Quote:
Originally Posted by FatDog
...I did some research and purchased "How to Cook Everything - The Basics". This is a great book for beginners. But there was a 2 page spread with 4 color photographs on how to boil water. (I am not kidding). I have heard Mark Bittman's other book "How to cook everything" starts with basic techniques, then re-uses them over and over again in later recipes...
...Below is my notes from searching for "Best cookbooks" with "*" characters if multiple sites recommend the same book. Do any of you have experience with these or can recommend others?...
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I have had a search to see what we have among the books you listed. The only one is the Mark Bittman one which, as you say, is very introductory in a detailed way as to method, but the recipes are fine. If you are interested in international foods (you mention ethnic) then we have Bittman's
The Best Recipes in the World; there are 1,000 recipes in it and by and large do not have ingredients that one has to hunt out or are expensive, or which are wasteful in that there will be specialty leftovers unlikely to be frequently used and which will not keep (e.g. many specialty spices and herbs). It may be worth looking at before buying.
Regarding Alton Brown and the book you list, I like his approach (many seem not to) probably because while at university one of our chemistry prof's ran a non-credit series of lectures for general interest on the chemistry of cooking. That changed my understanding of and approach to cooking dramatically. We do not have any of his books though, likely because there are hundreds of his recipes downloadable from
www.foodnetwork.com : one can find him under the "Chefs" tab and we have a goodly lot of those with non ostentatious ingredients.
If you want something more adventurous you might like to look at Mary Berry's books, especially her general ones, and Paul Hollywood's baking ones. These are full of interesting and repeatable solid recipes, and although both are English cooks the ingredients are generally common ones (both these authors provide their recipes with both metric and imperial measurements): I am not British by the way so am not suggesting these from any sort of national pride :-).
A problem I find is that cook books are expensive and so well worth a browse in a book shop with a big selection before buying, if that is possible (even if intending to buy the electronic version).