Serious Eats Gift Guide: Cookbooks
After reflecting on the vast universe of cookbooks out there for just a few minutes, my head began to hurt. How do you whittle down even the basics to a manageable list when there are three versions of The Joy of Cooking alone to consider?
So instead of a general gift guide, I'm listing the some of the best cookbooks of 2007 with an eye toward what from this year's crop would make a jolly, useful, tasty present.
Prices don't include shipping unless otherwise noted.
The Best Reference Book
James Peterson's Cooking is unmatched in terms of giving clear instruction for useful culinary skills. It leans heavily towards classic French dishes, but its value as a guide to technique make it an essential for home cooks who want to step up their game in terms of polish and consistency. Sidebars full of tips and the photos that accompany the well-thought out directions make complicated-sounding processes unambiguous - a recipe for success. $26.40, from Amazon
The Best on Basics
You can't argue with Alice Waters, the patron saint of the farm-to-table food movement. Basic cooks looking to expand their repertoires, new enthusiasts to culinary localism, or anyone who wants advice about shopping and cooking seasonally will enjoy her Art of Simple Food: Notes, Lessons, and Recipes From a Delicious Revolution. The recipes really are simple and wonderful, ideal for the newly independent cook, and the menus she presents would be a great help to the novice entertainer in giving dinner parties. $21, from Amazon
The Best Book on Meat
It's a good time to be a carnivore. This year we saw new and reissued guides to pork (Pork and Sons), bacon (Bacon), offal (Beyond Nose To Tail), Fish (The Young Man and The Sea) and chicken (Roast Chicken and Other Stories)—all great guides to single (albeit sometimes inexhaustibly broad) subjects. But no book published this year captures more about the virtues of flesh than The River Cottage Meat Book, delicious armchair tourism to a jolly England of roast fowl and spit-cooked joints of lamb. Equal parts pastoral romance, philosophical reflection, and instruction on selecting and working with a vast variety of meats, it is an excellent guide to shopping sensibly, making dinner thoughtfully and using leftovers wisely. $24, from Amazon
The Best Eclectic Cookbook
Because he is gently irreverant and always passionate about how to make delicious food, Eric Gower is a Serious Eats favorite, and we've featured several recipes from his The Breakaway Cook that should convince you. This book is perfect for the cook who likes to experiment, use unusual ingredients and embrace bold flavors, and will give you cred as a gift-giver who knows the difference between fusion and finesse. $20, from Amazon
The Best on Sweets
Ed has waxed rhapsodic about Gina DePalma's desserts at Babbo for a long time, and his excitement about Dolce Italiano was met by enthusiasm from Serious Eaters when they tried the recipes we featured on the site. If you give this collection of lovely desserts and charming anecdotes to the pastry maker in your life, maybe you'll get the gift of delicious treats in return. $23, from Amazon
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7 Comments:
I was one of the lucky SE fans to win Breakaway Cook! Alice Waters book is on "need this" list.
JEP at 3:50PM on 12/17/07
Let me offer one additional recommendation...
"Into the Vietnamese Kitchen" by Andrea Nguyen is a beautiful cookbook, providing background to the food and cooking techniques, as well as great recipes.
http://www.tenspeed.com/store/?main_page=pubs_product_book_jph1_info&products_id=2284
http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=94805
Andrea also blogs at: http://vietworldkitchen.typepad.com/
And she engages with commenters and fans of work.
(Her website is: http://www.vietworldkitchen.com/)
NSW at 4:21PM on 12/17/07
Typo...
While I'm sure Andrea engages with "fans of work," I obviously meant to write, "fans of her work."
NSW at 4:25PM on 12/17/07
Andrea's book came out last year, or I'm guessing it would have been a shoo-in.
mamster at 6:10PM on 12/17/07
I own the Joy of Cooking and it's boring. Never use it.
I would buy Dolce Italiano.
Anthony Bourdain: Les Halles Cookbook and Molto Italiano by Mario Batali are exciting gifts. Unique. Impressive. Not boring.
paris221966 at 11:44PM on 12/17/07
i just got the alice waters book and it is truly a wonderful addition to my collection. great insight and recipes. my kind of food.
cook eat FRET at 12:39AM on 12/18/07
I have not cooked from it myself, but I have heard some mutterings from print types that the recipes in the Waters book could have been more rigorously tested. For the right person, the River Cottage Meat Book would be great, though be careful flipping through it as you gather around the tree to unwrap gifts, as there are some very honest illustration of how and where we get meat. There's obviously an inclination to sort through this year's batch of cookbooks, but for the kind of folks who read SE, and the kind of people they would be exchanging gifts with, the Zuni book is hard to beat, as far as taking an enthusiastic cook to a more serious place.
The Gurgling Cod at 9:40AM on 12/18/07