I,too, love reading cookery books, but i am almost ashamed to admit it to some of my friends, most of them actually, as they think I am mad!! Up until I started clicking on to Rose’s forum I had only 1 or 2 American books but that number is growing rapidly! My latest is Rose’s Christmas Cookies.

I have too many favorites - they’re like children - you can’t pick one over the other   I know I have several hundred cookbooks but there are less than 25 I use on a regular basis.

I like the Silver Palate original books for real food; I like Maida Heatter’s books for desserts (I own all of them and am on my third copy of Great American Desserts!).  Laurie Colwin’s books are on the bedside table (Home Cooking and More Home Cooking) because she’s terrific writer and I miss her prose (she died in 1992, far too soon).  I also like Nick Malgieri and Dorie Greenspan (mostly her later books) and anything by Jacques Pepin.

Ask me again after Santa visits

All of RLB books, including the translation Passion for Chocolate.  Perhaps I will hunt for her first publication, too, can’t remember the name right now.  Also will try for a copy of her Masters thesis re: yellow cake!

All other books regarding baking, I read, take notes, and then give away.  I feel Rose’s books has all the main techniques and recipes, so all other books are just ‘the same thing’ re-visited.  A good way to not fill your book shelves.  Rose uses and lists extensive bibliography in most her books, perhaps would be interesting to own the books mentioned in her bibliography.

Large collection of Peruvian cuisine, my favorite is La Gran Cocina Peruana (never translated in English, lots of pictures of food and places in Peru, complete list of recipes).  Also the first book by Gaston Acurio.  Also Nicolini’s Que Cocinare cookbook (paperback, Nicolini was/is Peru’s largest pasta and grocery factory).  Also cookbooks about Chinese cuisine in Peru, and how Chinese influenced Peru’s cuisine and became “Peruvian” food.

Italian cookbooks “The Silver Spoon” (Italian and in English versions).  Giada’s Everyday Italian (only this book).  Also Naked Chef’s first book.  Mostly I only use Giada’s meat sauce and bechamel sauce recipes (modified with my notes), also her pesto recipe.  Then for Naked Chef, I follow his egg pasta recipe.  All other Italian recipes come from The Silver Spoon, Italy’s oldest and most extensive cooking “bible. ” Silver Spoon does-not explain in detail how to prepare the food, neither many pictures, so it is mainly starting reading material to know what to make and what goes in it.

A handful of local Pacific Rim Hawaii fusion food.  Not many really, why? when you can have it made for you next door.

“No” FoodTV celebrities’ cookbooks, except with Giada’s one, I have.

I don’t have a mountain of cookbooks, but I feel I have a mountain of recipes to make!

For baking, I use Dorie Greenspan’s Baking book, King Arthur’s Baking Companion, and RLB’s The Bread Bible.  I also have RLB’s Christmas Cookies but haven’t used them yet. I’m gearing up for them, though, because I expect to use several this season.  I also use The Ultimate RiceCooker Cookbook too with my rice cooker!

Since I am a Southern man, I have always found my Ultimate Southern Living Cookbook very handy.  I have also found some of the Donna Hay series of cookbooks to be quite simple and lovely.

For cakes, cookies and other desserts, I like Maida Heatter’s books, in addition to Rose’s.  (But my best brownie recipe comes from my 1963 Better Homes and Garden cookbook - it was my high school home ec textbook!)  I also like Patricia Wells’ books on cooking in Provence.  For italian food, Marcella Hazan’s encyclopedic volume that combined her first two books (I can’t remember the name.)  Paula Wolfert -  particularly her Moroccan cookbook.  I like to read cookbooks, too -especially Elizabeth David’s and Paula Wolfert’s.

I love Maida Heatter’s cookbooks. Absolutely wonderful. My ability to make Palm Beach Brownies may have been part of the reason my husband married me. I also like Alice Medrich, especially her Cookies and Brownies one, which is sadly out-of-print.

I’ve been trying to eat more vegetarian fare over the last year, so World Vegetarian by Madhur Jaffrey and A Year in a Vegetarian Kitchen, as well as Vegetables Every Day, both by Jack Bishop, are in heavy rotation. I love the Zuni Cafe cookbook too.

I also have a soft spot for regional cookbooks. My favorites are The Flying Biscuit Cookbook (brownie pie with pecan shortbread crust!), The Grit Cookbook, Dori Sanders’s Country Cooking and Sister Schubert’s Secret Bread Recipes (her pancakes are the best I’ve ever made—although I have not tried Rose’s from The Cake Bible).

I also love Maida Heatter—by watching at our local used bookstores, I’ve gradually been able to buy almost all her books. (My first, paperback copy of Maida Heatter’s Great Desserts fell apart from use!)

I’m also a big fan of Madhur Jaffrey. What little I know about Indian cooking I learned from her books.

This may make it sound like I just love all cookbooks, but that’s not true. When I’m at the bookstores I am always astonished by how many cookbooks there are and how many of them don’t interest me at all!

My budget is limited, so I have to be a bit careful about what I buy. Our local public library system is a great resource. My latest addition to the “I want it” list is “Cookwise.” I took it out from the library, but there is just too much good information in there to remember. I could keep going back to that book for years.

