actual recipes.

Having said that, the Cafe Paradiso book (or the slightly more recipe-heavy Paradiso Seasons) looks tempting. As does the new Ottolenghi book coming out - I spent a while looking at his first in Foyles before deciding that cooking for a veggie would just rule out too much stuff for it to be worth the price tag, so a solidly meat free book could be good.
 
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K

Krasner

Well-known member
This book taught me to cook. I still refer to it constantly for things I can never remember (the meat roasting times are invaluable) and if there's something I fancy cooking but have never made it always has a good recipe.

I'm a very relaxed cook and find most recipes over complicated and tiresome so I tend to use cookbooks for ideas rather than religously follow the recipes. But if i'm feeling uninspired theres a few books that I trust to guide me to a tasty meal.

Despite the naff title Madhur Jaffrey's Ultimate Curry Bible is an excellent book. The sections tracing the history of curry and its influence around the world are fascinating. Claudia Roden's Arabesque and the aforementioned Moro cookbooks also get regular outings.

Do other people find the vast majority of recipes infuriating? They almost always have stupid quantities and will never serve the amount they purport to (maybe I'm just a fatty) or have steps that make unecessary work/washing up.
 
Slothrop

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
Krasner said:
This book taught me to cook. I still refer to it constantly for things I can never remember (the meat roasting times are invaluable) and if there's something I fancy cooking but have never made it always has a good recipe.
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That and Leiths are great for standards. I tend to use Phillip Harben's Grammar of Cookery for basing cooking times and suchlike. As well as it being an interesting reference on how stuff actually works on a microscopic level - sort of like a proto-Blumenthal, but without the bat fuck insane bits.

Do other people find the vast majority of recipes infuriating? They almost always have stupid quantities and will never serve the amount they purport to (maybe I'm just a fatty) or have steps that make unecessary work/washing up.
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The one that gets me is books that use a very specific or obscure ingredient in a very small quantity for one recipe. I mean, I don't mind tracking down hard to get hold of ingredients, but I get quite wound up by having to do this knowing that said ingredient will then either clutter up my store cupboard and get used about once every six months or sit in the fridge for a week and then go off.

I think this is particularly bad when a general cookery book has one recipe from a given region or culture, but goes to great lengths to make it authentic by using all the right traditional ingredients rather than more common substitutes...
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
anyone got thai food by david thompson. im thinking of getting it cos its been reduced from $100 to $30 in the local bookshop. its supposed to be the best thai cook book you can get, at least if you dont read thai. its a tome and a half. hes an aussie boy that learned how to cook thai. he runs a resturaunt there now, in some posh hotel.
 
S

Sick Boy

All about pride and egos
tryptych said:
McGee's "On food and cooking"


Not strictly a cookbook, but every kitchen should have one. Written by an ex-physicist, you might not expect a book on the sience of cooking to be so well written - and poetic.
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Quoted for truth.
 
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