i dream of dinner by ali slagle! unlike some cookbooks that have made me feel like i'm breaking federal law if i'm thinking about substitutions or not using a kitchen scale, i dream of dinner's recipes are so adaptable and include ideas for riffing, so it's helped me loosen up in the kitchen and trust my instincts when i want to use a recipe as a jumping off point rather than a strict set of instructions. (and the recipes are lovely and delicious on the many occasions when i do simply follow them, of course!)
yes ali is so great at having a REALISTIC AND GENEROUS VIEW of how people actually cook/use recipes. the great thing about that book is that it isn't "about her", it's "about you", and she is helping you
i find myself returning to this book over and over. I've always been so impressed by what Samin is able to pull off in this book—the thorough instruction she builds up, that offers you structures to build off of. I was so impressed, too, in her press tour for the book when she would say "I want people to read this cover to cover before cooking from it." I haven't done that (oops), but I've always been impressed by her surety
Snacking Cakes, if only because it upped the amount of baking do to 300% and the loosey goosey vibe has made me more open to substituting things when I’m short on an ingredient.
But the book that made me think about food and cooking completely differently: I’m Just Here for the Food by Alton Brown, who I have mixed feelings about but that book and Good Eats opening up the science and “why” of how cooking works really made me a better cook.
Shout out to America’s Test Kitchen, while their whole Americana shtick is not always my palate, it too was a great source of learning on technique!
Totally agree about americas test kitchen. They have taught me many fundamental techniques and I appreciate their high level of nerd when I’m in the mood
+1 to snacking cakes! I said something similar about Ali Slagle's I Dream of Dinner in a different comment, but that book is designed to make it as easy and fun as possible to bake something—not to show off how skilled of a pastry chef yossy is, or etc. (FWIW, I have also loved reading Samantha Seneviratne's BAKE SMART, which is slightly less "simple" but has a more ATK approach to regular-person baking—she takes a lot of baking science and expertise, and uses it to make really approachable recipes.)
Also, one of the first cookbooks I really cooked from was the America's Test Kitchen "Cooking for Two" cookbook, which a family friend bought for me my senior year of college, or right after, when I was just getting into cooking and also in my first "serious relationship". While no recipes really stick out as memorable to me—maybe there was a pork chop in there?—I think those books are so good at holding your hand and really ensuring your success.
All of the books by John Thorne (which I re-read from start to finish every few years). His democratic, inclusive approach to recipe investigation and development helps remind me that you don't need/there isn't one "best" way to make a particular dish—all of the myriad ways cooks make a dish are potentially wonderful and worth trying at least once, if not cycling through regularly.
Good to the Grain by Kim Boyce. It was my first introduction to baking with something other than All Purpose flour. Her book showed me all the flavor accessible through different kinds of flours. And not to be dramatic, but unusual flours have pretty much been my life’s work since reading her book!
oh wow I remember when this came out—right when I started working in food media—everyone was obsessed with it but I was too baby to really cook from it (24 and didn't know what I was doing—now I want to revisit!!
I love East by Meera Sodha. Such a great variety of recipes and got me buying new staples. Every time I make something from it I feel invigorated and excited to eat and cook
Six Seasons! It made us think so much more about sauces and dressings. Reading about his preparation of different vegetables changed how I think about cooking -- from recipes to just creating a meal that we'll like. My husband's been reading Sohla while quarantining in the basement for covid this week, and I think that her book has a similar potential -- he's been texting me things this week like "why don't we poach things?"
ugh i LOVE six seasons. that and Deborah Madison's Vegetable Literacy (whose recipes are slightly simpler) are my go-to books for when I get something from the CSA/farmers market and need a bit of inspiration. Also I hope your husband gets better soon! Maybe you're about to enter your poaching era......
I have to pick two books: “Simple French Food” and Nigella Lawson’s “Feast.” I had the first one when I was living in the Persian Gulf and the second some moths later when I was in Belgium. The first one was fun for a bachelor getting started in the world & the other provided plenty of ideas for someone who had a good assortment of dishes and cooking tools
Ok I actually think that among other things one goal I have this year is to spend time with Nigella's books. (I know Eric Kim considers one of her early books—How To Eat, maybe—a formative text, and references it and her often.) I'll often watch her old YouTube videos and they're so fun. There's one where she opens up her freezer to grab something and it is just OVERFLOWING, it is a TOTAL MESS, and she's like haha yes this is what my freezer looks like!! That would NEVER happen in a cooking show now......