For some cookbooks that are fun to read, try “French Farmhouse Cookbook” and “Italian Farmhouse Cookbook” by Susan Herrman Loomis. Lots of little inserts about people who harvest salt, or run an orchard or farm. It turns you into an “armchair traveler and gourmet.” I’ve only tried a few recipes out of each one, but the ones I tried were good.

Happy reading and cooking!

My name is ___ and I’m a cookbook addict! 

Love cookbooks by RLB. Dorie Greenspan’s Baking from My Home to Yours, Maida Heatter, (I learned to bake from her books), Toba Garrett, Alice Medrich, Nick Malgieri and Marcel Desaulniers.  I love em all!  And I read them from cover to cover like a fascinating novel.

momof4boys - 05 March 2008 10:08 AM

My name is ___ and I’m a cookbook addict!

LOL!!!

i thought i was the only one who had issues with cookbooks i just gave away about 50 or more cookbooks. and in the last 2 weeks i bought 5, help cant stop just love learning new recipes. new fave martha stewart cookies.

Ahhh, cookbooks. 

I have about 25 feet of cookbooks, and about 15 years of Cook’s Illustrated.  I usually come up with what I want, and then search for the best interpretation of that concept.  I have an idea of what I think that recipe should be, and I look for the component parts wherever I can find them.  A few years ago a friend asked how you make Black Forest Cake.  I knew what I thought it should be.  Lacking a specific recipe, I assembled the component receipes and gave her my take on the whole process.  I have never made that cake.  (It did utilize Rose’s Brandied Burgundy Cherries and stabilized whipped cream.)

I have some that I go to for only one or two recipes.  It’s tough to keep track because if I use a recipe regularly enough, I put it into my computer and add it to my collection of recipes.  I really like
“The American Baker” by Jim Dodge.  I use his pastry cream recipe.  The recipes are straight-forward and simple.  And he gives components and assembly methods so you can mix & match. 

When I got this book (a long, long, time ago)  I read something that has always stuck with me.

“A well-made dessert communicates with those who are going to eat it long before they take the first bite.  Its first appeal is visual.  What appears on the outside is a promise of what awaits within.  The pastry cook should always be aware of this promise.  Once you have created anticipation, you either fulfill that anticipation or you disappoint.” - The American Baker, p 23. 

I also really like “Rosie’s All-Butter Fresh Cream Sugar-Packed No-Holds Barred Baking Book by Judy Rosenberg.  Who can argue with that title.  It runs the gamut of dessert recipes and has some wonderfully unexpected items. 

I just purchased the new edition of “The Joy of Cooking”.  It has great basic recipes that are time tested.  Where else can you find the recipe for home-made marshmallows (yum, and easy too with a stand mixer) and learn how to dress out a squirrel (haven’t tried that one yet).  If you want to experiment with candymaking, you can start with “Joy”.  You don’t have to go out and buy a specialized book to start out.  Try your hand at some old fashioned basics before you launch into the modern era.  After all, the chemistry of sugar hasn’t changed.

And I must weigh in on Saveur Magazine.  If you are looking for authentic recipes for traditional regional foods, regardless of what country of origin, their in-depth articles and accompanying recipes can’t be beat.  To read about these cultures, even if it’s Memphis BBQ or the Southern Fried Chicken from the perspective of the community, and then see a gorgeous picture and say “Mmm.  I’m gonna make that”.  My only boeuf with them is I have over 10 years of magazines, and I don’t think they publish a comprehensive index.  Arrgh.

I love “Cookwise”.  I’m a big picture person.  I want to know “Why”.  Why did my nicely thickened custard turn runny overnight?  Well you didn’t bring it to a boil and kill off the enzymes in the eggs.  They ate your starch gel while you were sleeping.  Only in Cookwise.

Bernard Clayton’s New Complete Book of Breads is a great comprehensive resource for the world of bread.  Once again, I haven’t cooked out of it as much as I would like to say, but I know that if I have the urge to make bagels, or pretzels, or cheddar cheese bread, pita, brioche, or just plain white bread.  It will be there for me.  I was following a recipe for the traditional Mardi Gras King Cake.  It was the one like brioche, not danish.  AFter extensive research on the internet I proceeded with a well-known TV chef’s recipe.  However,  things just didn’t seem right.  The dough was way too dry.  I pulled out “Breads” and looked up brioche.  Comparing the recipes helped me to realize that the recipe I was following didn’t have nearly enough liquid in it.  I added in the egg whites that weren’t being used, and everything worked out great.

You can’t cook in a vacuum (everything would explode). 
You can never have too many cookbooks.

JennyBee

I’m very fussy about book purchases now that I have less space since I’m living in an apartment, so my test is to borrow from the library and see if I use it.

Having said that, my latest borrowing is Pichet Ong’s “The Sweet Spot - Asian-Inspired Desserts”. The recipes I have tried are DELICIOUS so it’s going to be a permanent addition to my book shelf.

I like Deborah Madison’s cookbooks. I get so many ideas off the Internet now though, that I use that for recipes a lot.