Saturday, February 4, 2012

What are your favorite cookbooks and chefs?

First tell me some of your favorite cookbooks/chefs and why. Then if you can think of any books to fill in my blanks below that would be awesome! And any links to good websites or forums about various cuisines would also be awesome.



I collect cookbooks that have history and context along with good recipes. Since they are so expensive I do not like wasting money on fad cookbooks or celeb books (mainly Food Network). For general cooking and techniques I turn to America's Test Kitchen. I have many of their books and love them all. But I really like books by chef's who are leaders in their field of cuisine best. So here ten of my favorites in no order.



Authentic Mexican - Rick Bayless

Lidia's Italian Table/Lidia's Italy - Lidia Matticchio Bastianich

Cooking With Claudine - Jacques Pepin

Julia Child - The Way To Cook %26amp; The Art Of French Cooking

Vegetarian Everyday - Deborah Madison

Chez Panisse Fruits - Alice Waters

The Chinese Kitchen - Eileen Yin-Fei Lo

Kitchen Conversations %26amp; The Mediterranean Kitchen - Joyce Goldstein

The Tassajara Bread Book - Edward Espe Brown

Bobby Flay's Burgers, Fries, and Shakes - Bobby Flay



What all these chef's do in their books is give background history of the food or recipe and they are experts in their field of cuisine. They also manage to make it all fairly no fuss for the home cook meaning the either don't use a lot of hard to find items or they provide alternatives. In other words there is more to read than just recipes.



I must confess I have Mark Bittman's 'How to Cook Everything' and I find the it is too much and too big. It feels like he is trying to do too much instead of mastering one thing really well. I have cooked from it but the dishes are fine but it just feels to pretentious and the sort of depth of knowledge on specific cuisines I expect from from my chefs.



Now some of my missing cuisines



BBQ:

Greece:

Spain:

Brazil:

Sushi:

Indian:

Japan (non sushi):

Mediterranean:

Caribbean/Cuban:

Persian/Middle East:

Hawaiian:

Southern:

New Orleans:

Korean:

Thai:What are your favorite cookbooks and chefs?
I too LOVE America's Test Kitchen, I go to them for a lot of my recipes. Alton Brown also has good recipes, but his cookbooks aren't so great.



My all time favorite chef and favorite cookbook is Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking. I believe she is the best chef the world will ever see. I do not have, but I WOULD LOVE TO BUY, one of her other books, Baking with Julia. I love baking and as she is the best chef, her recipes are bound to be perfect.



Some other cookbooks I love, although not necessarily in your categories, are:



1) The Bread Baker's Apprentice; Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread by Peter Reinhart. This is a great book that makes baking bread easy and delicious. He provides all the science involved in bread baking and the history of all the different breads he has recipes for.



2) Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon and Mary Enig.

This is a great book on how to prepare healthy traditional natural diets. They provide info on all the studies backing up their research and insights into the recipes and traditional diets. Their book may surprise most people, they are not anti-meat, anti-fat, they recommend diets high in saturated fat and cholesterol, with scientific studies to back up their claims.



3) I do have an Indian/Thai/Southeast Asian cookbook that may help. For all my curry needs I go to: Best Ever Curry by Mridula Baljekar. If that isn't what you want, all of her other curry books are great. They don't have very much information though, so it may not be what you would like.



4) I do not have this book, but I do want it, it's on Southern cooking. It sounds promising, and it has gotten good reviews. It's called The Glory of Southern Cooking, by James Villas. Here's a link to it.

http://www.amazon.com/Glory-Southern-Coo鈥?/a>



Sorry I couldn't be any more help. I look forward to reading other people's posts. I too love cookbooks, and I have been disappointed with a lot that I have bought. I would LOVE to expand my collection further.



I would also recommend going to Barnes and Noble (or your favorite book store) and look through several cookbooks. This is obvious information, but I have had problems before. I look through the cookbook, find a few things I like, buy the book, and then never use it. So I recommend thoroughly looking through the book.





Maybe you can help me too. You didn't list any, so you may not know of any, but I would like a German cookbook. I have looked and bought a few but I have been unhappy with them. Do you, or anyone else on here, know of a good German, Austrian, Swiss, Czech, or Polish cookbooks, I would appreciate it a lot.What are your favorite cookbooks and chefs?
Sanjeev Kumar for Indian Food,

Giada de Laurentis for Italian FoodWhat are your favorite cookbooks and chefs?
cat cora is the best cook EVER

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