Favorite Cook Books

Curious to hear what everyone's favorite cook books are (and maybe include a recipe from it you are particularly enamored with).

I buy a lot of books. Cook Books are the only thing I buy that's not fiction, illustration or programming (occupational hazard) & I really do love them. There are a lot of things that can make a good cookbook; good recipes, good technical explanations, sometimes it's just a nicely made book.

I have two that stand out because they have taught me a lot about cooking. They aren't the finest printings but then, they are priced such that when I needed a copy of one in better shape, it was a no brainer to just order it:

Bouchon & Ad Hoc at Home, both by Thomas Keller. 

From Bouchon, I would recommend the any of the Quiches (the plain Lorraine or Florentine are my choices) or the "Simple Roast Chicken", which is a treatise in how one might with only salt get far better results than they had in the prior 3 decades with innumerable sticks of butter. From Ad Hoc at Home, Potato Pave.

I have several that I like for various reasons.

1) Fast food my way - Jacques Pepin
2) More fast food my way - Jacques Pepin

These two books (based on the PBS series) are great for everyday cooking. Most of the recipes use only a handful of ingredients and can be put together in 30 min or less. I like the 'Asparagus with croutons and chorizo' and the 'Ragout of broccolini, beans and sausage', for example.

3) Floyd on France - Keith Floyd

Traditional (non fancy) French food from Keith Floyd. All the recipes in this book are great, but I love the stews and the 'Basque Chicken'.

I mostly use cookbooks as references, to get an idea of what's possible, and then modify the recipes according to my preferences.

I like watching cooking shows, mostly on PBS. Lidia's Italy, Steven Raichlen, New Scandinavian Cooking, etc. Again, these are great for suggestions of ideas on what to cook.

Not an easy request because there are beginners who follow recipes verbatim and more advanced cooking... I used to buy lots of them also. For new budding cooks who follow recipes The Betty Crocker book can't be beat. A slightly more advanced one is the Americas Test Kitchen, the one based on the show recipes. After buying all those cookbooks on the shelf, I've looked at them mostly for ideas once one learns the basics. So the $ wasn't wasted.

For more advanced techniques there is Modernist Cuisine At Home, and a technique that is considered advanced for some reason but is drop dead easy is sous vide, but I won't suggest a book for that since there is so much information on line and frankly I never bought a cookbook for it. Logsdon has a good site as does Baldwin.

Today I get lots of recipe ideas from the 'net. It's amazing how many people think they can cook and how many mistakes they make. IMO there's no shortage of misplaced confidence. There are also those folks who actually know how to cook on the 'net. But again, I mostly use the 'net for ideas.

But now I'm learning how to cook and stay in ketosis, so I'm learning to cook all over again. But much of it builds on what I already know and it's not as monumentally difficult as I first thought it would be. I'm to the point now where I could invite people over for a low/no carb' meal (with a sweet dessert) and not be concerned that they won't like it. I can also serve them carbs just as long as I keep some dishes no carb for myself. But I'm still learning keto. It requires different techniques and ingredients.

But my master "cookbook" are the subdirectories of recipes and notes I keep in the computer; things that I REALLY liked, things that worked and recipes that didn't work with things to try next to make them work if they showed promise. So many ideas and so little time to cook and eat in comparison.

We have an extensive cookbook collection, however, my go to books over the years starts with The Joy of Cooking and then Bittman's How To Cook Everything.  We were charter subscribers to Taunton Press's Fine Cooking magazine starting in (I think) 1991 and it was really excellent with articles written by the chefs and bakers that made the recipes with all kinds of explanations and instruction.  Every issue had several recipes we'd make and I also learned a lot from them - unfortunately nothing good ever lasts and the last five years or so of that publication haven't been as good.  Even though you can get all the content digitally now We still keep the original magazines and the best ones are a little worse for wear.  As the quality of Fine Cooking declined we started looking at other publications, Cook's Journal / America's Test Kitchen are good  - I like how they explain the process they go through to arrive a the recipes.  Not only what but how and why.