Even though I rarely use recipes, I love them. They provide me with inspiration and ideas for combinations I may never have thought of on my own. I also love cookbooks, especially those that focus on techniques or a cooking philosophy. It’s not unusual to find me spending a Sunday afternoon curled up on the couch with the dog and a cookbook. Today, I’d like to recommend a few cookbooks that I turn to over and over.
First is “An Everlasting Meal: Cooking with Economy and Grace” by Tamar Adler. This isn’t your typical cookbook. She has modeled it after M.F.K. Fisher’s “How to Cook a Wolf” and it is thus more like a series of essays about how to eat. Each chapter is organized around a method or ingredient and her guiding philosophy shines through. I think her philosophy could be summed up as ‘Start and keep going.’ I just love her writing. It is beautiful and she really captures cooking – not just eating – as a sensual act. Take care with your cooking and plating and you will be satisfied with less because you have satisfied all your senses, not just taste.
Sprinkled through the chapters are recipes that illustrate the methods or use the ingredients she has just discussed. Reading her descriptions, you can almost taste the dishes. Her writing is reassuring as well. Yes, you’ll make mistakes. It will be okay, there are sections devoted to explaining how to save your mistakes. If your pork chop came out dry, it can be turned into hash. I wish I’d had this book years ago, but I’m not sure I would have truly appreciated it then.
Growing up, vegetables were usually boiled until soggy and served as is. I hated them. Boiled vegetables can be wonderful (see Tamar Adler’s book) if treated correctly, but it took me years to get over my hatred of boiled vegetables. If you grew up like I did, then Susie Middleton’s “Fast, Fresh, & Green” may change your life. This book is all about how to cook vegetables so you want to eat them Each chapter is organized around a specific technique like roasting or sautéing. She gives you a base method/recipe and then several specific recipes as examples. Her Sautéed Sugar Snaps with Salami Crisps is wonderful. I sometimes make it with snow peas.
Snow Peas and Salami
Snow Peas and Salami Done
The principle behind “Ratio” by Michael Ruhlman is that you don’t need a recipe as long as you understand the appropriate ratio behind the dish. He delves into the science of cooking more than Susie Middleton or Tamar Adler. The book is organized like a typical cookbook – Doughs and Batters, Sauces, Sausages, etc and carefully explains the science behind the ratio. This is the book that inspired me to start experimenting when baking and resulted in my Holy Mole brownies.
Another book that investigates the science of cooking is “Cooking for Geeks: Real Science, Great Hacks, and Good Food” by Jeff Potter. I love this book because it, more than any other cookbook I’ve read, encourages you to experiment. Want to test the calibration of your oven, it explains how to use sugar to do so. Why are copper bowls good for making meringues? Potter explains. There are directions to make your own seitan, a DIY sous vide and resources for finding molecular gastronomy supplies like meat glue. I enjoyed the recipe to make brownies using orange peels as a little cup. Fun!
The newest addition to my library is “Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking” by Samin Nosrat. Like Adler, she is an alumnae of Chez Panisse. I find Alice Waters insufferable in interviews, but she raises good cookbook authors. This book is all about how to cook – how to use salt and fat and acid and heat to make good food. The first half of the book explains techniques, interspersed with her memories of learning to cook at home and in a restaurant. It almost feels like part memoir. The recipes start after she has explained how to cook. The book is illustrated and the illustrations remind me of Mollie Katzen’s work (excellent vegetarian cookbooks). Every recipe has variations at the end. I used her best pan fried chicken to make pork schnitzel.
Breaded Pork Schnitzel
Quick Frying Pork Schnitzel
Here are three other books that serve as useful references: “Cookwise: The Secrets of Cooking Revealed” and “Bakewise: The Hows and Whys of Successful Baking” both by Shirley O. Corriher, and, of course, “The Joy of Cooking” by Irma S. Rombauer and Marion Rombauer Becker.
If you watched Alton Brown’s “Good Eats”, then Shirley O. Corriher is likely familiar to you. She used to show up and lecture Alton about food science. Unfortunately, her cookbooks read like textbooks and she is giving a lecture. They delve deeply into the science of cooking. If you want to understand how to make a tender pie crust instead of a flaky one, she makes it clear. Each recipe explicitly lists what it is intended to illustrates. They are truly useful references, but not something you want to curl up with on the couch on a rainy day.
“The Joy of Cooking” is an all purpose cookbook. Each chapter and section starts by telling you ‘about’ the method or ingredient. For example ‘About Pancakes’ gives tips for success and is followed by a lot (I mean a lot) of recipes. If you need to know how long and what temperature to use for that four pound roast, “The Joy of Cooking” has got you covered. It is also useful for learning the tips of success (how do I make a good dumpling) and finding a basic recipe that can serve as a base for experimentation, but I rarely make any of the actual recipes here. I just learn what goes into a typical pancake or dumpling or beef stew and go from there.
There are a lot of wonderful cookbooks out there. I hope I’ve introduced you to a few that will help you enjoy cooking as much as I do.
My grandfather actually published a cookbook of family recipes. I’m not sure if he sold any of them outside of immediate family, but it IS available for sale.
