Cookbookery: A Few Recommendations
As much as I like to joke (or brag) about not using recipes and measuring cups, good cookbooks are handy resources, even if you don’t plan to follow the recipes to a T.
Most celebrity chefs on the Food Network have multiple cookbooks to their names, so you can find a few from the personalties you like. Here are some recommendations:
Giada de Laurentiis, Everyday Italian and Giada’s Family Dinners
Ina Garten, Barefoot Contessa at Home and Barefoot in Paris
The Food Network’s How to Boil Water — a fantastic book for aspiring chefs of all abilities, with great tips on the basics to help you create your own mind-blowing recipes
Sara Foster, Fresh Every Day — great healthy recipes
The Silver Palate Cookbook
Wolfgang Puck Makes it Easy — simplifies otherwise intimidating meals
Curtis Stone, Cooking with Curtis — I want to marry him
Alison recommends any of the Williams Sonoma cookbooks (roasting, salads, pasta, etc.) for classic recipes that include technical walk-throughs that really help. She also loves Ina Garten’s Barefoot Contessa Parties!
Comments
By Lauren McNally
Lauren B. McNally is a New York based consultant and freelance writer who spends most of her free time exploring culinary and oenological pursuits with friends. She originally hails from Maine and graduated from Bowdoin College,spending time abroad at the University of Cambridge in the UK (where she found the dining hall cuisine rather offensive and repulsive, as opposed to the top-ranked Bowdoin Dining Services). Her palate is ever-evolving but Burgundies are among her current obsessions. Her least favorite wine-related phrase: “I don’t like _.” Lauren also enjoys cooking Italian and French cuisine, and has an unnatural obsession with Gorgonzola and pancetta.
About The Humble Gourmand
The Humble Gourmand is published the first Friday of each month, edited by Alison L. McConnell, a Washington, D.C.-based journalist and writer. It is designed to offer straightforward lessons and advice to aspiring cooks, oenophiles, and all other eaters and drinkers.
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Andrew
March 4 1:05 a.m. 1The books I use the most:
By the authors of "The Silver Palate": "The New Basics."
I got a copy of the 75th Anniversary "Joy of Cooking," and it is awesome. It's pointless to put this book away, since it winds up open on my counter on almost any day that we don't have takeout for dinner.
Alton Brown's books, "I'm Just Here for the Food" and "... More Food" are great as textbooks, since the above books tend to assume you know how basic kitchen procedures go. If, on the other hand, you don't really know how to sautee, cream, or braise, you need the Brown books.
Alison
March 4 3:36 p.m. 2Alton Brown is one of the very few Food Network types I can tolerate! I love the food-science aspects of his work.
Joy of Cooking, of course, is a classic. Wonderful.