Indulge me in a book recommendation.

Shryke

I've had a look through this thread here:
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2054978683
It gives a lot of different recs so as I don't see much of a difference from grabbing one book off the shelf or another.
I'd really just like to be specific. I'm in the market for a book or books (not too many!) that would deal with the basics of cooking when it comes to all different types of recipes. Also I'm very interested in starting baking. Any recs there would be most welcome, and geared toward a newcomer in the field.
I'm aiming to be able to make pasta dishes from scratch, say a bolognaise. Also I love hot food and especially a good hot curry like a vindaloo. I'd be interested in a wide variety. I'd name a lot of dishes but I'd start to feel stupid.
Are there any such books out there that can teach me the rudiments?
Here's hoping.

Sparks

From my own library: Good Eats : The Early Years by Alton Brown, preferably read while watching Good Eats on youtube. There's also I'm just here for the food by Alton Brown and Chef School by the Leiths school of Food and Wine, but the latter is less engaging and much less in-depth than the first two (even if Brown's a total geek, he explains what's going on during cooking far better than anyone I've ever come across, and has won a lot of awards for doing so).

Shryke

Books by Brown sound good. I'll look them up in a while. Anything else recommended would be great too. I'd like to have two or three different works/opinions to dip into.

Sparks

Shryke wrote: »

Books by Brown sound good. I'll look them up in a while. Anything else recommended would be great too. I'd like to have two or three different works/opinions to dip into.

Well, from the recommedations thread:

Sparks wrote: »

Avoca 1 was good. Avoca 2 was rubbish. Bowl Food was good, Grill It was interesting and those two are in a line of similar books, but they share recipes so there's some overlap between Bowl Food and Fast Food, for example. But these (and a few others) are just recipe books.

For Cooking books, there's a different list
Chef School is excellent (not Farrow's book, but the coursebook from - I think - the Leith's course)
Alton Brown's Gear For Your Kitchen is excellent.
Indulge is magnificant.
Crust is wonderful.
China Modern isn't half bad.

But my number one, all-time, I'd-throw-everything-else-out-bar-this, This-is-the-first-thing-I-would-ever-recommend cookbook, is not a cookbook, it's the Good Eats TV series from the states. The host, Alton Brown, has a fair few books out which try to do in book form what the show did/does in TV form, but the simple truth is that that's not possible. You can buy DVDs of the show, and they're also up on youtube. They don't just do a delia (ie. give a magic recipe to produce food from stuff), they explain why, in very easy to follow ways, you do what you do to produce food from stuff. Why can you cook lentils without soaking overnight? How do you do a pilaf? What's gluten? And so on. Which means that if you don't have exactly what's on the list for a delia recipe you can't make food, but if you don't have exactly what's on the list for a Good Eats recipe, you'll know whether or not you can use a substitute, what that substitute could be, and whether or not (and how) to change the cooking process to get the same end result.

About two-thirds of everything I learnt about cooking, I learnt from this nutjob. Can't recommend him highly enough. Especially to the geeky amongst us. I mean come on, the show has it's own nutritional anthropologist!

Sparks wrote: »

I'm Just Here for the Food v2.0

This is the second edition of I'm Just Here for the Food by Alton Brown. The first edition won the James Beard award in the US for best reference book. I'm somewhat at a loss to describe how good this is without hyperbole, but put it this way - if you wanted to get someone a book that would teach them how to cook, this is the book you'd get. Regardless of whether they're a college student about to move out of home without enough culinary skills to boil water, or whether they're a mom who's been cooking awful food for thirty years. It isn't just a collection of recipes - it's a book about the how and the why of cooking. Why do you beat egg yolks until they lighten in colour before using them for custards, and how does the colour change? How does food roast? Why do we sear meat instead of just boiling or roasting or stewing it?

I don't know if it's the one book I'd keep if I had to lose all the others (in fact, I'd probably go with my notebook if that was the criteria); but if I had to give someone just the one book on how to cook, this would be it.

waltersobchak

Anything by Nigel Slater would be good like REAL COOKING his cookery style is great for any beginner

THE GREEN RIVER CAFE COOKBOOK is a great book for simple tasty Italian food.. again great for any beginner because the food is based around the ingrediants rather than the cooking processes.

or a more advanced book LE MANOIR by Raymond Blanc or NEW BRITISH CLASSICS BY Gary Rhodes are fantastic books. Both loaded with great recipes especially New British Classic it has every type of dish you could possibly want in there.. And Raymonds book is the French equivalent

Shryke

They sound like some very good books! I'll check them out later and be making a mess in the kitchen by the weekend.

