Favorite Cookbook?

I love love love love Alton Brown  Good Eats I found out is on Sunday night here, I DVR it!

What channel? Though we canceled our Skybox so unless it's BBC we won't get it.

It is Sky...I dont know what channel as I jus thave it set to record on DVR I am guessing thr food channel ;-)

It's been a while but I bought new cookbooks recently and one of them needs a post:

Tender, Volume 1 - Nigel Slater (Veg, but not Vegetarian)
OMG the love I have for this cookbook. We've done a handful of recipes and each is, trite as it sounds, more delicious than the last. The book is broken into chapters by vegetable and then it's a intro about the veggie, tips on planting, growing and harvesting, and then suggestions of general things that work particularly well as seasoning. Then there's recipes and suggestions of things to serve with each recipe.  Some recipes include meat and meat products and some merely are suggested to be served with specific types of meat.

This one is particularly helpful now that we're getting a weekly veg box 'cause we tend to look at it and say, "beetroot? what the heck do we do with beetroots?" or find ourselves looking for a wider variety of things to do with the veggies we already know and love. The Potatoes section is over 60 pages and is further broken down to Mashing (with a list of potatoes that work best for mashing and then 8 recipes) roasting, frying, boiling, baking, salads, and gratins. Not every veg gets that much love, but there's a wealth of information and ideas.

Volume 2 just came out and is all about fruit. It's on my Christmas wish list   The other cookbook we picked up was Nigella's Kitchen but I don't feel I've spent enough time with it yet to do a review.

Tender, Volume 1 - Nigel Slater (Veg, but not Vegetarian)

I got it for DH last Christmas.  We use it a lot too, along with our other Nigel Slater cookbooks. 

Still like Delia Smith.

The Flavour Thesaurus looks intriguing:

I also have to vote for Nigella Lawson's How to Be A Domestic Goddess cookbook.  I'm always going to that book...mostly for baking, but love it and have yet to fail on the recipes I've made from it.  Also, love Jamie Oliver's cookbooks (want to get his Jamie At Home book...and from reading the past posts, I now want his Ministry of Food and one of Nigel Slater's books when I'm over for my visit).

I swear I collect recipes from all over and keep them in a binder.  I LOVE the recipes shown on Indian Food Made Easy.  I download Anjum's recipes all the time.

I just love cookbooks in general, but as part of my downsizing efforts in preparation for moving, I've gotten rid of most of them.  But I did go through each one first, and copied out my favorite recipes.

A lot of them were old church or community group cookbooks.  Although a lot of the recipes are a little odd, you can't beat them for quick and easy casseroles and desserts.  They rarely take any special equipment or ingredients.  I can whip up most of the recipes just with stuff in my pantry.

The only 'celebrity' cookbooks I have are the Martha Stewart Everyday Living cookbook, and a Frugal Gourmet (Jeff Smith) one from the '70s.  The old one was my mom's; I don't think I've ever made any of the recipes, but I get a kick out of it because I always used to watch his show on PBS when I was a kid.    The Martha Stewart I bought at a Half-Price Books for about $5, otherwise I wouldn't have bothered.  The nice thing about it is that she starts each section out with a basic recipe (i.e. Fried Chicken 101), and they work really well. 

The quirkiest one I have is 'Carla Emery's Old Fashioned Recipe Book.'  It's less a cookbook than an encyclopedia of homesteading.  It does have a lot of good recipes, but also how-to's on *everything*; soap & candlemaking (not as crafts, but as necessities), animal husbandry, dairy, gardening, building.  I think there's even a section on how to bury your dead.  People, not animals.  I'm not even kidding. Total hippie commune handbook.

Mostly, when I actually need a recipe, I go online.  The nice thing there is that, since I like to tweak things to my own tastes anyway, I can compare several recipes for the same thing, which give me a starting point to work from.   

I <3 Mark Bittman's How To Cook Everything Vegetarian.  There's a non-veg version, How To Cook Everything that I've gotten good feedback on as well. They really do teach you how to cook, well, everything, and he bothers to explain the why and the how and shows you how to tweak the recipes to your own tastes and styles and resources available.  It's a huge book but really worth it. 

Also, I really like Veganomicon, in case anyone here is a vegetarian or likes to eat vegetarian sometime.  It's not-scary, delicious vegan food.  Vegan with a Vengence and Vegan Brunch are by the same author and are rather good, as well as Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World for vegan baking and there's a cookie one too that I haven't tried and can't think of the name of right now. 

Tender, Volume 1 - Nigel Slater (Veg, but not Vegetarian)

I have this one too (it was a gift), but I don't like it as much as my other Nigel Slater books. It's not that I don't like it, but just that I find I don't use it all that much. I suppose that's not Nigel Slater's fault, but more my DH's fault for not liking his vegetables. 

Still like Delia Smith.

Agreed. She's always good.

I love love love love Alton Brown  Good Eats I found out is on Sunday night here, I DVR it!

Saw Good Eats is now on the Food Network. Yay! I love the science of cooking!!

I love the science of cooking!!

Then you need Shirley Corriher's CookWise and BakeWise!

Then you need Shirley Corriher's CookWise and BakeWise!

Oooh thanks, I'll check them out! 

I'm not a big fan of celebrity chefs either, but River Cottage Everyday is a great cookbook.  Recipes are easy to follow, not too fussy or outrageous!

I'm not a big fan of celebrity chefs either, but River Cottage Everyday is a great cookbook.  Recipes are easy to follow, not too fussy or outrageous!

I am completely in love with that cookbook!  I just made the wholemeal honey cake for my colleagues, and they all loved it!