Bon Appegeek

Reviews are in alphabetical order by author’s last name except for new reviews at the top.

How to Cook Everything: Simple Recipes for Great Food, by Mark Bittman and Alan Witschonke (illustrator). Wishlisted.

I’m Just Here for the Food: Food + Heat = Cooking (Hardcover), by Alton Brown. Review pending. [Also posted in Reference books.]

The Way to Cook, by Julia Child, also available in a much cheaper paperback edition. I look on this book with affection because it was my first cookbook purchase. Unfortunately, I was in college then, and it scared me. At the time I thought cooking was dicing some bell peppers and frozen chicken breasts and simmering it all with bottled sweet and sour sauce. Cutting up entire chickens and making pastry in a food processor struck me as excessive. Ah, youth. I admit that I haven’t cooked much from this book because the layout isn’t very friendly, but it’s a pleasurable and ambling read. I have made the vichyssoise to great acclaim. By some miracle, Julia’s vichyssoise recipe had less cream than most of the recipes I’ve seen on the ‘net. The queen of cream and butter gives a nod to low(er) fat cooking sometimes. Who knew?

The New Best Recipe: All-New Edition with 1,000 Recipes, by the editors of Cook’s Illustrated magazine. A must-have. I’ve already detailed my fondness for CI’s recipes in over on the magazine review page, but in a nutshell, the CI folk are geeks after my own heart. There’s no tradition here, only relentless testing for the best. Their high standards of excellence have the ironic effect of making me more irritated when they seem to miss something (why don’t they explain why the angel food cake recipe calls for half the sugar mixed with the flour instead of the egg whites when they explain everything else to death?), but the success rate of CI recipes beats out every other book in my collection so far. If you don’t subscribe to the magazine or the web site, do at least buy this book and cook with faith.

Cooking New American: How to Cook the Food You Love to Eat (Hardcover), by Fine Cooking Magazine. Wishlisted.

The Naked Chef Takes Off, by Jamie Oliver. A blast to read. Oliver’s enthusiasm and energy burst through on every page. You can get most of the recipes at his site here, but you’ll miss out on the pleasure of browsing. Worth it if you get a good price. I’ve made the wonderful pukkolla many times.

The All New, All Purpose Joy of Cooking, by Irma S. Rombauer. I have a version that’s ten years older than this one. Truth be told, I haven’t cooked from it much because the cake recipes irritated me by requiring 6-cup bundt pans and cake flour. I have cake flour and 6-cup bundt pans, but few others do, and for such a mainstream book I would have expected more accessible ingredients and equipment. However, the reference sections are great if you need to know what the heck to do with, say, a celeriac. Apparently the older, classic versions are superior, but I’ve not had the pleasure of reading them.

All About Braising: The Art of Uncomplicated Cooking (Hardcover), by Molly Stephens. Review pending. [Also posted in Specialty/Misc cookbooks.]

Anne Willan’s Cook It Right, by Anne Willan. More a fantastic reference book than a cookbook, different dishes are pictured in three states—two bad, one good. Photos may show one poundcake that sunk, one poundcake that overbaked, and one poundcake that’s just right. (I didn’t check to see if she covers porridge.) Willan explains the hows and whys of the failures, provides troubleshooting information for each failure, and what to do to fix the problem or salvage the dish. It appears that the book is out of print. It depresses me that such a useful book could disappear, but so far it’s widely available used. This book is more approachable than her amazing but more intimidating classic, La Varenne Pratique, which is also available used only. What does a brilliant culinary teacher have to do to stay in print?!

The Good Cook: 70 Essential Techniques, 250 Step-by-Step Photographs, 350 Easy Recipes (Hardcover), by Anne Willan and Alison Harris (Photographer). Wishlisted.

Good Food No Fuss: 150 Recipes and Ideas for Easy to Cook Dishes (Hardcover), by Anne Willan. Review pending.