277426 Wed Apr 06 10:57:19 -0700 2005 25 31 Home Cooking 0 1465792 These are what I am looking at for a basic collection as i do not want to be overwhelmed. What do you think? 1. Joy of Cooking - I am seraching for editions from '62 '63 '64 or '75 2. The Way to Cook - Child 3. Essentials of Italian Cooking - Hazan 4. La Varenne Practique - Wilian 5. Here for the Food/ More Food/ Gear- Brown 6. On Food and Cooking - McGee 7. Secrets of Baking - ? Magazines will allow me opportunity to experiment with techniques learned from these and to develop intuition about flavor, taste texture combos. Also using sites such as eG and chowhound for support. Comments Please. Wed Apr 06 10:57:19 -0700 2005 0 newb 1 1465809 personally, i prefer bittman's how to cook everything to joy of cooking. the recipes are more modern and do a good job of incorporating ethnic (asian, latino) flavors when appropriate. i have both but never use joy. i think colicchio's think like a chef is a good technique book that you might want to consider. i don't think you need la varenne practique - you will get enough technical instruction with julia, marcella, and, most importantly, practice. i don't use alton brown, but i think you can get the recipes on the food network website, thus obviating the need to buy the book. mcgee seems like a good idea. if you are interested in indian food at all, suvir saran's indian home cooking has vaulted to the top (or near the top) of my favorite cookbooks list and is very good for novice cooks. Wed Apr 06 13:02:11 -0700 2005 1465792 0 queue 2 1465817 Interesting...I use the Joy all the time and have about 8 different ones (I'm a collector, tho). I find they have some excellent basic ethnic dishes that can be embellished on as you gain experience. Oddly enough, I do find that the older editions have more ethnic recipes, along with more exotic ingredients. As they use to tell us in cooking school, once you have mastered the basics, you can than feel free to fool with different variations. In other words, unless you can make a perfect hollandaise, you have no business making a sauce maltaise :-) Funny the things that stick in my head after all these years :-) Wed Apr 06 13:43:31 -0700 2005 1465809 0 Cyndy 3 1465851 See also, "SAUCES, Classical and Contemporary Sauce Making" authored by James Peterson. Use the "search inside" link on Amazon. And, don't forget you can buy books at Amazon.com through the Chowhound site. It used to be they put sauces OVER things to cover imperfections. Now, they sometimes even paint with them on plates (expressionism)! However, flavor is KEY. The book starts with a short history of sauce making and moves on to: *Equipment *Ingredients *Stocks and glaces and essences *Laisons (which are various thickening agents from gelatin to bread) *White sauces . . *Meat sauces . . *Egg yolk sauces . . *Purees *Desserts. . .Creme Anglaise and caramel He even delves into herb-infused vinegars and fruit salsa and chutneys. The book allows for imaginariums, but also has some very basic recipes, such as aspics. How about a Hot Hazelnut and Parsley Vinaigrette for Baked Fish? There are recipes dispersed throughout and indexed per chapter and then alphabetically. The full index and then the recipes index following is a great place to start. Link: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0471292753/qid=1112815064/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/103-7496005-0866206 Wed Apr 06 15:40:58 -0700 2005 1465817 0 kc girl 2 1465845 Second Bittman. Indispensable. Wed Apr 06 15:16:12 -0700 2005 1465809 0 Sir Gawain 1 1465815 I have Joy and use it all the time for Basic recipes and techniques. Once you know the basics then you have something you can build on. The previous poster was correct in that Joy recipes are rather old fashioned and non-ethnic but a basic white sauce is the same in 1960 as it is in 2005. I also like Joy because it provides the basic information necessary for everything from butchering to cooking to preserving and has an excellent index so you can actually find what you are looking for. Wed Apr 06 13:40:19 -0700 2005 1465792 0 EAF 1 1465819 1. Joy of Cooking - if i had to have just ONE cookbook it would be this. I have found it indispensable. i have the most recent edition. 2. The Way to Cook - i don't have this one. i have the one with her and jacques pepin. i have used it quite a bit despite some of the recipes being a bit too complex for my skills. this said, some of the common and simplest recipes are no nonsense and well detailed (with pictures). the homemade gravlax is unbelievably easy and fantastic. just be sure to obtain the freshest salmon you can get your hands on. living in SF, we have the good fortune of buying salmon direct off the boat. 3. Hazan - this is essential to any collection. 4. Here for the Food - personally i like this book. but i'm one that really enjoys knowing the science (proven facts) of anything. others might find it verbose. luckily brown's wit and humor come through to make the reading light. 