Last Christmas I got my mom a “family recipe” book for her to write down the family favorites. I also love church or other organisation cookbooks. You know those are recipes people were proud of.
I have copies of all of one of my grandmother’s recipes. I put them together into a book for relatives. I don’t remember how many copies I had made.
Putting them together into a book for interested relatives was how I got the recipes. Lots of relatives wanted copies of the recipes. I brought them up first, and was willing to do the work to make copies.
My family did a similar thing some thirty years ago. I should see if my parents still have a copy sitting around, I’d love to have my (late) grandmother’s strudel recipe. I still remember spending afternoons stretching dough out and folding it over when I was a kid.
Strudel is fucking great.
Living in the neighborhood I do, if the bakery doesn’t offer strudel or cassata cake, they won’t last long. There’s a bakery at the corner of my street that does Hungarian Strudel. But all of those of us who grew up with eastern European grandmothers know that nothing is as good as grandma strudel.
We have a few of the Church Cookbooks and My Mil’s CB as well, lot’s of Casseroles, I am my Mom’s cookbook, she never wrote any down…
I have a bunch of those from various organizations family members belonged to at some point.
I also have my grandmothers’ cookbooks (from both sides) and LOVE having their handwritten favorites scattered throughout. I’ve been scanning them and disseminating to cousins, as much for the family history as the recipes themselves.
My Mom self-published a recipe book of her favorites. Many of the recipes included little stories about the origin or serving of the dish.
I keep thinking I should submit some of them.
… Hobbit
Yes, you should. At the rate people are (not) submitting I figure by 2032 we will have enough for the Glib cookbook.
When we lived int he city our neighborhood was made up of mostly young couples, small children, and new babies. The street was a close-knit area where we worked, played and helped each other. Whenever a new baby was born this casserole was sure to be delivered to the home of the new parents. It was an economical dish, which was an important factor at that time in our lives. Everyone seemed to like it, even small children who might have been fussy eaters. It has continued to be a family favorite in our home.
Chow Mein Noodle Casserole (aka Chow Mein Noodle Stuff)
1 lb. ground beef
2 stalks celery cut into small pieces
1 can cream of celery soup
1/3 to 1/2 cup instant rice
1 onion, diced
1 can cream of mushroom soup
2 cups water
1 can (or package) chow mein noodles
Cook meat, onions and celery in skillet until meat is done. Drain. In a large casserole mix cream soups, water and rice. Add meat mixture, stirring until well mixed. Bake in a 350 degree oven for 50-60 minutes or until mixture is thick and the rice is done. Remove from oven; sprinkle top of casserole with noodles. Return to oven for 10 more minutes to heat and brown noodles.
… Hobbit’s Mom
Are you mining posts and comments for recipes or do you need them to be sent via the Recipe Submission Form? I think I’ve wedged in at least three recipes into the H3 series, should I send them in through the RSF as well?
I also submitted via the RSF. Just wanted SP to know that a few recipes are on the way.
… Hobbit
Yes, please send via the form. It’s to make it easy/faster to import them into software down the line.
Thanks!
I was inspired to send one of grandpa’s recipes via the recipe submission.
I find Alice Waters insufferable in interviews
I found her insufferable in person. Chez Panisse was, I’m sure, a revelation when it opened. But it hasn’t changed and the rest of the world got better.
My most-used cookbooks over the years:
Julia Child, Mastering the Art of French Cuisine vol 1
Madhur Jaffrey, World of the East
David Rosengarten, Dean & Deluca Cookbook
Rick Bayless, Mexican Kitchen
Victor Sodsook, True Thai
Marcella Hazan, Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking
Mostly, I just get general idea from cookbooks. Your philosophy of understanding the basics, then riffing off of that is very much what I try to do.
And of course, there’s YouTube now, so I’ll usually watch a few different versions of the same thing to get the essence of it (especially for regional cuisines). Chef John and Helen Rennie are my first line of go-to.
Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking. I have that cook book and it is a great book I don’t look at enough. How I was gifted it is a weird tale involving a crazy girl who liked drugs and had few inhibitions. She was the one if it weren’t for the fact she was bat shit crazy. It is weird she gave me that cookbook when she is a person who eats a burger with nothing. I mean nothing but burger and bun. Who does that?
Ned Flanders?
I second Julia Child. Baking With Julia and Julia and Jaques Cooking at Home (classic recipes) are also quite good.
I used her best pan fried chicken to make pork schnitzel.
Don’t let an Austrian know you’re using chicken instead of pork.
Great recommendations! I might pick up a couple of those, especially the Nosrat. Thanks, Tulip.
Ratio is excellent, and Joy of Cooking has been gifted at nearly every family bridal shower or “first apartment” housewarming since it was written.
I have given each of my nieces and nephews “Cook This, Not That”. It has a breezy style and is focused on replicating popular chain restaurant dishes (chicken wings, shrimp and grits, etc.) I think that makes it millennial friendly.
Yes, I think so, too!
Most of the children/teens in my family cook already. Which pleases me greatly.
I often give “Just a Matter of Thyme” to young friends/family members. A very nice cross-section of easy to follow recipes (including some very nice desserts), whimsically presented in a very thin volume.
