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!)
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!
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!
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?"
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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!)
Salt, fat, acid, heat
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!
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.
An Everlasting Meal was spectacular. To name another one, I really loved The Secret of Cooking by Bee Wilson.
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!
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?"
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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🤌🤌🤌