Favorite Cookbooks

[honeychile]

Originally Posted by MysticCat

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.



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!

When I was in high school, complaining about chemistry, this is the method my mother used to get me interested! I NEED that book!!!

Originally Posted by MysticCat

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.

I think it's funny to see 16 receipts for basically the same thing, such as Coca Cola Cake ala Cora, Coca Cola Cake ala Camille, etc, etc.

My favorite from one of those books was for Honeymoon Salad: lettuce alone!