Agree. I have The Joy of Cooking and Cooking for Geeks, I need several of these others.
Thanks, Tulip, I Just ordered ‘An Everlasting Meal’, (more beer money not spent on beer, sigh).
I think you’d like “Stews, Bogs, and Burgoos” great recipes but also the author writes a few paragraphs about the dish, it’s origin, where he first had it, where it’s popular and such before each one.
Second OMWC’s Marcella Hazan recommendation, a must have.
Also the Reader’s Digest Creative Cooking is an assume resource, covers everything, right up to skinning/prepping rabbit.
I look at recipes the way ancient people saw writing someone’s name, it curses you. Everytime I try to write down any of my recipes they turn out wrong, trying to actually measure things messes me up.
Your [REDACTED] recipes all worked great for me!
It depends on if you’re talking about baking or cooking. Baking is more of a science, while cooking is more of an art. Baking requires following steps and ingredients exactly (until you understand how it is all working together), cooking allows you to riff and improvise a lot more without too much risk. I’ve managed to get the girlfriend to get from being terrified of cooking to finding some dishes she’s getting competent at and enjoys cooking.
If you’re looking for something simple that sounds fancy, this works and is very forgiving.
Link SF’ed
Sigh:
https://www.thekitchn.com/recipe-broccolini-chicken-sausage-and-orzo-skillet-234135
It was either here or TOS when someone said “baking is for chemists and aspies”.
Pretty much sums it up for me.
So. Which one do you think *I* am? I assume you have seen my baked goods (not a euphemism).
/raised eyebrow and finger on the ban button
Well, I’m not a chemist…
I don’t have the natural inclination toward winging it with recipes. I have to start with a recipe and mark it up as I make it better.
So don’t include the measurements, just estimates. Assume we’re smart enough.
I sent the Joy of Cooking to Goodwill recently. It’s been sitting as a paperweight on the bookshelf for years, ever since I discovered recipes online. I’ve found almost everything I’ve cooked using Joy to be mediocre at best, and with the easy access to superior recipes, getting rid of it was a no brainer. I wish I had done it years ago.
The handful of cookbooks I’ve kept have either essays or other food writing that I find interesting or nice pictures. Judge away, but I kept several older Jaime Oliver ones for that.
The audience for Joy of Cooking is typically people who think Chili’s is Mexican food and Panda Express is Chinese food. I’ve found it to be a good stepping-stone or introduction to things, though. It’ll get you about 70% of the way. If that’s as far as you need to go, then there you are. Otherwise, you get an introduction and know broadly what you’re looking to do once you find a more sophisticated or specialized book. I found that to be the case with baking bread. The JoC stuff wasn’t wrong, really, it just didn’t make good bread. But it did get me to a point where I knew the basics.
^this^ JOC tells you the common ingredients in X. It gives you starting point.
You guys have had better luck than me. Even as a starting point, I find it unhelpful.
When I was 22 and living on my own (before the internet) it was a key to edible cooking. Now, I agree, its way easier to find something on the internet. Although, there are a couple of recipes I still use from there. I also still use it, like you said, when I want to make something I’ve never made before and can compare the JOC recipe against the internet.
My most used cookbook, besides online recipes, is Weber’s Big Book of Grilling. I can’t say enough good things about it. It improved my grilling enormously, and gave me back the joy of fire that was almost extinguished by a childhood of overcooked dried out bbq.
Joke I didnt get to tell in morning thread: 285 in Atlanta is named after the two speeds od traffic. First, you drive 85 until someone screws up, then you get to drive 2 mph.
Pork schnitzel.
Would.
A pork tenderloin sandwich is the only good thing I learned in the years I was stuck in OK. Throw Tulips schnitzel on a toasted bun with some mayo and we are talking a great sandwich.
Horseradish sauce.
Now your’e talking.
Good list, I’ll check some of those out.
My top five go thus:
1. Le Cordon Bleu at Home – This is supposedly the recipes taught at the school in Paris, and it’s laid out as a series of full meals in order from most basic to most complex, often with a particular dish being used as a way to introduce a specific technique. I’m a fan of French cuisine, and I like that it’s organized as entire multi-course meals with dishes chosen to complement each other. I tried to work my way through beginning to end, one meal after another, and made it about three in. This is one of the books that include so many things I’d like to make but will never have the chance to do that it gives me some small feeling of malaise. How French.
2. The Silver Spoon – This has been referred to as the Italian Joy of Cooking. There’s a recipe for damn near anything you can buy in a grocery store or butcher’s, and many things you can’t. It’s organized by main ingredient, which is really handy, and includes some sample menus. It made me realize how awful a lot of the “Italian” restaurants I’d been to were. In some ways, it’s the polar opposite of the Cordon Bleu book, because while there are a few relatively involved, complex recipes, most recipes focus on bringing out the flavors in the featured ingredient. Freshness and simplicity are emphasized, and I’m not kidding when I say that there are some recipes that include a single ingredient, with the instructions being something like, “Wash, slice, and put on plate.”