5. On Food and Cooking - i just received this book and i love it for the same reason stated in # 4. but again, it's a more of a reference about the minutiae of how/why. regarding mag. subscriptions, i'm a fan of CI but i must confer with other ch's opinions about them. (see earlier thread on Cook's Illustrated). i currently subscribe to Saveur (i like to read about the travel/history of food), Fine Cooking (i need/want creative ideas) and Cuisine at Home (in the end i prefer simplicity). I despise Gourmet and F&W. the recipes that are perfectly photographed and poised on the pages never turn out well. Wed Apr 06 13:46:06 -0700 2005 1465792 0 angella 1 1465821 I wouldn't recommend an older cookbook for a novice. Cookbooks are written for their time period. If you want Joy, I'd go with the latest edition (3rd if I'm not mistaken). Personally, I like Bittman's How to Cook better than Joy. How to Cook Meat by Chris Schlesinger & John Willoughby is probably a good intro to that subject. Roasting by Barbara Kafka is a good book for high heat roasting, which is not universally praised by everyone and seems to work better on birds than beasts. Sauces by James Peterson is a book I should use more (my fault not his), but it covers the topic. Any James Peterson book is going to be a good one. Splendid Soups I use, but Fish and Shellfish I don't so much. I would point out, however, that I have yet to find a fish and seafood book I like. Of the ones I have, his would be the best. Wed Apr 06 13:50:54 -0700 2005 1465792 0 muD 2 1465830 I'll back your Peterson and Schlesinger recommendations. And here's a confession: my hundred-plus cookbook collection (which has been trimmed down on several occasions), has never included the Joy of Cooking. Never used it. I grew up in Fannie Farmer household, and for some reason always felt like Fannie Farmer was Joy of Cooking for New Englanders, and if you had one, you didn't need the other. Ridiculous, I know, but that's the way it is. For general purposes, I also like Craig Claiborne's New York Times Cookbook, and for basic baking, Nick Malgieri's How to Bake. Wed Apr 06 14:21:54 -0700 2005 1465821 0 curiousbaker 1 1465823 1. Yes; alternatively, the Fannie Farmer Cookbook by Marion Cunningham, or Mark Bittman's How To Cook Everything. But Joy, particularly the older editions, is a touchstone in a way the other two are not. 2. Yes. 3. Later, unless classic Italian is core for you. But it is eventually a must-have. 4. Very much yes. If you get this, you might not need Joy for its basic information that is lacking in the alternatives I mentioned. 5-7. Not sure. Might I also suggest the following? -It's All American Food by David Rosengarten. It combines the best of both Bittman and Cooks Illustrated, and remedies their weaknesses. -The Victory Garden Cookbook by Marian Morash. Despite the broader works by Deborah Madison, such as Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, this is still the single best resource on choosing, handling and preparing vegetables (and planting them if you so desire), and the recipes are straightfoward, elegant and foolproof. It's not strictly vegetarian. But it is how a gardener approaches a kitchen, and invaluable for that perspective. -American Cookery, by James Beard. Just wonderful, soup to nuts. It is actually a bit of a history of sorts, organized as a cookbook full of choice opinions by the master himself. A national classic by a national treasure. Wed Apr 06 13:52:05 -0700 2005 1465792 0 Karl S. 2 1465833 Fannie Farmer is very good for novice cooks. I'm more of an intermediate cook, but I still refer back to it for basics. Bittman's is good too. Wed Apr 06 14:30:26 -0700 2005 1465823 0 valerie 2 1465836 Victory Garden Cookbook is one of the most tattered cookbooks on my bookshelf. When I'm looking for simple preparations and general info on any vegetable, I look to it first. Wed Apr 06 14:37:35 -0700 2005 1465823 0 peppermint pate 3 1465897 Victory Garden is likewise my most tattered; American Cookery next. Wed Apr 06 21:22:59 -0700 2005 1465836 0 Karl S. 1 1465840 I taught myself to cook using JC's The Way to Cook - I highly recommend it. Also have a tattered Fannie Farmer that is suprisingly useful. Marcella is a must if you want to cook Italian food. You might want to look into Jacques Pepin's cookbooks - about ten years or so ago, I bought a two volume paperback set, the name of which I do not remember, which has great photos that are very helpful. Wed Apr 06 15:02:20 -0700 2005 1465792 0 MMRuth 2 1465918 The two Pepin books - more "how to" books than cookbooks - are La Technique and La Methode, both of which have been out of print for some time, but are available (for a price, particularly in the case of La Methode) at on-line booksellers such as alibris.com. I think they're absolutely essential for anyone interested in learning the right way