bbb.co.uk/food has great recipes as well!

I mentioned this in another thread, but I'll do it here, too. This is by far my favorite cookbook: Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/...500_AA240_.jpg

Blurb:

Ratios are the simple proportions of one ingredient to another. Biscuit dough is 3 : 1 : 2 -- or 3 parts flour, 1 part fat, and 2 parts liquid. This ratio is the beginning of many variations, and because the biscuit takes sweet and savory flavors with equal grace, you can top it with whipped cream and strawberries or sausage gravy. Vinaigrette is 3 : 1, or 3 parts oil to 1 part vinegar, and is one of the most useful sauces imaginable, giving everything from grilled meats and fish to steamed vegetables or lettuces intense flavor.

Cooking with ratios will unchain you from recipes and set you free. With thirty-three ratios and suggestions for enticing variations, Ratio is the truth of cooking: basic preparations that teach us how the fundamental ingredients of the kitchen -- water, flour, butter and oils, milk and cream, and eggs -- work. Change the ratio and bread dough becomes pasta dough, cakes become muffins become popovers become crepes.

My discovery in this book last night was that pound cake and sponge cake are the same thing ingredient-wise. It's just that you cream the butter and sugar in pound cake, while you whip the eggs and sugar in sponge cake. The categories in the book are:

• Doughs (Breads, Pasta, Pie, Biscuit, Cookie, Pâte à Choux)
• Batters (Pound/Spong Cake, Angel Food Cake, Quick Cakes, crepes)
• Stocks (Stocks, Clear Soups/Consummé, Roux, Beurre Manié)
• Farçir (Farçir, Sausage, Mousseline, Brine)
• Fat-Based Sauces (Mayonnaise, Vinaigrette, Hollandaise)
• Custard (Custard, Crème Anglaise, Chocolate and Caramel Sauces)

Awesome book!

Me too. It's my guilty pleasure. I have had to hide some of my stash, and I've started letting go of some of them, reluctantly. That said, I'll recommend Marcella Hazen for Italian cooking. She's my Bible, and I grew up in an Italian household.

The problem is that some people have very different ideas of what is a good recipe. I've found some real clunkers with the poor, delusional woman's name attached.

My favorite might be the Fig Newtons that are sliced and rolled in confectioner's sugar. My wife and I still laugh about that one, from a church cookbook.

Ok, I'm going to go ahead and spam for my friend, LeAnn's blog, because she is an awesome cook:

shecooks.org

And, MC, she's doing a Tenore CD giveaway today!

The only thing I like about the BH&G cookbook was the table of measurements and list of substitutions in the very back. I was making a stew out of it early in my marriage and called her to ask what bay leaf was. "Bay leaf? Where did you get that from?" she said. When I told her, she sniffed, "That's a Yankee cookbook! Only put part of that bay leaf in, and take it out before you eat! Better yet, don't use it at all!"

But mostly I found Betty Crocker much easier to a follow, with more detailed explanations of mysterious methods. I still occasionally refer back to Betty!

Southern Living, Cooking Light and several other publications share a recipe site, www.myrecipes.com. I love reading the comments on recipes on the Web sites. Especially when people complain that they don't like it, and then list all the things they substituted!

Another good site I found was Christy Jordan's www.southernplate.com, which started as a blog. She has just published a cookbook and has been featured in several magazines. Southern favorites, good explanations, even videos of how to prepare dishes. She also offers links to a number of other good food blogs. Christy is not gourmet, but you can feed your family well and pretty cheaply, too.

[QUOTE=MysticCat;2011697My favorite might be the Fig Newtons that are sliced and rolled in confectioner's sugar. My wife and I still laugh about that one, from a church cookbook.[/QUOTE]
Don't knock it 'til you try it, my friend!:D

You're supposed to take it out before you eat - the cookbook says that (at least every stew recipe I've tried from the BH&G cookbooks say that).

I'm confused.

I'm confused as well...who has a problem with bay leaves? I love the flavor they add. I use 2 or 3 when I make a stew.

Right. Bay leaves add great flavor, but they're not pleasant when you actually bite them.

And I've known plenty of Southern recipes that use them.

I always use a few bayleaves in a stew (one per person) in you tie them together, it's easy to take them out after!

Bay leaves are a choking hazard.

I had never heard of nor tasted bay leaf. I had crumbled the leaf into the stew...which made it really hard to take out. I don't remember the cookbook (probably the 1968 edition) saying anything about taking out the leaf. Or maybe I didn't read that far before throwing it in!

I don't care for the flavor of bay leaf. Guess I got too much in there...or bit on a piece...who knows? :confused: I don't remember.

I use a bay leaf in my marinara sauce.. my Italian grandmother's recipe (which has no measurements, much like others have noted, other than measuring with your palm). And yes, you have to remove it.

My guess is that this:

Quote:

Originally Posted by AnchorAlumna (Post 2011739) I had crumbled the leaf into the stew...

led to this:

Quote:

I don't care for the flavor of bay leaf.