What is your favourite cookbook. I like the Moosewood Cookbook though I have not used it for years.

[applegrove]

[hifiguy]

1. I have a few, but the one I always go back to

is Irene Kuo's incomparable "The Key to Chinese Cooking" (now out of print :(). The best one-volume all-region A-Z Chinese cookbook EVAH!

[mainegreen]

2. The Joy of Cooking.

I know, I know. But it's the workhorse of cookbooks so how can I not love it?

For fun cookbooks though, it would either be this generic cookbook I have called 'Indian Cooking' where everything comes out perfect every time, or the french cookbook 'I know how to cook' because everything out of that is yummy yummy yummy.

[Arkansas Granny]

4. Joy of Cooking here, too. Recently, however, I've been getting a lot of recipes

from the internet.

[mainegreen]

5. I've been burned by to many recipes off the internet

My success rate there is at best 30%.
:(

[Arkansas Granny]

21. I've gotten several good recipes lately at All Recipes. Their recipes come with reviews.

http://allrecipes.com/

[elleng]

3. James Beard

Don't know which one, as mine 'disappeared' when I left our house.

[livetohike]

6. "Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home" must be my

favorite because it is falling apart :-). Well, so is "Sundays at Moosewood Restaurant" :hi:.

[oneshooter]

7. 1950 Betty Crocker cookbook. really nice recipes n/t

[femmocrat]

20. Mine is vintage early 1970s, but it is the one I use the most.

I bought a more recent one, but prefer the old BC Cookbook. It is so stuffed with recipes that the backing is falling off the spine.

[murielm99]

24. That is my edition of choice, too.

I do have the one from the fifties, but I have to be careful with it. Some of the recipes call for too much salt. I think they used more salt in those days.

I don't imagine many of you live on farms, or in the country. But the Home Extension cookbooks are often the best cookbooks around. Those farmers' wives know how to cook. I have a couple of those cookbooks that I use often.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

8. A very old edition of The Joy of Cooking.

[OriginalGeek]

9. I have pretty much the same success rate whether it's from the internet

or my big red and white checkered cook book. I burn everything. I only got it because that's what my mom had. My wife has actually had 2 of them and she threw the old falling apart one away when she got the new one but then we discovered the new one was different. THe new one didn't have the recipe for Chicken Saltimbucca so we had to go scaouring though friends libraries and whatnot until we gound a copy of the recipe and Xeroxed it and stuck it in there.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

14. Mine is also very old...1965!

It's the Bride's Edition, and it was given to me by my grandmother!

I have read it for many years, though not recently...

:hi:

[PufPuf23]

19. I have my grandmother's (born 1889) 1931 Joy of Cooking and another 1975

edition that was a wedding present in 1977.

The old edition is unique in that there are several hundred handwritten recipes, magazine cutouts, and recipe cards on blank pages, taped into, or loose in a book that is falling apart.

I also have my mother's (1915-1979) personal recipe book; hand written, or cards, or magazine cutouts.

Lots of recipes on canning, pickling, jellies, smoking meats, etc.

Access here was only by foot, horse, or mule train until 1921 and there was not general electricity until mid 50s and no telephones until 1972 and still no cell access.

My maternal grandparents had a hunting and fishing resort from 1921 to 1959 that served salmon, steelhead, sturgeon, trout, venison, elk, bear, duck, pheasant, grouse, goose, panther, and today's normal meats. They would smoke fish for clients to take home. Food was included in the daily tariff. I have a resort register for two years in late 40s that had names like Frank Capra, Fred MacMurray, Eddie Cantor, etc. and the only thing I have ever bought ebay was a picture of President Hoover flyfishing for steelhead in the early 20s at the resort riffle. BTW I have not hunted since 1969 nor fished since 1986 despite growing up in this culture. I don't can or anything either and use Costco meat. I have Indian friends that give me canned smoked salmon, fresh salmon, or jerked salmon. When it is the right season and company, I will go out for Matusakes or morels and make a killer matusake soup (matusakes browned gently in butter with shallots then add 1-1 ratio for 1/2&1/2 and sherry then bring to a simmer and eat. Maybe add a splash of pepper or fresh cilantro.

My Dad's family had been here since the late 1850s and lived off the land including farming and cattle, mules were more used for transportation than horses)

I am actually kind of clueless. Several years ago I showed the recipe book to one of my close neighbors who were both in their 90s and knew my one grandmother and parents and Alita would make the old recipes for me and Cleo but now they are both gone.

Several have told me I should edit into a book because of classic frontier recipes before electricty and refrigeration and with wood stoves.

There is a lemon merange pie recipe to die for that takes 6 ingredients. Home made fig (or other fruit) newtons. Recipes for the natural bounty of wildlife, berries (mmm huckleberry pie), matusake and other mushrooms, wild grapes, smoked fish and bacon or ham, etc.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

22. I have the 1943 edition. It was a wedding gift to my mother.

[Ptah]

10. Fannie Farmer

[PassingFair]

12. + 1

I actually have two of those.

