When You’re Hungry for a Good Read, Devour a Cookbook!

I’m the first to admit that I’m not the best cook in the world.  I don’t have a lot of patience for cooking, and most nights when I get home from work, I’m just too exhausted to pick up a pan.  Luckily, I live with someone who really enjoys cooking, and is pretty darn good at it.  However, once in a while the culinary mood strikes me, and I head for…the library.

If you’re like me, you like to keep it simple.  Some good resources for no-nonsense chefs include:

• Cooking 1-2-3: 500 Fabulous Three-Ingredient Recipes by Rozanne Gold
• Everyday Cooking with Dr. Dean Ornish: 150 Easy, Low-Fat, High-Flavor Recipes by Dean Ornish with Janet Fletcher, Jean-Marc Fullsack, and Helen Roe
• Healthy Cooking Made Easy by Campbell’s
• The Phoney Gourmet: Includes 75 Delicious Recipes for Short-Cut Cooking by Pam Young and Peggy Jones
• Pillsbury Fast and Healthy Cookbook: 350 Easy Recipes for Every Day by the Pillsbury Company

For those who have a little more time and patience than I do, there are the well-known, general cookbooks, full of time-tested recipes.

• The Joy of Cooking by Irma S. Rombauer and Marion Rombauer Becker
• Better Homes & Gardens Complete Guide to Food and Cooking (reference copy only)
• The Good Housekeeping Cookbook: 1,039 Recipes from America’s Favorite Test Kitchen edited by Susan Westmoreland
• The James Beard Cookbook by James Beard

If it’s a special occasion or you’re in the mood for something outside of the norm, the library has a wide variety of ethnic and specialty cookbooks to choose from.

• The French Chef Cookbook by Julia Child
• German Cooking; Savoury German Dishes Prepared in the Traditional Way by Arne Krüger 
• The Complete Greek Cookbook; the Best from Three Thousand Years of Greek Cooking by Theresa Karas Yianilos
• The Italian Country Table: Home Cooking from Italy’s Farmhouse Kitchens by Lynne Rossetto Kasper
• ¡Delicioso!  Regional Cooking of Spain by Penelope Casas
• The Art of Mexican Cooking: Traditional Mexican Cooking for Aficionados by Diana Kennedy
• The Best of Russian Cooking by Alexandra Kropotkin
• Carribean and African Cooking by Rosamund Grant
• Sushi Made Easy by Nobuko Tsuda
• The Breath of a Wok: Unlocking the Spirit of Chinese Wok Cooking Through Recipes and Lore by Grace Young and Alan Richardson
• Great British Cooking: a Well-Kept Secret by Jane Garmey
• Patout’s Cajun Home Cooking by Alex Patout
• The Glory of Southern Cooking: Recipes for the Best Beer-Battered Fried Chicken, Cracklin’ Biscuits, Carolina Pulled Pork, Fried Okra, Kentucky Cheese Pudding, Hummingbird Cake, and 375 Other Delectable Dishes by James Villas

If you can’t find something that sounds good in our collection, log on to one of our computers and take a look at a cooking website or blog.  Here are some of my favorites:

• The Pioneer Woman Cooks – Step-by-step (with pictures!) recipes of some of the most beautiful, full-fat, high-calorie dishes I’ve ever seen.  (Not all the recipes are unhealthy, but using skim milk and margarine takes the fun out of it.)  My all-time favorite food website.
• The Way the Cookie Crumbles – These chefs test recipes from a variety of sources, such as Gourmet, Cooks Illustrated, and other food bloggers.
• Sugar and Spice – Mostly baking, but includes savory items like bagels and pizza dough.
• Hungry Girl – Healthy (or at least, healthier) alternatives to decadent foods we all love.
• Smitten Kitchen – Everything from wedding cake to fresh ricotta with red onion pizza.
• Cooking Blog Directory – Your guide to hundreds of blogs about food and cooking, rated by the website’s editors
• Yahoo! Food – A searchable index of a variety of recipe resources.  Very useful when you’re looking for different versions of the same dish.
• Cooks.com – A search tool for thousands of user-submitted recipes.

Happy cooking!

 

** Britta **