I love reading cookbooks. I hate following recipes 
So i usually read them for inspiration.
Also why i would love more books like The Flavour Thesaurus.
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Totally disagree that it is impractical. You have to want to make that kind of food and follow those recipes, but we (Jonathan even moreso) use it so much that we need our 2 copies. The recipes are clear, comprehensive and teach essential building blocks for mastering certain skills and techniques. We value it deeply for way more than reading. The recipes are only useless if you don’t want to make that kind of food, which you don’t have to want - but that’s about you, not the book. Not aimed at you @Zachgoldstein Plenty of people are quite happy with The Silver Palate (we have two falling apart copies of that as well).
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I agree with the YouTube / online bit. There’s information to be had and there’s things to learn but there’s a lot of noise. When I talk about TV I’m thinking of series like The Mind of a Chef or Parts Unknown. Almost never about a recipe, rarely even about a single dish or technique. Much more about exposure to regions, cuisines, concepts, maybe sometimes even an ethos.
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Cooked the heck out of the SP cookbooks in the 80’s!
the same book designer went on to design the
“What to expect when expecting” pregnancy book
and it looks exactly like the SP cookbooks 
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yeah I agree with everything youre saying here - impractical is probably the wrong word to use to describe it. Lets go with ‘dense and challenging’ instead!
Agree on recipes, whether in books or on TV, for inspiration. But the very first time I nearly always follow very closely - I think the chef / author deserves that respect, and then I play around after that.
yeah I got you - I consume tons of food related programing but not a ton of straight up cooking videos
Mind of a Chef is one of my favs of all time - The Magnus Nilson season is prob my favorite with Sean Brock in second
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To your point, that fish cookbook has a recipe for a baked salt crust whole cabbage that I really want to make. I’ve made plenty of fish in a salt crust but would never have thought about doing cabbage that way until this cookbook. I bet that cabbage is great with some pork also.
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This sake was served chilled. I have a dedicated small sake fridge.
Deja vu. Did nearly this exact same dinner a couple weeks ago, but wanted to try a slight variation with the polenta, and did a chutney for the pork this time instead of a grilled apple mostarda.
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Wife asked for something light as we had Dew Drop dog, burger and a half and half extra crispy for lunch.
Grilled shrimp salad.
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Because you are a baller. 
We didn’t cook it from scratch, but were pretty excited to find a kit for Asturian Fabadas that we prepared in our tiny apartment kitchen in San Sebastian. We might have improved on a few elements… 
Peasant food rocks.
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An almond cake that I made with almond flour, diced dried Turkish apricots, a sliced almond and honey topping, and no butter. I just had a small slice with my late morning espresso. - very yum
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Lamb meatballs stuffed with fresh cherries in a mint/vinegar sauce from the cookbook Sofreh. Going back to the point @Zachgoldstein was making about learning from cookbooks, the sauce for this is something I would never have done and it felt strange making. Onions, turmeric, dried mint (a lot of it), water, vinegar, lemon juice, fruit and sugar that you finish the meatballs in. Turned out amazing and I’m making this again soon for friends.
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Uh…care to expand Jim? The pic looks like that would be absolutely delicious, but I have no clue what exactly it is.
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Yeah , that would have been useful. I added a description. Thanks.
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