3. Justin Wilson’s Homegrown Louisiana Cooking – I grew up watching this guy on PBS, and my dad, who taught me how to cook, was a huge fan of Cajun cooking, as am I. Not a lot to say about this other than it’s the book of the tv show, there are some great recipes in here that I’ve used, slightly modified, for years, and the important thing to remember is that all measurements are very, very approximate.
4. All of Jacques Pepin’s Fast Food My Way series – Jacques Pepin is a master. He has a few “Fast Food” books, and they’re basically recipes geared toward implementing more sophisticated dishes in a way that makes them practical on a day-to-day, making dinner after work type of setting. Or if you just don’t want to invest a ton of time making something that nevertheless tastes good and is a little fancier than a sandwich.
5. The Joy of Cooking – Tulip got it in one. This was written as a sort-of how-to manual for a midwest housewife in the last century, which was a role that required (and still does, I’d assume) a significant amount of time and resource management and could benefit from a dash of culinary sophistication within the bounds of a limited variety of ingredients, knowledge, time, etc. There isn’t a technique or ingredient that isn’t introduced in this book, and as such it’s a fantastic first cookbook and standard reference. It’s encyclopedic in its range, but a little pedestrian in its tastes. That said, if there are hipsters in China complaining that they can’t find real, authentic American cuisine, I’d just send them this book and tell them to get crackin’.
All of Jacques Pepin’s books are on our shelves. Several of our go-to dishes are his or riffs on his.
I love The Silver Spoon.
Also, along with Marcella, Lidia Bastianich’s recipes are terrific.
I have one of Lidia’s books, Lidia Cooks From the Heart of Italy. It’s excellent.
I’ve heard “Lidia’s Italian Table” and “Lidia’s Family Table” are must-haves.
My most-requested dessert is Lidia’s Torta al Vino from Family Table
I always loved watching Justin, Jacque, and Julia on PBS. Great stuff!
Thanks Tulip. I just bought Salt Fat Acid Heat for kindle. According to Amazon, it’s going to be a series on Netflix starting in October 2018.
Speaking of good food, I had this for breakfast this morning https://twitter.com/egould310/status/1026198111914352641?s=21
That looks delicious. I hope you have a Kindle Fire because the illustrations are lovely. I would never buy any of Mollie Katzen’s books on kindle because they are all hand drawn. This really is reminiscent and worth enjoying.
Looks great – tomato season is here, so making shakshuka for my husband’s breakfast tomorrow.
I love that. Tomatoes are not quite ready here, but when they are…
Do you use Romas?
Here are my go-to cookbooks.
And, the rest.
Ree Drummond.
Absolutely would.
She’s getting a little long in the tooth but back in the day, sure.
Run Fast Eat Slow looks interesting. Adding to my kindle. Thanks.
Our former Portland condo was a couple blocks from Ken’s Bakery – yum.
We never had JOC growing up. Instead we used my Dad’s copy of A Lady’s Home Companion, that his mother gave him when he left home. It covers everything.
Some other cookbook favorites:
Steven Raichlen’s How to Grill was very helpful for me. I don’t come from a family background that did much in the way of smoking or grilling, outside of throwing some steaks or burgers on the ol’ Weber kettle grill.
The New Orleans Cookbook….though there are many, many glossy recent cookbooks, I like to scrounge around yard sales and thrift shops for old ones. I found this one that way and it’s fantastic, with many delicious Creole and Cajun classics.
Another one I found that way was The Chili Lovers Cookbook. It’s exactly what it says – a small, cheapo, spiral-bound collection of chili recipes from around the country, many of them from winners of national chili competitions. Simple and delicious.
One I dislike is The Silver Palate. It was all the rage in the 1980s and I found one in a thrift store and returned it (I.e. re-donated) a week later. It was really dated.
The carrot cake recipe in there is my go-to. But otherwise, I don’t use it much.
Also, Lisa Fain’s first Homesick Texan website and then cookbook got me through moving to Florida after growing up in Texas.
I’ve had her cook book in the shopping cart for a while. Might have to move it up then.
Nobody suggested To Serve Man?
Well played Ted.
The best cookbook in the world is allrecipes.com
This is because it has all recipes. It also is the worst. But if you find a recipe that has been tried 10k times with a 5 star rating, you know it is pretty good.
The Julia Child’s Menu Cookbook is fantastic…. if you like french cooking. And you have some time. It offers full planned meals that require a bit of time and effort to prepare.
The meal with Cornish game hens and butternut squash was really good. But it took forever. I think there were like 5 reductions in the prep. I adopted the recipe for a much simpler dish of chicken breasts smothered in red wine sauteed onions and mushrooms, baked with smoked gouda over the top. Much easier and super-delicious. I haven’t made it in years…. so it’s time to put it back in the rotation.
quickie version: caramelize sliced vidalia onions in butter with some salt and garlic. Set aside in a bowl. Deglaze the pan with red wine and reduce. Sautee some mushrooms in butter… add red wine at the end. Reserve with the onions and deglaze/reduce.
Take chicken breasts, butter, salt, pepper and garlic – sear and brown the outside quickly in a hot pan. Remove the chicken and deglaze/reduce.