Incredibly washed answer but the Momofuku cookbook, right when it came out, was the first one that got me like...excited about trying stuff outside my basic comfort zone — new ways to cook and flavors and ingredients i didn't know. I had just gotten my first place that had a real/actual kitchen after college. I remember it being really fun.
brave of you to say this in MY comments section but I do think that this is widely regarded as a great cookbook and was also huge huge huge when it came out—say what you will about Dave Chang and I will say plenty in private but he and his coauthor seem to have done a great job of communicating his whole deal/cooking into an actually useful book
The Canal House books, for sure! The old American/Italian/French cottagecore energy restores a level of fantasy to cooking at home (in a provincial kinda way, as though I were running a cute inn, not a slick city restaurant). But on a practical level, recipes range from all-day affairs requiring a bottle of wine (for the cook, not the food!) to dead simple pantry appetizers and meals that awakened me to the true potential of the cans in my pantry. I recommend issue 8, Pronto!, which starts with about 10 different things you can marinate in red wine vinegar and oil to whip up a surprisingly elegant last-minute dish.
This is such a good explanation of what is so appealing about those books. Makes me want to revisit the little italian one they put out not so long ago, called PRONTO. (I really do appreciate a SLIM cookbook sometimes.....) I also think they straddle that (perceived) line between home cook and professional cook—you see those recipes and you're like ok, yes, I could be this sort of cook *someday*......
I'm going to show my age here! As a baker, Rose Levy Berenbaum's The Cake Bible taught me to weigh ingredients and certain techniques like reverse creaming, etc. As a cook, Charmaine Solomon's Complete Asian Cookbook opened up new flavors and techniques. Looking forward to seeing what others say!
An Everlasting Meal for me too. I have been learning and changing how I cook with Sohla's Start Here. Barbara Michaelson's Presque Tres Bien and Getting Better All the Time was the first cookbook I read cover to cover. It was the first cookbook that made me want cooking to feel different (and better) than it did.
I think Sohla's Start Here is such a great addition to the sort of "modern comprehensive cooking instruction" canon, with Samin's Salt Fat Acid Heat. She's really taking on the project of TEACHING YOU HOW TO COOK, and I'm always fascinated to see the different strategies that people use there. I've found it a very *enjoyable* book to cook out of, too. There's so much joy in what she does, you can tell she really finds it fun. Though every time I see the chapter called like "Welcome to Brown Town" I simply have to laugh
Tamar Adler's An Everlasting Meal: Cooking with Economy and Grace. Changed how I cook and how I approach life each and every day ~ I even led a writing and meditation retreat on an island 10 miles off the coast of Maine with her words as muse to our own making.
Oh, and An Everlasting Meal Cookbook: Leftovers A~Z
I'm not gonna lie ~ it was pretty great! This September, we will journey and journal through Rebecca Solnitt's The Faraway Nearby ... . .. perhaps you can join us?
Another vote for Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone by Deborah Madison. In my mid-twenties and living in a two-person household with just me and my partner for the first time, that is the first book that truly taught me how to think about ingredients. Rather than just picking a recipe and cooking that in isolation, Deborah (we're on a first-name basis in my mind) showed me how to start with a vegetable I have on hand and think about all the possibilities for preparing it, then building a meal around that. I'm not (often) a vegetarian, but over ten years after first discovering that book it still informs so many of the decisions I make about what I buy and prepare.
Not so much “a” book as a prescription for books I hadn’t seen mentioned: Artisanal, The French Laundry, Grey Kunz, Saltie, WD~50, How to Cook a Wolf, Dali, El Bulli, Modernist Cuisine, Prune (❤️), Kenny Shopsin, Foxfire Appalachian, anything from Stephane Reynaud, Fergus Henderson, Jessica Harris, Verta Mae, Edna Lewis, Melissa Weller, Brooks Headley, the Bras, Bryan Koh, Caroline Eden, John Thorne, Jim Harrison, Dara Goldstein, Jacques, Naomi Duguid, Caroline Eden or motherfuckin Fuchsia Dunlop🤌🤌🤌
i dream of dinner by ali slagle! unlike some cookbooks that have made me feel like i'm breaking federal law if i'm thinking about substitutions or not using a kitchen scale, i dream of dinner's recipes are so adaptable and include ideas for riffing, so it's helped me loosen up in the kitchen and trust my instincts when i want to use a recipe as a jumping off point rather than a strict set of instructions. (and the recipes are lovely and delicious on the many occasions when i do simply follow them, of course!)
really great book ^^ I feel so similarly
yes ali is so great at having a REALISTIC AND GENEROUS VIEW of how people actually cook/use recipes. the great thing about that book is that it isn't "about her", it's "about you", and she is helping you
I love I Dream of Dinner, too. One of my absolute faves.