Swampy

The "Ballymaloe cookery course" is a very good all rounder

rosiemci

Darina Allen' new book Forgotten Skills of Cooking is very interesting too.

Minder

You'll spend a long time looking for a bolognese recipe in the River Cafe Green cookbook - as the title suggests, it a vegetarian cookbook. The River Cafe original (Blue cover) doesn't have it either. For a comprehensive Italian cookbook get Made in Italy by Giorgio Locatelli. It has a huge range of dishes including breads and baked desserts (and a bolognese ragu). It's expensive and also a large tome to haul about - a cheaper alternative for a good range of Italian recipes is Carluccio's Passion for Pasta. It has only pasta dishes and the bolognese is simplicity - meat, tomato, wine, onion, basil, water, season, cook for 3 hours.

For general cookbooks with a wide range of recipes including baked things, Delia used to be the best - and she is still very good if you want to cook traditional dishes. Rick Steins Food Heroes books (two volumes) have a wide range of great dishes - starters, mains and desserts across a range of international foods. Mumrez Khan's recipe for lamb karahi curry is in the white one - it gets a mention on here every now and then (mostly by me). Another wide ranging cookbook with hundreds of savory dishes (not a sweet in sight) is Dean & DeLuca cookbook - and not a single photo. I recently picked up Ramsays Great Escape (100 Indian Recipes) and have cooked from it a few times. It's very good, quite authentic and the recipes really work.

As with any recommendation, don't buy online until you've has a flick through in the bookshop.

smallgarden

id recommend mary berryd complete guide i think its called.it has wide rande of dishes, times for dishes,pictures of every dish etc.its really good for basics to more complicated things and each section gives basic info on the food area e.g poultry section gives ways to fillet,spatchcock etc

also a really basic book for starter cookery is smart cooking 1and 2,its aimed at secondary school students but it has all basic methods of baking e.g creaming, rubbing in, sectionds for meat/fish/starters/soups.its basic easy recipes
if you ever done home ec its where youl find most of the recipes

Sigma Force

I have a few of the celeb chef type books and they are handy but the most practical sensible book I have is Good Housekeeping, it has all the basics and plenty of info. from hygiene in the kitchen to diff. cuts etc. Reciped vary from a roast to rice dishes and desserts.

Probably cheaper than some of the celeb type books as well.

waltersobchak

Minder wrote: »

You'll spend a long time looking for a bolognese recipe in the River Cafe Green cookbook - as the title suggests, it a vegetarian cookbook. The River Cafe original (Blue cover) doesn't have it either. For a comprehensive Italian cookbook get Made in Italy by Giorgio Locatelli. It has a huge range of dishes including breads and baked desserts (and a bolognese ragu). It's expensive and also a large tome to haul about - a cheaper alternative for a good range of Italian recipes is Carluccio's Passion for Pasta. It has only pasta dishes and the bolognese is simplicity - meat, tomato, wine, onion, basil, water, season, cook for 3 hours..

Actually the River Cafe Green Book isn't just vegetarian book at all. Fair enough it does specifically deal with seasonality of certain vegetables, their cooking processes and recipes.It also has meat dishes, great beginner book imo,were as Giorgio Locatelli's is hardly usful for a novice cook.

Also i do agree, try and flick through a book, before buying onlne, what might be useful to someone else mightn't be as usful to you.

Minder

Agreed, it's not strictly a vegetarian cookbook - but there is no section in it on meat dishes and a flick through the index shows maybe 3 or 4 recipes that have any meat in them at all. This includes two bruschetta recipes with a slice of prosciutto on top. One recipe for cavolo nero with salsicce. A half dozen recipes include fish or shellfish and the use of chicken stock in dishes mean it is not a vegetarian cookbook. But out of the 460+ pages there are less than twenty recipes that include meat or fish.

Minder

waltersobchak wrote: »

It also has meat dishes, great beginner book imo,were as Giorgio Locatelli's is hardly usful for a novice cook.

Just because it's comprehensive doesn't make it difficult.

waltersobchak

Minder wrote: »

Just because it's comprehensive doesn't make it difficult.

Well its definitely comprehensive, and a wonderful book, but its a book that surely falls under the category of either for professionals or experienced home cooks only.. Whereas I think a book like New British Classics is perfect for beginners and the experienced alike and, it has everything traditional, you could possible want in it.

Dinkie

Swampy wrote: »

The "Ballymaloe cookery course" is a very good all rounder

+1 for this.

It gives really good basic recipes. After each recipe it gives options on how the basic recipe can be easily changes in order to give it a twist.

It has really good practical information in it and covers all the basics +_ some more intermediate stuff. I am a basic cook and have found it great, and my mum who is an amazing cook finds it equally useful.