to do things in the kitchen. They were reprinted in a single volume a few years ago. I had the opportunity to meet Pepin while he was out flogging his autobiography ("The Apprentice," which is also a great read), and he mentioned that he actually prefers the new edition because they spent some time getting the photos to print better. Thu Apr 07 08:32:01 -0700 2005 1465840 0 FlyFish 3 1465926 The ones I have are called "The Art of Cooking" vols. I & II. Thu Apr 07 10:42:03 -0700 2005 1465918 0 MMRuth 4 1465929 Oh, OK - I have that set as well, but from your description I thought you were talking about the others I mentioned. The Art of Cooking is indeed a cookbook, as opposed to simply a guide to technique. You may be aware that they're extremely collectable - I've seen fine condition slipcased 1st Editions at used booksellers for as much as $1500 (yes, one thousand, five hundred!). Through an unusual series of events, I was able to get ahold of a mint set of the 1st Edition at about 2% of that price, and I subsequently got both books autographed by Pepin. They're the centerpiece of what's becoming an absurdly large collection of cookbooks. Thu Apr 07 11:38:12 -0700 2005 1465926 0 FlyFish 1 1465843 You didn't list the 1997 edition of Joy of Cooking. I recommend it above all the other books on your list for the novice. Mine is spotted and stained and riddled with my notes. Each section is put together by a number of different chefs and cookbook authors: Rick Bayless, Alice Medrich, John Willoughby, Chris Schlessinger, Penelope Casas,...just to name a very few, yet it is still consistent, cohesive, and comprehensive. The recipes I have tried have been spot-on and some are my standards. Sad thing that this edition gets such a bad rap. The '75-'77 edition is so sentimental to a lot of people; a real sacred cow. Wed Apr 06 15:10:03 -0700 2005 1465792 0 poppytrail 2 1465871 Yes, this is the edition I have and we use it all the time in my house. It is my first "go to" cookbook. I actually made the rack of lamb on Sat and our guests liked it so much they looked it up in their JOC when they got home so they could make it. Wed Apr 06 17:47:47 -0700 2005 1465843 0 Keri T. 1 1465867 Essentials of Italian Cooking - Hazan One of the best books I have ever owned!!! Wed Apr 06 16:59:52 -0700 2005 1465792 0 k 1 1465868 OK, I'll throw in my 2 cents. I would consider The New Doubleday Cook Book. It is a basic encyclopedia of all things to do with home cooking. You name it, it's in there Wed Apr 06 17:01:13 -0700 2005 1465792 0 susanmc 1 1465888 If I had to leave my burning house and could take only five of my cookbooks...jeez. J of C for sure (I prefer the '60s version, sorry), and Fanny Farmer. Choice between The Way to Cook and the NEW NY Times (Reichl!!) would be a tossup. Amen to James Beard's American Food, but then there's Evan Jones's, too. Tony Bourdain's Les Halles cookbook just because he's a great coach, and his cassoulet recipe makes Paula Wolfert's look like directions for a brain transplant. Magazines? Saveur. You can get recipes anywhere. What you need to make food is to GET the ATTITUDE. Wed Apr 06 19:45:26 -0700 2005 1465792 0 Will Owen 2 1465893 Sorry, that was NOT the NY Times cookbook I was thinking of, but the new Gourmet. That'll learn me to make lists like this without running downstairs to check my facts... Wed Apr 06 20:39:03 -0700 2005 1465888 0 Will Owen 3 1465898 Yes, I forgot the new Gourmet. It's belongs on the list, too. I think Bittman's Minimalist cookbooks are better than his bigger opus. Wed Apr 06 21:25:21 -0700 2005 1465893 0 Karl S. 1 1465895 2 things: 1) There are a lot of great and good cookbooks out there. You could put yourself in the poorhouse trying to buy them all, and sometimes they will just sit on your bookshelf collecting dust. Nowadays, whenever a cookbook interests me, I borrow it from the library. That lets me flip through at my leisure, and generally if I like the book I will cook something from it within the 3 weeks I have it. If I love it and find myself bookmarking recipes, then I go out and buy it. If I haven't cooked anything within that time, I know I never will. Saved me a lot of money. 2) I also parrot the Bittman over the JOC, but the Bittman book has a great little index in the back of what he believes are the most essential cookbooks. It's a good little list, even if you don't agree with every entry, and a great starting point to building your library. Wed Apr 06 21:07:24 -0700 2005 1465792 0 Pupster 1 1465943 I agree heartily w/Bittman and many of the others recommended but the one book that hasn't been discussed is Harold McGee, "On Food & Cooking, The Science and Lure of the Kitchen". It is the go to book anytime I need to know about a spice and herb, veggie, how to cook fish, meat, you name it. It's one of the Bible's of the field, gotta have it if you really want to understand food and cooking. Fri Apr 08 07:38:34 -0700 2005 1465792 0 Jakesdad