the REFERENCE LIBRARY
THE COOK BOOK SHELF
WEB SITES
At some point you won’t need recipes to make something delicious. You’ll be comfortable enough to improvise and experiment. But even when you get to that point, you’ll find cookbooks to be very helpful reference guides. And beyond that, they’re great fun to flip through. Whether you’re just looking for a fun 1940s cocktail to make or you can’t remember the ratio of water to rice, they’re nice to have around. My collection of cookery books is hardly exhaustive, but I do have a decent selection of classics, handy reference, esoterica, and coffee table books. Some are indispensable, others simply fun to page through when it’s raining outside and you don’t have cable.
These two cookbooks are indispensable. Between the two of them, you should be able to find any recipe that you’ll need; from hummus to rice to pot roast and chocolate chip cookies.
The Internet is crammed full of web sites devoted to cooking and food. These days one could almost get away with not owning any cook books....almost.
This website stockpiles all the recipes from Gourmet and Bon Appetit. So now you don’t need to keep all those old issues lying around.
A great site that also now includes an online food magazine, CHOW. This site is also great for getting restaurant recommendations all over North America.
You can create a list of the ingredients you have and the site will spit out a list of the drinks you can make. It also has multiple search options (by name, ingredient, and even type of glass) that can help when you’re stumped for cocktail ideas.
Another good one. Search by name or ingredient.
Esquire’s Handbook For Hosts
The French Laundry Cookbook
The Way to Cook
On Food and Cooking
The Art of the Bar
I picked up this gem at the local Good Will. It’s the 1949 version of a a book written for the bachelor host. It’s full of wit and wisdom, along with a healthy dash of harmless sexist tosh. The jingoistic section of “Continental Cooking” is delightfully a bit not right. There’s a section on how to know if you as host has had one too many, and there’s also a section on party games. Example: PAGE 83.
Thomas Keller’s first cookbook and his best, I think. Every Christmas I make a meal in the high style of his Yountville mecca and (according to most) succeed. The recipes are easy to follow and you’ll be surprised at your final products. Most of the recipes call for ingredients and equipment either readily available or already in your cupboards. I should note that the section entitled “Cooking with Chlorophyl” is about as out there as it gets, which when compared with the Alinea cookbook is more akin to “How to Open that Can of Tuna.”