Amuse Bouche

Seeking Cookbook Recommendations

 
There has been a great backlash lately in the food world.  Many have been talking about the home cook's ball and chain attachment to recipes and cookbooks.  I am the first to agree that a recipe is a template, a jumping off point, an idea, a thought, a place in time, except of course when it comes to baking.  Baking, the science vs savory the dash of this and a bit of that, requires a few more rules, a need to remain within certain parameters that savory cooking does not. 

Michael Ruhlman has recently written a book that should free many, both savory and baking to experiment, Ratio follows the credos I learned in culinary school.  Here is the basis, the framework, the structure, now feel free to riff on it.  Be a jazz cook if you want, just know where the chord began.  6116 (eggs:flour:sugar:butter)=genoise, 1:1:1 (flour: to fat: To liquid)=roux for soup , 2:2:1=roux for sauce, 3:3:1=roux for a soufflé, these were the frames, the chords that I had to memorize to be able to make anything I dreamed up. This book which, by the way, should be in every library and on every shelf. It should have loads of notes and scribbles in the margins of every recipe its owner has tried.  It should be passed down like Larousse and Julia were to me.

But I love cookbooks, adore them, read them cover to cover. cookbooks are my jumping off point for new ideas, they help me plan classes, they make me want to try new things. In a month or so we are going to be adding a cookbook section to the front of our cooking school and here is where you come in.

I am trying to compile a list of 100 - 125 cookbook titles that should be in everyone's library.  Cookbooks that inspire, that teach, that led you by the hand into the kitchen and made you fall in love with cooking. Cookbooks that made you want to go out and hit the farmer's market, and find the perfect fruit, or vegetable or meat. The books that inspired you to call your friends and invite them over just so you could cook for them, the book that made you not fear your mother-in-laws arrival on the doorstep. The book that allowed you to throw that first dinner party or dive into a foreign cuisine.

Email me, speak below in the comments, tell me your favorites.

Thanksgiving Comes First

The title of this post is to support an acquaintances quest to celebrate the holidays AS THEY COME not, as tends to happen now, as the retailers wish it to happen.  He is justifiably tired of retailers and the media shoving Christmas down our throats before Thanksgiving and in some cases Halloween have even passed! His goal is to Make Thanksgiving First.

Since my entire world relates to food and cooking, Thanksgiving is the holiday to celebrate.  It isn't about religion, it isn't dedicated to someone's birthday,  it wasn't created by Hallmark to sell more cards, it's a holiday about giving thanks, sitting down to take the time to eat and laugh and talk with friends and family.  There are no gifts to buy, no packages to wrap, the only obligation is to remember to pick up your turkey on time and make sure you get all your groceries before Wednesday night. What a nice idea. 

Now to explain that photo above.  That stack represents how I spent my Friday afternoon. Four and a half hours at the NE Mobile Book Fair spending some gift certificates.  What a glorious way to spend some time, the only thing missing was a big coffee to keep me going.  Not only did I have three gift certificates, but all cookbooks were 30% off through Sunday.  It was like hitting the lottery!!

Now for a run down from bottom to top.

Aromas of Aleppo by Poopa Dweck - A gorgeous book about the Arab Aleppian Jewish Community and their foods.  I picked it up for the beautiful cover and my love of Aleppo pepper, I bought it because it is loaded with great looking dishes.  I shall report back when I start experimenting.

Made in Italy by Giorgio Locatelli - A comprehensive look at regional Italian dishes.

Rick Stein's Complete Seafood - I have recently fallen in love with Rick Stein and Chalky.

Rick Stein's French Odyssey - I need to get my hands on this series as well.  I hope Food TV replaces some of the crap they show lately to show this series. Give Sandra Dee a vacation, I'm begging you.

Food: The History of Taste - Edited by Paul Freedman - Because I adore food history.  I want to know the answers to where it came from, why we do the things we do, what foods shaped cultures.  If all of this interests you as well, get a subscription to Gastronomica, you'll be hooked.

American Home Cooking by Cheryl and Bill Jamison - Regional Foods by two of my favourite cookbook authors.  Smoke & Spice was one of the first cookbooks I bought when I started collecting.

La Bonne Cuisine de Madame E. Saint-Ange - Written for the housewife of 1920's France, this highly detailed cookbook was recently translated by Chez Panisse co founder and chef de cuisine Paul Aratow.  This is the book Julia studied when she was beginning to dissect French cuisine.

Knife Skills Illustrated - by Peter Hertzmann - I teach knife skills classes and this will be a book I recommend to my students. Detailed illustration and step by step diagrams show how to hold your knife, sharpen the blade, hone, fillet, carve and chop an array of products.

Home Food 44 Great American chefs cook 160 recipes on their night off - Put together by two founders of Share our Strength Debbie Shore and Catherine Townsend.

