Cook books.

[akesingland]

Hi All

I only just stumbled across this one. My partner is alarmed at the number of my cookery books, she sould shut up, she gets fed. Very interesting, a bit like saying your favorite best songs. So here goes:

1 Delia Smith "Complete Cookery Course"
2 Nigel Slater "Appetite"
3 Ken Hom "Chinese Cookery"
4 Lindsey Bareham " A Celebration of Soup"
5 Sri Owen " The Cooking of Thaiand, Indonesia and Malaysia"

As for the worst, humm. I like all of them, never knock a cookery book!

Cheers
Adam

[Wohoki]

Hope you didn't see my list


You're right about Mr Hom, he writes a good book.

[aris]

Personally, I like the older books - most of which i've inherited from family or bought at boot sales.

[akesingland]

Wohoki

Do not worry, yes I did. I would say who does not look at their Delia when it comes to roast the chicken, or make an apple pie, how long does it take to cook that vegetable in my organic box I have never cooked. I'm not talking about the insulting "How to Cook" series.

We can be so snobby sometimes. Dont get me wrong I hate her TV programs, just like the classic book.

Cheers
Adam

[Wohoki]

Give us a few titles then Aris. The oldest cookbook I use regularly was written by The Countess Morphey in the nineteenth century for Selfridge & co ("Recipes of All Nations"), but I do use an older book, produced by the Royal Navy in 1820, for some real hard-core stews.

[Heather]

- I have a series of files by Prue Leith that I use a lot (from a series of collect-and-keep things) for most recipes.

- The Complete South African Cookbook, good basic cookbook that has spot-on roasting times for meat, recipes for biltong and boerewors, and freezing instructions for vegetables. Got it as an engagement present 17 years ago, it now looks very well-used.

- Nigella's Feast - excellent recipes for Christmas food, really good mince pies and Christmas cakes, cranberry jelly, etc. etc.

- Gary Rhodes British Classics, mainly for the pork pie recipe, picallili, etc. as a lot of his recipes are far too complicated

- Madhur Jaffrey's Ultimate Curry Bible - for all things curried!

- HFW RC Year and RC Cookbook, for how to cook stuff I've never seen before

I tend to accumulate cookbooks and have an entire bookcase devoted to them, in my dining-room.

[Wohoki]

I'm about to run-over from my cookbook-bookcase. My wife wants me to get rid of some of them. Fat chance. I'm going to get a (much) bigger bookcase.


And I should give an honourable mention to "Schott's Food and Drink Miscellany" by Ben Schott. No recipes, apart from named salads and cocktails, but lots of odd snipets of food lore. A great book to keep in the bog.

[jenny_haddow]

A curiosity I have on my shelf I found in a charity shop. 'Best recipes from the backs of boxes, bottles cans and jars'. I think it's American because I don't know half the brand names. It's handy for the odd quick meal if you substitute most of the processed stuff for fresh. There's some real oddities in there though.

Two fairly recent aquisitions that I have enjoyed:

Falling Cloudberries by Tessa Kiros, and La Porte des Indes cookbook(NB Sea bass baked in banana leaves)

Too many books, need a bigger house!

[moggy]

Another one I like is an oldish one produced by the atora suet company - it has all the old traditional recipes in it. My mother used to have it, but this one I picked up at a car boot sale for 10p
Just looked the site up and they have a lot of the recipes now on line
http://www.atora.co.uk/inspiration/index.htm

[moggy]

I'm about to run-over from my cookbook-bookcase. My wife wants me to get rid of some of them. Fat chance. I'm going to get a (much) bigger bookcase.

hmm, I was ruthless and got rid of all the ones I didn't use or that were no good as we were going to be emmigrating, however I seem to be rapidly replacing them

[Wohoki]

I only keep the good ones. Delia went out the window years ago (actually she went to the Cats Protection League, and sold in 24 hours.)

[moggy]

My most obscure one, that I can't bring myself to part with, because I keep promising that one day I might be able to read it is one of Śląsk cookery, written in Śląsk. I bought it because I thought it was written in Polish, it was only when I came to try to read a recipe I realised my mistake (Śląsk is to Polish what geordie is to English!). I still can't bring myself to part with it though, well it is only small and doesn't take up much space after .

[saucisson]

Readers Digest Complete Guide to Cookery
Delia 1978 Complete Cookery Course
Madhur Jaffrey Indian Cookery
Real Thai (McDermott)
The Internet

My worst, The new bread machine book, from the days before I realised the one thing you can't make in a bread machine is bread

[Rik vonTrense]

Talking of Bread Machines..........being a home baker of some repute I did an exercise on the use of bread machines trying various machines and recipes over one whole month.

I never made one satisfatory loaf as far as I was concerned.

I did, however, make a fortune selling door stops.

You would not believe some of the atrocities that came out of the machines going under the name of a loaf of bread..

The best machine I found was a National Panasonic. Those to be avoided were those with an inspection window in the top which prevented the loaf from being cooked that side.


/

[jenny_haddow]

I have two bread machines. One was �9.99p in a Tesco sale and makes the most fantastic bread (Iwill post a picture) the other is from Lidl and makes two small loaves side by side. I've used bread machines for the last 10 years and can get a good loaf out of any, no matter what brand and price. I use a mix of flours and about 6-7 different seeds in my bread, and learned that you cant load them up and walk away, you have to nurse them to the first rise by adding extra water/flour to get a good dough, then you can leave it. I use it to knead for pizza, baguettes, rolls etc, and I always have two in case one packs up.

Jen

Bread machine books are rubbish!