Put the chicken in a layer in a baking dish. Layer onions and mushrooms on top along with reduced wine sauce. Layer sliced smoked gouda (or your other favorite similar cheese). Bake at 350 for about a half hour.
The chicken comes out super juicy and the onions and mushrooms make a wonderful companion. Plus, cheese. Goes great with a good loaf of bread for sopping up the juice.
This version only uses one pan, one bowl and one baking dish. Julia’s version took pretty much everything i owned at the time, if I remember correctly.
I’ll have to give it a try.
The comments are sometimes better than the base recipe, but almost always insightful.
Every Allrecipes comment section-
“Love this recipe but instead of pork chops I used chicken breast and I didn’t marinate them but seasoned them with Emeril’s ‘bam’ rub, also substituted broccoli for the mushrooms, and I didn’t have any wine so I used Coors light. Best Pork Marsala ever! four out of five stars.”
??
Sounds like you’ve had my marsala.
You don’t like my comments?
Ok, I tried to start a new food war last night with my nacho comment, so allow me to try again. caramelize sliced vidalia onions will not deliver the best caramelized onions. You want normal yellow onions low and slow for superior caramelized onions. Vidalias should go on a sandwich preferably made by a woman who is oppressed. Other than that your dish sounds great.
Y’all keep mispelling Walla Walla sweets.
A-firm. I grow Walla Wallas every year. They typically get to softball size. Best sweet onion out there.
You Cascadians can keep your Walla Walla’s, the Videlia is a superior sweet onion. I lived in WA state for awhile and even the walla walla’s could not remove the salty taste of winter storms and dreariness from eight months of no sun from my mouth.
Hey, I live in the high desert. Walla Wallas are the things of sunshine and happiness…
Ok, I will give you that there is occasionally some sun in Cascadia. I drank too much tequila in the sun once at the Gorge outside of George. It was a Buffett concert so it was required, but still, the Vidalia is a better onion.
Yeah, I thought Vidalias were what you bought when Walla Wallas weren’t available?
^This.^
My onion soup involves a minimum of 3 hours of low and slow. Yes, Vidalias are very much not optimum.
I like the Julia Child recipe. It’s must faster than 3 hours.
Ok, I confess that I probably didn’t use vidalias….. it has been at least 12 years since I prepared that dish. It was a regular in my rotation through most of the 90’s, so I probably used just plain old yellow onions.
We have 3 kids now, so my days of spending an afternoon preparing a fancy feast are greatly reduced. They are very adventuresome eaters, but spending 3 hours preparing something fancy is to all but guarantee that they’ll complain and ask for Ramen instead.
This might help me with my deficiency.
We had Betty Crocker cookbook growing up. Good for comfort food.
I have Fanny Farmer, the only thing from which I ever made was the hollandaise sauce. They misfiled it, though. Hollandaise sauce should be in the beverage section.
Good post Tulip! You may get me to enjoy food and eating yet.
I love cookbooks, thanks Tulip. The few I still have after what is mine is hers a couple times are, The book of Sushi, Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking (commented on above), The Whole Hog Cookbook (which is like pork porn) and the long lasted and tested out of print as far as I know Tropic Cooking that I have had for close to thirty years now. Tropic cooking is a book the author went around to all the hot spots in FL back in the late 80’s/early 90’s and got their recipes. Love it in spite of not being close to fresh fish these days. The ratio book has been on my to get list for a long time.
We have an entire bookcase full of cookbooks and stacks of magizines. We also have an oline subscription to America’s Test Kitchen and Cook’ s Country. The annual subscriptions are somewhat pricy but we’ve found a lot of great recipes and techniques on their sites. Their equipment reviews are nice as well. I recommend. As far as cookbooks, we’ve actually had a lot of luck with Racheal Ray’s cookbooks particularly the 30 minute meal ones and the 365 no repeats. There isn’t much technique so helps if you know how to cook. You do get a lot of solid recipes in them What I like about them is that they are typically no fuss, inexpensive, and are grocery store friendly. I don’t need to go to Madagascar to get special leaves from an endangered plant. I can just go to a regular grocery store. I does help to have a decent spice/dry herb collection which if you cook regularly shouldn’t take long.
We have an online subscription to ATK, as well. I refer to things there at least weekly. My peach pie (not a euphemism) that OMWC loves so much is a slight adaptation of that one.
We have a bunch of their cookbooks. “Vegan for Everybody” is quite good.
I’ll have to pick that up for my eldest daughter who is vegan. I certainly don’t mind eating an occasional vegan meal myself.
After seing the cover on Amazon, I’m pretty sure I already bought that for her:)
Ha! Yes, Web Dominiatrix brought it with her while visiting, and I then purchased a copy. Everything from them just works.
I have the veganomicon, and that’s like an encyclopedia for vegan cooking. I don’t use it very often because we’re not a vegan household, but most of the recipes in there are outright delicious, not just “good for a vegan recipe”
Cool. Added to daughters gift list:)
I do utilize Google a lot for recipes. I’ll often search for a recipe and put “best” in front of it. I’ll read a handful of them and look for common ingredients and techniques. I also always read some of reviews because you can get a lot of feedback on adjustments you may want to make to ingredients and cooking times. After you prepare you will always have something you would have added, not added, or done differently. Write it down on the recipe before you scan it into your computer.