Cooking at Home on Rue Tatin by Susan Herrmann Loomis, as recommended by Mr. Lebovitz, I will be cooking quite a bit out of this book.  It was the salmon rillettes that caught me - the holidays and parties are upon us make someone you love happy and make this.  Someday I'm going to send David pictures of the kids at create a cook making his creations.  I think we have worked our way through 5 of his recipes in the last few months and every one executes perfectly and even I, savory to the core, can say that he makes some mean, easy to execute desserts.

Goose Fat & Garlic by Jeanne Strang - The title alone made me buy it.  We just finished working though Southwest France in regional French.  Goose fat is the butter and garlic is the truffle (well really for garlic that is to Provence, but they come close here).  I ADORE this book.

Jewish Food:The World at Table by Matthew Goodman - No, I'm not Jewish, but I live in a community with a very high proportion and I often have to alter recipes to fit some Kosher kids in my classes.  I also love to learn the food behind any culture.  This book covers 170 recipes from twenty nine countries handed down by families for generations.

The Elements of Cooking by Michael Ruhlman - Oh Michael how we adore thee.  His latest book is a Strunk and White for the kitchen.  Reference, essays on the fundamentals, bible for those beginning to fall in love with the kitchen and a reminder for those of us who already love it.  Besides the man has seriously cute hair and he can hang with Alton and Bourdain whenever he wants.  Come on.  Buy it, read it, learn.

Pig Perfect:Encounters with Remarkable Swine and Some Great Way to Cook Them by Peter Kaminsky - The search for the perfect swine, an avocation I firmly believe in.

New England Soup Factory cookbook by Marjorie Drucker and Clara Silverstein - A local institution that makes some seriously great soup without the soup nazi.

Stalking the blue-eyed Scallop by Euell Gibbons - I read something on someone's blog that referenced the title and it made me want to read this book.  I remember being fascinated in shellfish class in basics when Chef Stephan informed us that scallops had blue eyes, I had to race home and google it, and what do you know.  They do! Many of you are likely too young, but I remember seeing Euell do the grapenuts commercials when I was growing up.  I really never knew much else about the man and I thought that it was high time I learned.

Beyond Nose to Tail by Fergus Henderson & Justin Piers Gellatly - Really what more can I say about Fergus that hasn't already been said.  Please honey, next time we are in London....take me to St. John's...PLEASE!

Brillat-Savarin's The Physiology of Taste: Translated by M.F.K. Fisher - It was time.

And then today in the post this gorgeous book arrived from the U.K. from my fabulous brother-in-law who knows me oh so well. Gordon Ramsay's recipes from a 3 star chef.

Say what you will about Mr. Ramsay's programmes or his attitude, but the man can cook.  This book will make you want to hit the kitchen now! Detailed recipes and lush photographs.  Yum.

Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant

I just spent a gorgeous Fourth of July week up in Maine. Sun and cool breezes and a deck with a great chaise longue meant I had plenty of opportunity for reading and when I didn't have my nose buried in a cookbook planning for 'The Flavours of France' week coming up, I had my nose buried in Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant.

In my previous life I worked in downtown Boston and spent about an hour every morning and afternoon commuting on the local commuter rail.  I read voraciously during this time sometimes up to two or three books a week.  Often I would choose compilations because I could dive in and out of the book and finish a story  or two before the train rolled in to South Station.  Compilations are a little like tapas or mezze.  Little bites of things that can be savoured and enjoyed without your palate getting bored or dulled by one flavour. So when the publisher asked me if I would like to read a copy of Alone in the Kitchen I jumped at the chance.

Each of the stories in this book is dedicated to solitary dining.  The things we make or like to eat when we are alone.  In the years that I lived in this house alone with the puppy before the arrival of husband upon these shores I can assure you that I ate some things that would be considered rather bizarre in mixed company.  I tend to have a penchant for vinegary and spicy with an immediate switch to several days of cheesy, creamy and comforting.  The arrival of the Brit and his general dislike of things vinegary and cheesy, not to mention eggplant, has meant that we have dining together-alone nights.  I make dinner for me, he makes dinner for himself and we dine separately but together. 

Jenni Ferrari-Adler has gathered a great collection of writers from M.F.K. Fisher, Marcella Hazan and the late Laurie Colwin to Laurie's daughter Rosa Jurjevics, Nora Ephron and Haruki Murakami to create her vision of a book that speaks to the solo diner.  I love that these stories speak of the repetition a solitary diner often craves like making the same dish, night after night or how buying one head of lettuce when you live alone means inventing quite a few ways to use that head if you don't want to see it languishing and wilting in the produce drawer or how that loaf of bread goes from sandwiches, to French toast, to croûtons to bread crumbs.

A few of my favorites were Thanks, but no thanks by Courtney Eldridge a story about selfishly living and dining alone after a relationship with a domineering partner and his even more intimidating well heeled food obsessed mother. The Year of Spaghetti by Haruki Murakami a brief story that encapsulates then need to sometimes be not just alone, but solitary as well and How to Cook in a New York Apartment by Laura Dave.

Perfect with a glass of Rose and a sunbeam anywhere, Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant is delicious reading for the food inclined whether you cook for one or for many.