Cookbook Review Thread - Page 6

AceLuby · #51 10-08-2007, 01:43 PM

I have 3 cookbooks by the Colorado College and they are the 3 best cookbooks I own.

wuwei · #52 10-08-2007, 01:52 PM

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i'm a huge fan of ethnic cooking. i love bold brassy flavors and i find that mexican, chinese, indian and SE Asian food give me what I'm looking for. For SE Asian, I love hot, sour, salty, sweet.

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Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet is very good. I also really enjoy Seductions of Rice by the same authors. Alford and Duquid write cookbooks that you can enjoy like a good book. This one has a history of rice and some fun stories about the authors' travels through asia. Very nice photography throughout the book. The recipes can involve some running around searching to find ingredients, but not that bad.

I just noticed they now have a book out on Indian cuisine, I will have to check that out soon. I recommend heading to a bookstore, grabbing a couple of these books and paging through them for a while. They'll suck you in.

mikeczyz · #53 10-09-2007, 12:28 AM

i've also got seductions of rice, their book on home baking and the indian cookbook. all are superb. highly recommended.

Aloysius · #54 10-09-2007, 02:37 PM

So was looking through reviews of Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet and looks interesting... but seems like it's much more of a "coffee table" cook book than a practical one for everyday use?

The reason I ask is cause I'm in LA with a ton of very good SE Asian / Asian rest. options nearby (and cheap).

I've found with certain Asian cuisines (Thai come to mind) it's just not practical to cook alot of the dishes at home, because it's so labor intensive with a ridiculous amount of ingredients - really much easier to go out to a restaurant for me.

But I haven't explored SE Asian cooking at home really (I [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] Vietnamese food, for example), so any thoughts on this or additional cook book recs would be great, thanks.

-Al

xxThe_Lebowskixx · #55 10-31-2007, 08:14 PM

what is a good Korean Cookbook? I find that most cookbooks and recipes online try to make the dish a little bit different as if to make their recipe original. thats not what i want. i want a cookbook written by someone who runs a Mom and Pop corner restaurant in Seoul. Authenticity and not watered down for Americans is the goal! Any recommendations? I especially want to learn how to cook all of the different varieties of ban-chan.

Aloysius · #56 10-31-2007, 08:21 PM

KKF - I mentioned this one way earlier in the thread, I like it alot:

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2) Cuisine specific (for Korean, highly recommend Korean Mother's Cooking Notes)

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I also like this blog - My Korean Kitchen, has some good recipes and general stuff on Korean food.

-Al

xxThe_Lebowskixx · #57 10-31-2007, 08:55 PM

Thanks a bunch. That book looks good. I agree with you that cooking Thai food is laborious and much of it is stir fried which smells and heats up your house. The curries are good to cook at home though.

mikeczyz · #58 11-01-2007, 12:42 AM

Thanks for the korean rec...i've been looking for a good korean cookbook.

ike · #59 11-01-2007, 12:43 AM

Mexican Everyday by Rick Bayliss

This book is awesome. I've only started cooking very recently and I'm not any good at it, but using these recipes I've consistently gotten delicious, reasonably healthy food without much time or effort.
If you ever get a chance to eat at one of his restaurants in Chicago, do. The meal I had at Topolabampo was probably the best Mexican food I've ever had, quite a few meals in Mexico included.

Chicago Twister · #60 11-01-2007, 01:03 AM

I've accumulated a lot of cookbooks over the years, and they are usually in one of two types. General cookbooks like Joy & New Basics, and specialized cookbooks. I also have a number of books geared specifically to professional cooking as I used to be a chef.

The specialized cookbooks are my favorites because while they don't expand the breadth of my knowledge much, the expand the depth a great deal.

My favorite specialized cookbooks are:

Professional Pastry Chef by Bo Frieberg

Splendid Soups by James Peterson

Sauces also by Peterson

Bread Baker's Apprentice by Peter Reinhart

Bernard Clayton's new Complete Book of Breads by Bernard Clayton

I also have one pretty cool cookbook which is a general cookbook like Joy or Basics, but Italian. Silver Spoon by Phaidon press has a basic version of pretty much every Italian dish you could ever think of, and 2,000 other ones too.