Favorite cookbooks
 

I'm a cookbook fiend. I don't think I can ever have enough. and I read them like novels. I read recipes I never intend to cook, recipes I wouldn't even enjoy. I read way more cookbooks than novels.

Anyway, the wife and I are cleaning upstairs before some family come to visit, and the wife wants to get rid of some. Well, we can get rid of some. They can't all be winners.

I don't know if this is my favorite, but it holds some sentimental value. This was my first one, purchased in 1986 or 1987 from a traveling encyclopedia salesman. I was 8 or 9 years old and I convinced my mom to buy it for me. I even remember a couple recipes I cooked from it - one of the spaghetti sauce recipes, which was the first thing I made from it; the grilled Cornish game hens I made for my parents' wedding anniversary when I was 10.

It's like a reunion with an old friend.

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Don't use one, go by taste.

I do, too, but you didn't always, did you?

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The pipe bombs are to die for.

And you don't use a recipe at all, even when you make something you've never made (or even eaten) before?

I've got a lot of cookbooks, and I don't really have a favorite, per se. I've taken the recipes I've used and put them in Mastercook recipe files. I've got one that holds all my favorite recipes, and that would be my favorite cookbook.

Here's one cookbook I've taken quite a few recipes from (I'd recommend it even for the pantry items alone):

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and her first book is also excellent, IMO:

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hmmm. I have a few still in storage, but of the ones I have in my kitchen, Gordon Ramsay's "Fast Food" gets used quite a bit. It's a play on Rachael Ray's 30 Minute Meals...but these don't suck.

I have an Alton Brown book that is great, but I haven't had a lot of time to go through it and try very many recipes. Other than his steak recipe cooked via a 500 degree cast iron sear etc, followed by a deglaze of blue cheese using brandy and some other goodies.

my favorite cook book is google.com

Never seen any of Ramsay's books, but I did a play on a recipe he did on live TV once (it was like three months later and totally from memory) and it turned out great.

Ray's first cookbook has a couple good ones in it. Her's is the basis for my carbonara. I liked her show for a while, and I'll always give her props for being the only cook on Food Network that actually cooked in the time slot - by all accounts, she does everything in that 30 Minute Meals show she used to do within the time period, and if she screwed up either went with it or they started shooting the episode over. But she's way over-exposed. Not like Guy Fieri over-exposed (FN does like 9 straight hours of DDD a couple times a week), but over-exposed nonetheless.

I enjoy Brown's books more for the science than recipes. They're like reading an episode of Good Eats.

Reported.

I think I have three of Ramsay's books and the all seem to be legit right out of the gate without much tweaking. and, he has some very interesting and fun flavor combinations.

I agree on RR. I'm no sure when it happened, but it after a while ever recipe of hers that I tried was so amazingly bland. By the time I did all the tweeking to the flavors, it was basically a new ****ing recipe lol.

My guess would be as her popularity rose, her handlers wanted her recipes to be more "universal."

Sounds very plausible. I would regularly try a recipe, and it would need to be completely re-seasoned at the end. Ridiculously bland.


the other thing I like about GR's books are how they're laid out. very easy to read, not too busy etc.