Haven’t seen a recent thread for cookbook recommendations so I figured I would start a new one. The only books I have on hand are Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking and Thomas Keller’s French Laundry and Ad Hoc at Home.
Would love some recommendations for both more gourmet style food and weekday dinners.
Two that we bought this year and use a lot are:
The Four Horsemen - Nick Curtola
Justine Snacks - Justine Doirin
Yotam Ottolenghi’s Plenty and Jerusalem (or, really, any of his later cookbooks)
Travis Lett’s Gjelina
Judy Rodgers’s The Zuni Cafe Cookbook
Claudia Roden’s A Book of Middle Eastern Food (new edition is The New Book of Middle Eastern Food)
Madhur Jaffrey’s A Taste of India (may be out of print) or An Invitation to Indian Cooking
Fuchsia Dunlop Land of Plenty (republished as The Food of Sichuan (Sichuan) and Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook (Hunanese)
Fergus Henderson’s The Book of St. John, Whole Beast, Beyond Nose to Tail
Elizabeth Andoh’s Washoku (or any of her other books)
Niki Segnit’s The Flavour Thesaurus
Slightly off the beaten track for the every day / weekly category
Simply Mediterranean Cooking
Byron Ayanoglu, Algis Kemezys,
Very tasty , reasonably straightforward, recipes. These guys apparently cooked for major film sets, including actors like De Niro, and I think that shows. Chicken with white wine and fennel (spiced with cinnamon and fennel seed), lamb with prunes that sort of thing. We make a stew for four for Sunday and get a “free” mid week meal that just needs reheating.
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The Prawn Cocktail Years , Simon Hopkinson
A fun, nostalgic, read. Sound recipes but I read as much as a memory jogger as the actual recipes.
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Almost anything by Heston Blumenthal.
The Fat Duck Cook Book for vicarious entertainment. (We had a bucket list level lunch there years ago but I haven’t attempted any of these recipes) but I have done several recipes in his other “home cooking” cook books eg In Search of Perfection they are well worth it for the analysis and explanations as much as the recipes. Fish and chips with the batter involving lager and vodka and a soda syphon, ( ok some flour etc as well) !
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The Perfect Scoop for ice creams, both familiar and esoteric.
I go to the public library and check out all the new cook book arrivals. Go through them rather quickly when one really grabs me that is the one I buy.
Sometimes tjeee is just one recipe or technique which hardly justifies a purchase.
Helps weed them out and I’m a bit space limited anyway.
I enjoy my Dean and Deluca cookbook
It’s not like cookbook recommendations stop being useful when they are a few years old, so in case you missed it:
Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child and Simone Beck.
I love The Fat Duck cookbook, not for everyday meals for sure. I have made quite a few things from it and the recipes work. The flaming sorbet is so fun and that crazy recipe for fries did make the best I’ve ever had.
Some of my recommendations would be -
Simple French Food by Richard Olney. A classic, as much fun to read as it is to cook from, will get you to think about food not just recipes.
A Good Food Day by Marco Canora. Great for everyday meals. My copy opens itself to the chicken thighs with garlic, lemon and olives. It could be the best chicken dish ever.
Crazy Water Pickled Lemons by Diana Henry. Mediterranean/Middle East cookbook, I will be using the recipe for preserved lemons to make some preserved Meyer lemons today.
Cook Real Hawaii by Sheldon Simeon. The Coconut Shrimp is off the charts great and the chili pepper water has become a staple in my house. It’s full of delicious recipes.
The Chef And The Slow Cooker by Hugh Acheson. I made fun of crock pots, I was wrong. This is a perfect book for easy weeknight meals. Some standout recipes are the Kimchi Braised Chicken and the Pot Roast with Charred Onion and Chickpea Salad.
Vietnamese Home Cooking by Charles Phan. Wide ranging Vietnamese recipes. Some standouts are Pork Clay Pot With Young Coconut Juice. One of my all time favorite soup/stew dishes. If you leave out the pork and stir in large diced salmon to barely cook at the end you will be very happy. The Mama’s Meatballs will make you forget about other types of Banh Mi!
On the gourmet side of things -
Manresa by David Kinch. If you are looking for a high end meal this is a good place to start. The Lemon Seaweed Ice on Smoked Oysters is worth doing. A lot of technique in this book. One example would be that they blanch garlic cloves eleven times and then sauté them in pork fat. They end up tasting like mild garlic gnocchi.
Il Viaggio di Vetri by Marc Vetri. High end Italian but nothing difficult to pull off. I use his fresh pasta dough recipe most of the time. I still remember the Pappardelle with Blufin Tuna and Oregano I made that the book said to have with a Cab based wine. Did not think that was a good idea but had a Ridge Monte Bello with it and it was one of the best parings I’ve ever had.
If you are adventurous the Modernist Cuisine set really is worth the money. I still use it often. Recently made the Cured Venison Tenderloin. Cured two for different times and used one for carpaccio and the other is almost done curing for a bresaola style. Hanging in the cellar right now.
That was probably my third or fourth after the two main Julia books. Some really nice stuff there.
My go-to cookbook is An American Bounty (Culinary Institute).
My wife is a big fan if the Ottolengheli cookbooks.
Soups and Stews and New Complete Book of Breads by Bernard Clayton.
The other book I should have mentioned, although likely impossible to get now is Sainsbury’s* French Cooking. Authentic Classic recipes made accessible. I think Elizabeth David was probably an inspiration Definitely one of my goto books although I have some of the key recipes more or less memorised by now. Poulet a L’Estragon that sort of thing.
Also Italian Cooking but I use that a lot less
A key feature of these books is their very compact format and almost every dish illustrated with a photo.
I would recommend Six Seasons by Joshua McFadden - some really great and delicious takes on vegetables for weekday dinners.
This was a good cookbooks thread, too:
My answers in 2019 were:
I’d swap the last one out since then, but the rest remain go-tos.
Thursday nights. Been a while but one of the best I’ve known.
I concur with several of the previous recommendations. Here are a few more to consider:
I also use the Food Network a lot, especially recipes of Alton Brown and Ina Garten.
The Food Lab by Kenji Lopez-Alt
Not a cookbook but an opportunity to learn a ton about fermentation methods and products.