Tonight dinner is gonna be a big bone-in ribeye, green beans cooked in a lemon parmesan cream sauce. Vodka with sparkling lemonade. Pinot grigio. Home made ice cream (made with coconut cream) flavored with vanilla and a hint of nutmeg. Topped with a mixture of chopped nuts, dark chocolate, raisins, butter and honey I heat together in a saucepan.
Damn. That sounds awesome. I just seasoned my new offset smoker/gas grill combo and am picking up ribeyes on the way home tomorrow to christen the grill. Will get some good Ohio corn on the cob as well to go with it.
I bought my wife a new ice cream maker last month and she made butter pecan ice cream which was really good.
My wife is the ice cream maker. She does some variation on this https://www.gnom-gnom.com/keto-vanilla-ice-cream/
Apparently it is keto/paleo friendly. It’s damn good.
Interesting. We’ll have to give it a go. My wife doesn’t like most rtificial sweeteners but I don’t think we’ve ever tried xylitol.
NICE. I’m giving this a shot. Maybe Bacardi.
I have never heard of xylitol and then,
Wtf? I am pretty sure what can kill my dog is not so good for me. Not that I have a dog and or would mind being dead, but you know what I mean. You guys use that stuff?
So you don’t eat chocolate or drink hoppy beer? Both hops and chocolate are toxic to dogs as well.
good point. disregard the above comment.
True story, I had a black lab that ate an entire box of Hershey’s chocolate bars. Two dozen. Didn’t bother her a bit. For two days, all I had to do to find the poop to pick up was look for the glint of tin foil.
There are a number of substances (some not thoroughly understood) that can kill your dog that you can quite happily and safely eat. Onions cause a type of hemolytic anemia in dogs (and if you feed too many too often, they can die from ’em). Takes several days for initial symptoms to appear. Chocolate’s a big no-no, as is anything with caffeine. Both grapes (and their dried form, raisins) and macadamia nuts contain as-yet-unknown stuff that is fatal to dogs in anything other than the smallest quantities. (1 grape/raisin per kilogram of bodyweight is one of the rules of thumb I’ve heard; even below that, your dog will drool copiously and be quite sluggish.)
When we got our pup, we swept our garden clean of anything that might present a danger to it. Now she eats our asparagus shoots (damn it!) and her pee smells vile. :-/
Liquid nitrogen or go home.
White wine with beef?
White wine with a very very rich and creamy lemon parmesan butter cream sauce.
And maybe a (((wine guy))) can chime in here; the old rules about white wine=chicken/fish, red wine=beef don’t necessarily apply any more?
I’m the wrong guy for that since I don’t eat chicken or beef. But… the important thing is what other flavors are involved and working to complement those. For example, with a beef curry, you might want to try an Alsace Gewurtztraminer. Toro apparently pairs well with Syrah, assuming the toro is prepared simply. Grilled salmon is classically paired with Pinot Noir. Eel is often matched with red Bordeaux.
The other key is choosing food friendly wines rather than the overblown shit that some wine critics love. Moderate to low alcohol, snappy acidity- a good Cabernet Franc from the Loire will be much more versatile than, say, a Cabernet Sauvignon from Napa or Sonoma. Gamay is amazingly good with a wide variety of foods- Beaujolais Crus are a fantastic go-to when in doubt.
BTW, there’s a great story about the winemaker from Chateau Lafite being told that in a comparative tasting, people preferred the Haut Brion. He replied, “I make my wines to pair with dinner, not with Haut Brion.”
There’s a lesson in that.
Only if your taste buds are dead. 😛
Drink what tastes good. Interestingly enough, back around the countries founding, sweet wines were served with roasted meat.
If I am adding wine to a dish it gets Franzia Chardonnay from a box because I am white trash and that is what I have in the fridge. I have bought reds to cook with such as in doing a rolled stuffed flank steak from a recipe and found the wine overpowered it. It was good, but less winey would have been better or it could be I am un-cultured. I could have done better than the recipe winging it with cheap box white wine, butter, capers and flat parsley.
I always enjoy your posts Tulip and have added several of those to my wish list:)
First cookbook was Better Homes and Garden which my mom had and I I still consider a classic and is full of great info. Second cookbook was Frugal Gourmet by Jeff Smith and I still make the Fennel Pork chops from that all of the time.
This Betty Crocker cookbook was the only cookbook we ever had, and we only used it for a few recipes. It’s fun to look at it now and see all the recipes they had in there for the microwave.
Microwave gets a bad rap. It does do some things quite well, particularly steaming.
It’s also much better once you learn how to properly use the power cycles.
I have four of Jeff Smith’s books.
I still hear him saying “hot pan, cold oil, food won’t stick” in my head on occasion.
Did anything conclusive ever come out, before or after Jeff Smith died, on those charges he had molested boys?
By Julia:
Mastering the Art of French Cooking
The Way To Cook
Anything by Marcella Hazan or Rick Bayless. #MeToo Mario Batali and Lidia Bastianich. Back in the day I used the Frugal Gourmet series quite a bit.
