Cookbooks

Here are a few cookbooks that are worth checking out…

General

If you don’t have a copy of the Joy of Cooking, you should get one. It’s a good, general book that has reliable recipes for nearly every kind of cooking and explanations of ingredients and cooking techniques to make it possible to follow these recipes. After that you can begin to specialize…

Regional

I tend to think of food in terms of its place of origin. One good way to expand your range of recipes is to get a cookbook for a specific region whose food you particularly enjoy. Phaidon publishes a collection of international cookbooks. These books are translated from the editions originally published in their respective countries. For example, I Know How to Cook by Ginette Mathiot is something like a French equivalent of the Joy of Cooking. In France, it is commonly given as a present to a child leaving home for the first time. It contains some fairly involved recipes but also a few simpler recipes and some basic information on making some of the sauces and other bases upon which many French recipes are built. You may need to buy more butter.

Momofuku by David Chang has recipes from the hoity-toity restaurant with the same name in New York. It also contains an interesting history of restaurants. These recipes are mostly a combination of Japanese and Korean food, and the food is delicious. I have had problems finding some of the ingredients that are required for these recipes, but I guess that’s what I get for living in Maine.

Bread

The Joy of Cooking has a decent sized section on baking bread, and the recipes in this section produce good bread. If you’re really get into it, bread-baking is a specialized enough type of cooking that it really requires its own cookbook. Fortunately, there are many such books. The The Bread Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum (not to be confused with The Bread Bible by Beth Hensperger) is the definitive guide to baking bread. The attention to detail in this book borders on obsessive compulsive disorder. The opening section on techniques is especially helpful, giving a general basis for baking any type of bread.  I’ve recently started making recipes from Peter Reinhart’s Crust and Crumb (I haven’t been able to justify the purchase of his latest book, The Bread Baker’s Apprentice.). His recipes make excellent bread, and they seem to be a bit less demanding than Rose Beranbaum’s. Another book that is worth checking out is Beard on Bread, which is an excellent book that contains recipes for a few types of bread that aren’t found in The Bread Bible.

-Kevin

Updated: February 3, 2011