Cooking

Cinnamon / June 11, 2007 5:27 PM

I'm happy to answer this. The Joy of Cooking changed the way I cook forever. It's line drawings of vegetables helped me learn how to cook different types of "produce" from a local indie market. There are a handful of recipes I no longer need to even glance at, because I've made them so many times.

Cook's Illustrated 1000 Best Recipes is my new favorite. They explain why that tablespoon of sherry really does make a huge difference in a cheese sauce. They teach you why ingredients do what they do.

I have two cookbooks by Julia Child and I find them more interesting to read and examine than I do to follow, but they provide me with lots of creative ideas. And one of these days I just might make a fish-shaped gellee. maybe

Alice / June 12, 2007 10:36 AM

Is it true that the 1976 ed. is the preferred edition to get of The Joy of Cooking? I know they recently published a 75th anniversary ed. that was supposed to fix the so-called travesty that was the 1997 ed. I don't own the Joy of Cooking, but I'm trying to cook more, and I'd like to get it, but I'm wondering if I should be looking in used bookstores for an older ed. rather than getting the newest one.

And I've recently started getting into Cook's Illustrated, too. I'll have to check out the book.

My cooking skills are so sad that the cookbook I use most often is the Good Housekeeping Illustrated Cookbook, because it's about as basic as it gets.

Andrew / June 12, 2007 2:32 PM

Alice, we've got the '97 edition, and I think the "travesty" epithet came from the sort of folks who hate and fear change. It's not identical to the original, but it's hardly bad. Just different.

And it remains my favorite. We use it so regularly that its spine is cracked and we've got a bunch of additional pages stuffed in the ends.