Salt, fat, acid, heat
i find myself returning to this book over and over. I've always been so impressed by what Samin is able to pull off in this book—the thorough instruction she builds up, that offers you structures to build off of. I was so impressed, too, in her press tour for the book when she would say "I want people to read this cover to cover before cooking from it." I haven't done that (oops), but I've always been impressed by her surety
The comments may now be closed…
Ha!
Snacking Cakes, if only because it upped the amount of baking do to 300% and the loosey goosey vibe has made me more open to substituting things when I’m short on an ingredient.
But the book that made me think about food and cooking completely differently: I’m Just Here for the Food by Alton Brown, who I have mixed feelings about but that book and Good Eats opening up the science and “why” of how cooking works really made me a better cook.
Shout out to America’s Test Kitchen, while their whole Americana shtick is not always my palate, it too was a great source of learning on technique!
Totally agree about americas test kitchen. They have taught me many fundamental techniques and I appreciate their high level of nerd when I’m in the mood
+1 to snacking cakes! I said something similar about Ali Slagle's I Dream of Dinner in a different comment, but that book is designed to make it as easy and fun as possible to bake something—not to show off how skilled of a pastry chef yossy is, or etc. (FWIW, I have also loved reading Samantha Seneviratne's BAKE SMART, which is slightly less "simple" but has a more ATK approach to regular-person baking—she takes a lot of baking science and expertise, and uses it to make really approachable recipes.)
Also, one of the first cookbooks I really cooked from was the America's Test Kitchen "Cooking for Two" cookbook, which a family friend bought for me my senior year of college, or right after, when I was just getting into cooking and also in my first "serious relationship". While no recipes really stick out as memorable to me—maybe there was a pork chop in there?—I think those books are so good at holding your hand and really ensuring your success.
An Everlasting Meal was spectacular. To name another one, I really loved The Secret of Cooking by Bee Wilson.
Bee's book has been on my bedside pile for months!
All of the books by John Thorne (which I re-read from start to finish every few years). His democratic, inclusive approach to recipe investigation and development helps remind me that you don't need/there isn't one "best" way to make a particular dish—all of the myriad ways cooks make a dish are potentially wonderful and worth trying at least once, if not cycling through regularly.
i love this idea :)
Good to the Grain by Kim Boyce. It was my first introduction to baking with something other than All Purpose flour. Her book showed me all the flavor accessible through different kinds of flours. And not to be dramatic, but unusual flours have pretty much been my life’s work since reading her book!
oh wow I remember when this came out—right when I started working in food media—everyone was obsessed with it but I was too baby to really cook from it (24 and didn't know what I was doing—now I want to revisit!!
Your Substack name affirms that. Unless there was some nominal determinism going on with what your folks actually named you.
I love East by Meera Sodha. Such a great variety of recipes and got me buying new staples. Every time I make something from it I feel invigorated and excited to eat and cook
This is a book I've been meaning to return to!! Thank you for the nudge :)
Six Seasons! It made us think so much more about sauces and dressings. Reading about his preparation of different vegetables changed how I think about cooking -- from recipes to just creating a meal that we'll like. My husband's been reading Sohla while quarantining in the basement for covid this week, and I think that her book has a similar potential -- he's been texting me things this week like "why don't we poach things?"
ugh i LOVE six seasons. that and Deborah Madison's Vegetable Literacy (whose recipes are slightly simpler) are my go-to books for when I get something from the CSA/farmers market and need a bit of inspiration. Also I hope your husband gets better soon! Maybe you're about to enter your poaching era......
I have to pick two books: “Simple French Food” and Nigella Lawson’s “Feast.” I had the first one when I was living in the Persian Gulf and the second some moths later when I was in Belgium. The first one was fun for a bachelor getting started in the world & the other provided plenty of ideas for someone who had a good assortment of dishes and cooking tools
Ok I actually think that among other things one goal I have this year is to spend time with Nigella's books. (I know Eric Kim considers one of her early books—How To Eat, maybe—a formative text, and references it and her often.) I'll often watch her old YouTube videos and they're so fun. There's one where she opens up her freezer to grab something and it is just OVERFLOWING, it is a TOTAL MESS, and she's like haha yes this is what my freezer looks like!! That would NEVER happen in a cooking show now......