Pretty much anymore, I’ll just Google a dish I’m interested in making, and I typically only use a recipe once, and then I make it my own.
Busy day. Four cups of pesto are now in icecube trays freezing and I just pulled ten pints of sauerkraut out of the water bath. Next up is vacuum packing some dried basil.
Dinner will be duck and pork kielbasa on the grill with the last bit of kraut from the crock, sliced tomato from the garden and grilled baguette.
I really like Rick Bayless.
You know, I hear that canned sauerkraut is easily shipped.
It’s a shame that cabbage is a cruciferous vegetable. ;D
I miss Football Sundays at your place. 8 hour meals.
We’d spend the morning shopping with absolutely no plan in mind, lay it all out on the counter, then within a minute, we’d figure out what we were doing and be starting the preps. It was fun that we could essentially mind-read each other while we were working, never get in each other’s way, and tend each others stuff.
I think the massive alcohol consumption probably helped.
I’m not sure we could survive that these days.
It would be fun to find out…
“Dinner will be duck and pork kielbasa on the grill with the last bit of kraut from the crock, sliced tomato from the garden and grilled baguette.”
Yeah man. Get it!
The best part is the fifteen minutes from start to plate.
And I’m currently under the willow tree sipping a greyhound.
And remember: If Yan Can Cook, So Can You!
Zai jian!
Two others we love are by Andrea Nguyen.
Asian Dumplings: Mastering Gyoza, Spring Rolls, Samosas, and More
Asian Tofu: Discover the Best, Make Your Own, and Cook It at Home
(OK, anyone who has been here knows our dining room is lined with bookshelves crammed every which way with cookbooks.)
Only five of the bookcases are cookbooks, be fair.
A female buddy of mine (we really need a name for that kind of friendship) has around 600 cookbooks, and is still acquiring them. In contrast, I only have around 80 or so.
She’s pretty hardcore. Compared to her I’m a dilettante.
I thought I was crazy for having 20 or so before we moved! 600?? I can’t imagine even 1/3 of them get use within a given year.
Like I said, she’s hardcore. And she has an almost-encyclopedic memory of what recipe she read in which book. It’s kinda eerie, actually. I’ve known her for 30 years, and she’s prepared probably over 1,000 recipes from the various books that she’s subsequently altered “to make her own.” It’s a rare visit to her place where we get something that she’s made before for us.
The hell of it is, her husband has almost zero interest in food. For him, it’s fuel. :-/
But they *are* floor to ceiling bookcases. And then there is the other floor to ceiling bookcase full of wine books. And then….
The Joy of Cooking (1975 edition, IIRC) was the cookbook my Mom threw at me as a teenager, right after she gave her three boys the “I’m sick of cooking for you ungrateful yard apes” speech. Possibly the best thing she ever did for us — all three of us are now quite competent cooks, with occasional forays into exclamations from friends and neighbours such as “You should start your own restaurant!”
Got an MBA. Researched it briefly. Yeah, no thanks. There’s a certain amount of sheer insanity you have to partake of to start a resto. I think I’m a good enough business person, but not nearly good enough as the whole package. Not for me.
BTW, Tulip, an apology from me to you is long overdue. I contacted you briefly when you were in Vancouver about getting together for a drink or something, and then shamefully forgot to follow up. I can only plead extended temporary insanity due to unusual levels of family excrement hitting the proverbial rotating aerodynamic surface. In other words, “I blame myself.”
I could, and have, watched her cook stuff that I have no interest in making myself.
Hubba X2
My wife doesn’t like most rtificial sweeteners but I don’t think we’ve ever tried xylitol.
i never drank any, but enamel reducer doesn’t smell sweet, to me.
YMMV
People talking about cooking shows brings back memories of watching the Galloping Gourmet. That guy was pretty entertaining, even if I didn’t actually cook any of the stuff he did on the show.
I always watched Chef Tell on PM Magazine.
“I see you!”
Whoa flashback!
I remember the early Food network show, “Grillin & Chillin” where a pre douchebag Bobby Flay and some gap-toothed hillbilly grilled shit and fucked with each other it was a good time.
I loved the Galloping Gourmet! He was usually pretty shitty by the end of the show.
Drunkest TV cook was Keith Floyd. And the results were often hilarious.
Keith Floyd was awesome.
If we are going to go in that direction, you gotta include Justin Wilson.
That guy was really funny, but I never cooked anything he made.
Graham Kerr (The Galloping Gourmet) introduced my Mom to Chicken with 40 Garlic Cloves, a recipe which blew her mind. She was the only garlic-lover she knew in a neighbourhood filled with WASPs, but even she had never imagined anything so . . . extreme. Plus she discovered the joy of cooking with wine. I don’t mean in the food. Kerr really was fairly ‘faced by the end of each show.
Graham Kerr, always Drunk! Loved him!
Just put a slab of mango marinated salmon on the grill. And suddenly discovered I only have one white, a gewurtz, in the rack. I’m inclined to open it, even though it may overpower the salmon?
That question belongs over at The Root.
