When you start to be known to family and friends as a foodie, you can start to count on getting at least one cookbook every birthday and probably another one at Christmas. I have, as a consequence, built up quite a selection. I welcome them all, but some have seen a lot more use than others.
To those of you who are just learning how to cook, you need to get yourself a copy of The Joy of Cooking. It's your primer, your textbook, your introductory guide, and I still consult it frequently. Don't worry if you can't shell out for a shiny, new, $35 edition -- there's no shortage of used copies out there. I have an edition from the early 1960s, back when it still had diagrams on how to skin rabbits and squirrels.
How to Cook Meat is a great gift idea for someone who is just starting out. It's a technique-heavy book rather than just a collection of recipes, and it did a lot for my understanding of just what I was doing in the kitchen and why. I still dip periodically into its recipes for inspiration and have repeatedly used its formula for tandoori paste to good effect.
It's probably no surprise that I'm a big Tony Bourdain fan (what foodie isn't?), so it's natural that Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles Cookbook appears here. It's a very good primer on French cooking, and Bourdain's wit seasons the instructions. I used this book for my first attempt at beef bourguingon, which was a hit. The pig's heart with Armagnac ... wasn't.
Fergus Henderson's The Whole Beast: Nose to Tail Cooking has some recipes in it you may never cook. It has recipes in it that even scare me a little. (I'm looking at you, lamb brains) It is also a wonderful reminder of just how much more there is on an animal than what we traditionally eat. It has a number of mainstream dishes as well -- Henderson's duck legs and carrots have been at the center of several dinner parties at my house -- so you can ease into the wilder offerings.
Finally, a local note. Vermonter Molly Stevens' won a James Beard Award for All About Braising, and for my money she deserved it. This is another technique-heavy volume (albeit focused on one technique) that I've gotten a lot of mileage out of. Braising, which we will discuss more in the near future, results in large pots of rich meat capable of supplying leftovers through the week, and Stevens' book is a marvelous treatment of the subject.
My shelf also holds several volumes from Nigella Lawson and Madhur Jaffrey. These two ladies each deserve their own post.
Joy of Cooking is my go-to book, though I am intrigued by the prospect of a book going deeply into braising.
Posted by: Tyler | 12/07/2011 at 12:42 PM