Incredibly washed answer but the Momofuku cookbook, right when it came out, was the first one that got me like...excited about trying stuff outside my basic comfort zone — new ways to cook and flavors and ingredients i didn't know. I had just gotten my first place that had a real/actual kitchen after college. I remember it being really fun.
brave of you to say this in MY comments section but I do think that this is widely regarded as a great cookbook and was also huge huge huge when it came out—say what you will about Dave Chang and I will say plenty in private but he and his coauthor seem to have done a great job of communicating his whole deal/cooking into an actually useful book
Yes thank you I am brave
The Canal House books, for sure! The old American/Italian/French cottagecore energy restores a level of fantasy to cooking at home (in a provincial kinda way, as though I were running a cute inn, not a slick city restaurant). But on a practical level, recipes range from all-day affairs requiring a bottle of wine (for the cook, not the food!) to dead simple pantry appetizers and meals that awakened me to the true potential of the cans in my pantry. I recommend issue 8, Pronto!, which starts with about 10 different things you can marinate in red wine vinegar and oil to whip up a surprisingly elegant last-minute dish.
This is such a good explanation of what is so appealing about those books. Makes me want to revisit the little italian one they put out not so long ago, called PRONTO. (I really do appreciate a SLIM cookbook sometimes.....) I also think they straddle that (perceived) line between home cook and professional cook—you see those recipes and you're like ok, yes, I could be this sort of cook *someday*......
I'm going to show my age here! As a baker, Rose Levy Berenbaum's The Cake Bible taught me to weigh ingredients and certain techniques like reverse creaming, etc. As a cook, Charmaine Solomon's Complete Asian Cookbook opened up new flavors and techniques. Looking forward to seeing what others say!
Oh, when I worked at Food52 Rose was talked about like some sort of foremother, saint, genius, early visionary! She's a legend!
An Everlasting Meal for me too. I have been learning and changing how I cook with Sohla's Start Here. Barbara Michaelson's Presque Tres Bien and Getting Better All the Time was the first cookbook I read cover to cover. It was the first cookbook that made me want cooking to feel different (and better) than it did.
I think Sohla's Start Here is such a great addition to the sort of "modern comprehensive cooking instruction" canon, with Samin's Salt Fat Acid Heat. She's really taking on the project of TEACHING YOU HOW TO COOK, and I'm always fascinated to see the different strategies that people use there. I've found it a very *enjoyable* book to cook out of, too. There's so much joy in what she does, you can tell she really finds it fun. Though every time I see the chapter called like "Welcome to Brown Town" I simply have to laugh
Tamar Adler's An Everlasting Meal: Cooking with Economy and Grace. Changed how I cook and how I approach life each and every day ~ I even led a writing and meditation retreat on an island 10 miles off the coast of Maine with her words as muse to our own making.
Oh, and An Everlasting Meal Cookbook: Leftovers A~Z
This retreat sounds so cool!
I'm not gonna lie ~ it was pretty great! This September, we will journey and journal through Rebecca Solnitt's The Faraway Nearby ... . .. perhaps you can join us?
https://sewmanystories.com/retreats
Another vote for Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone by Deborah Madison. In my mid-twenties and living in a two-person household with just me and my partner for the first time, that is the first book that truly taught me how to think about ingredients. Rather than just picking a recipe and cooking that in isolation, Deborah (we're on a first-name basis in my mind) showed me how to start with a vegetable I have on hand and think about all the possibilities for preparing it, then building a meal around that. I'm not (often) a vegetarian, but over ten years after first discovering that book it still informs so many of the decisions I make about what I buy and prepare.
She really is the best. (And I call her Deborah too.....)
Not so much “a” book as a prescription for books I hadn’t seen mentioned: Artisanal, The French Laundry, Grey Kunz, Saltie, WD~50, How to Cook a Wolf, Dali, El Bulli, Modernist Cuisine, Prune (❤️), Kenny Shopsin, Foxfire Appalachian, anything from Stephane Reynaud, Fergus Henderson, Jessica Harris, Verta Mae, Edna Lewis, Melissa Weller, Brooks Headley, the Bras, Bryan Koh, Caroline Eden, John Thorne, Jim Harrison, Dara Goldstein, Jacques, Naomi Duguid, Caroline Eden or motherfuckin Fuchsia Dunlop🤌🤌🤌
And Caroline Eden, apparently.
Love the saltie book!!!!