As long as it’s not too sweet, it should pair well with the mango.
Turned out the gewurzt was a tad too sweet. Riesling would have been better, I think. But then again a good wine is always that in the glass in front of you!
I cant contribute to the cookbook conversation, but I recommend Designing Great Beers, which I once saw described as “the best homebrew recipe book, despite containing zero recipes”. That is accurate.
It teaches how to create a recipe from scratch.
That’s a great book. When I was actively brewing I’d flip between that and Brewing Classic Styles.
Simply the greatest TV Chef ever.
Not this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4BOZcDMw_A ?
Haven’t clicked. Guessing it’s the muppet. If it’s actually Vic Tayback, than good on ya!
Cooking in the Star Wars universe.
Paging HM? HM? If you’re not too too busy, I need a ruling.
I hate you.
Honestly, if you reviewed my dating resume, she would be “petite”.
Do you know for a fact she isn’t a centaur? For real, she’s like two totally different people joined at the waist.
Further research shows that its a complete set .
If that’s not Photoshop, I swear to God she must be doing some sort of intense training and diet regimen, like the Pawg Diet or something.
All the meals that get posted on here are light. I’m more of a man vs. food kind of guy. If it isn’t bigger than my head, why am I eating it? That isn’t going to be satisfying.
Speaking of TV chefs, Art Ginsberg (Mr. Food) got his start up in Troy, NY, and eventually did his segments out of WRGB before decamping to Florida. WRGB for many years had one of those high school quiz bowl shows, Answers Please that taped in the same studio as Mr. Food. One team was on the long wall of the studio with the host in the corner and the other team along a short wall. Mr. Food’s set-up was on the other long wall, with the cameras strategically placed so that the Mr. Food stuff was never seen.
We beat the shit out of everybody in the final season (1989), but none of my footage seems to be on Youtube, for better or worse.
Oooh, it’s so good!
Ted S on quiz bowl challenge https://youtu.be/z3HvchF49AM
One the best books to understand American domestic cuisine is the Good Housekeeping Cookbook. I think mine is from 1947. It has an excellent glossary and index, and a wealth of basic information on such things as measuring, cooking techniques, the different cuts of meat, different kinds of cheese, etc. More importantly, it has around 1,200 recipes almost all of which are either uniquely American or American adaptations of foreign dishes (and many of those are hilarious).
grilled a 2 inch porterhouse tonight.
I grilled a marinated pork tenderloin for dinner. Served with avocado drizzled with balsamic vinegar and melted cheese.
*lazy cook*
You are doing better than me. I am doing a ceaser salad with last weeks sous vide bottom round soaked in au jus topped with the nachos I burnt last night.
I’m having beer for dinner. It’s too hot to cook, and I’m not motivated.
We had hot dogs on the grill, as we do most Sundays during grilling season.
Grilling Season? 12 months of the Year, I did Steak in a Colorado blizzard, just because!
MEAT!
Same. We cut out a chunk of slab and dug the pit for the new bathroom, and chipped a hole most of the way through the stem wall. Too tired to cook.
What do scratch made waffles count as, cooking or baking?
I made low(ered) carb corn bread waffles with blackberries last weekend.
https://smile.amazon.com/photos/share/CU5z1sxAYSnBMCGOcuv8wlNU5YnJQnpUKIpPCgpDb3I
They count as Tasty!
Sweet, now that we’re talking about grilling this is no longer OT.
I decided I need to tighten up my grill game after I got out of the habit and forgot a lot of the basics. So, I’ve been doing a lot of cooking on the grill. This is difficult in some ways because my wife only eats chicken and fish, and my daughter only eats mac and cheese, applesauce, and Nutrigrain cereal bars.
Anyway, to this end, I’ve switched from briquets to lump charcoal ( so-called “cowboy charcoal” ) and I’ve started using various wood chunks for flavor. Holy crap…I had no idea. I feel like I’ve finally left Plato’s allegorical cave. The former was a massive improvement, but the latter has been mindblowing. Most of the time I don’t even need to season meat other than some salt, maybe a touch of pepper. Good lord, tonight I threw a few frozen hamburger patties from a Sam’s Club sleeve I bought in damn June above some hickory, and damned if those things didn’t taste like the best damn hamburgers I’ve ever made!
Now, I realize smoking is a whole other ballgame and really needs a good smoker in order to circulate the smoke thoroughly and maintain an even, low temperature over time, but has anyone ever tried smoking meat in a kettle grill? I’d think that if you can’t quite get low enough for a proper smoke, you could still get to something like a smokey roasting effect.
This might be right up your alley.
Sweet, I’m gonna look into that.
Absolutely! Water pan on one side, lump charcoal filling about 1/4 on the other side with smoking wood on top. I leave the bottom full open and the top almost fully shut. I can get temps to hold in the 200s without issue. Check out the Slow N Sear for the Weber kettles.
Linky
I might give that a whirl tomorrow with some pork loins I’ve got in the fridge. So, I get the coals going in the chimney, dump them off to the side, pop some wood chunks on the coals, water in a pan on the other side, then stick the meat above the water, cover it, and live my life for a few hours? That seems too easy.