My husband has about 150 cook books.

I just have the two...

[kentauros]

11. The Tassajara Bread Book

by Edward Espe Brown :)
http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Tassajara_bread_book.html?id=3et4AAAACAAJ

I've used this book more than the forty+ other cookbooks I own. While I like to cook, I love to bake!

[Brother Buzz]

15. Ed Brown is truly a wonderful person

I met him through his brother, Dwight, in 1970, just months before his book exploded on the market.

There is a delightful film on him I stumbled across on Netflex titled HOW TO COOK YOUR LIFE. Track it down, you won't be disappointed.

http://news.sfzc.org/content/view/421/44/

[kentauros]

25. Oddly enough, I have heard about that movie and within the last week!

So, I will have to look for it :)

That's cool you got to meet him. I actually have the other two books with the similar covers, The Tassajara Recipe Book, and Tassajara Cooking. As much as I learned about basic cooking from The Joy of Cooking, and more advanced stuff from Child's The Way to Cook, I really learned more about spontaneous cooking from Tassajara Cooking. For someone that is used to recipes on the order of chemical equations (baking requires precise measuring) it has helped me free up that kind of stiffness from years of baking.

And for anyone that doesn't understand what I am trying to get at, it doesn't really have recipes so much as guidelines. Flavorings get actual measurements as do cooking times, but the ingredients are simply listed, and you don't even have to use them all. It's very loose and surprisingly, works quite well. I recommend any of his books :)

[PufPuf23]

27. Good ingredients and gentle handling but baking is chemistry. nt

[kentauros]

28. Perhaps you need to read (if you haven't already)

Harold McGee's book "On Food and Cooking" :D

I'm not a scientist, but I've learned so much about food science from that book! He really knows how to teach and makes it a joy to read :hi:

[PufPuf23]

30. I have never heard of Mr. McGee.

I may have been confusing in my last post in that I meant to say (1) Usually quality ingredients and attentive cooking works and can be learned by observation and (2) Baking does require some precision.

I am lazy and don't use cook books except Joy of Cooking like an encyclopedia and I have old family recipes and forest knowledge for mushrooms, huckleberries, etc that entertain and please.

The topic makes me nostalgic fo childhood family rather than wanting for new recipes.

Plus I lived in north Berkeley for years and have been landlord to two of Humboldt County Organic Growers Association Presidents and have my own garden.



Thanks for noticing me. Peace.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

13. The I Never Cooked Before Cookbook, by Jo Coudert.

Little paperback I got in the 80s. It's out of print now and hard to find.
Good for dummies.
It says 1) do this; 2) do this, etc.
Very simple. The Beef Stronganoff recipe is good because you pour in a couple of cans of beef gravy instead of making the gravy from scratch.

Also The Settlement Cookbook, originally published by a Settlement House in Milwaukee in 1900. I have a 70s edition. Lots of German and Jewish stuff.

The American Woman's Cookbook, circa 1941. My mom used it in Home Ec class in college. It has beautiful color plates. You can find it on Amazon.

I have tried James Beard and I think his recipes are way too much work. I don't do French cooking either for that reason. I avoid a lot of things in Joy of Cooking that are complicated or have weird ingredients.

A good website I have found is allrecipes.com
I just made banket, which is a danish crepe with marzipan filling in it.
Got the recipe from there.

I make bread in the Cuisinart.

[kentauros]

26. Hey, remind me the next time I visit y'all

to bring my copy of "Build Your Own Earth Oven" and then the next time I visit after that we can have wood-fire baked pizza! :9 ;)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxmfC7nMTlY

Oh, I've also got a book on building your own sundials if you want to borrow that, too :hi:

RecipeSource is another good online recipe site.

[greendog]

16. The Tao of Cooking

[IcyPeas]

17. Moosewood Cookbook == Soy Gavult .... so yummy

borscht = so yummy

my ex and I made almost everything in that book.

[GoCubsGo]

18. Creme de Colorado

It's a collection of recipes put out by the Denver Junior League back in the 1980s. Everything I have ever made from it was delicious!


http://www.amazon.com/Colorado-Cookbook-Junior-League-Denver/dp/B002BRK9VU

I also love my Moosewood books and The Joy of Cooking.

[Odin2005]

23. Cooking for Geeks.

http://www.amazon.com/Cooking-Geeks-Science-Great-Hacks/dp/0596805888

This book is awesome!

[SwampG8r]

29. gonna sound lame

better homes and gardens cookbook is the best
it teaches technique and the recipes always come out right
perfect gift for housewarmings

[spiderpig]

31. Better Homes & Gardens

Both their basic cookbook and their baking book. Recipes are reliable, and I like the format - ring notebook style, so they lay flat.

[HopeHoops]

32. "Moosewood Cookebook" is my favorite also, but "The Enchanted Broccoli Forest" is a close second.