Cookbooks with more than the basics

As a "city kid" who lives in the country and has no one local to answer many questions, one of my first resources has always been cookbooks. Almost all my cookbooks have to do with cooking with less: prefab ingredients, number of ingredients, money, or time. I didn't plan it that way, it's how it worked out.

Because of this, I have war time cookbooks, vegetarian, time-saving, scale up/down (quantity), freezer, bulk/commercial kitchen, and other oddities. There are many supposedly comprehensive cookbooks: Joy of Cooking, BHG, Pillsbury Picture Cookbooks, etc. I have those too, but these are the ones I rarely see others mention.

Craft of the Country Cook, Pat Katz, 1988,  ISBN: 0-881-79-015-X.

This is a wonderful book for someone looking for a way to use up apples say because she gives you 8 pages of info. about apples, but in the side bars, she cross-references other recipes with apples.

So there's general info about apples, cold storage, applesauce, apple cider, using peels/cores, 3 pages of recipes, and 25 other recipes in the sidebars (or title/page number).

I found this book at a thrift shop and it's a regular go-to. Most recently, I was looking for a recipe for a cheese spread and found a recipe here I could modify for what I wanted.

It's written like a college textbook, and assumes a similar level of background knowledge (i.e. basic familiarity with high-school-level science), but On Food and Cooking (McGee, 1984) is one of the best cooking-related resources I've found in print format, and I've only read the first few chapters so far.

NH Farm Museum Cookbook – NH Farm Museum, 2013.

This book is divided by seasons, recipes using foods from the appropriate seasons grouped together. Within each season, you’ll find recipes for: morning glories, appetizers, soups, salads, sandwiches, main events, vegetables & sides, go-alongs, and sweet endings. After the seasonal sections, there are 2 others: “Always in Season” and “Preserving the Harvest.”

I have pencil notes on many, many pages, a sure sign that I not only like/use the book, but that I intend to keep doing so. In any season, when I have just too much of X (produce) to use up, this is one of my go-to resources. Because the foods are grouped by seasons (and appropriate for me), it's easy to find a recipe using fennel say that also uses other things I have available.

I opened it at random, to Fall Salads. Recipes for Fennel Slaw (fennel, celery, apple), Veggie Slaw (cabbage, broccoli, cuke. celery, snap peas, green pepper, scallions),Rainbow Salad (beets, red cabbage, green cabbage, pears, parsley or mint), Apple Walnut Salad (romaine, spinach, onion), Carrot & Cashew Salad (jalapeno, cilantro, carrot), Confetti Spaghetti (asst. fresh/froz. veg: tomato, celery, onion, cuke, radish, carrot, gr bean, corn), Kale & Lentil Salad with Apricot Vinaigrette (kale, cabbage), Corny Veggie Salad (broccoli, cauliflower, scallions, corn), Potato & Cauliflower Salad (cauliflower, potato, scallions), and Greek Chicken Salad (tomato, letttuce).

Recommended!

My go to is Joy.

But, I have a love affair with a quirky coffee table cookbook out of the 1950s.  It is the Picture Cook Book published by Time Life.  There are actually 2 cookbooks, but the soft cover one is about impossible to find and repeats the recipes in the hard cover. The hardcover is for display. The soft cover is for the kitchen. The date on mine is 1958.

It features recipes from the top restaurants in the country.  There is a wide range of complexity in the offerings,  for example, the baked beans uses dry beans but he chili uses canned beans.   The Bouillabaisse calls for canned tomatoes…but then uses saffron.   The Borsch, appropriately, has  3 hr simmer time.

Then there is the quirky… fried celery with chicken livers ( in mushrooms and heavy cream), spicy lemon pickle, cucumber and meat slice soup, sautéed tripe, and buckwheat groats with almonds.

Of course, being from the 1950s, the women generally wear long formal odresses, heels, and lots of make up. The men are often in suits and ties and cook incredibly fatty steaks.

There is a nice chapter on herbs and spices as well as a design for a herb garden. There are sections  on cooking with wine, candy, kitchen design, left overs, buying meat,  carving meat.

Of course, there are the endless pictures.

I love cookbooks with methods/science, not specific recipes. I also love "formula recipes" where I use up what I have. A lot of times, I just make my own recipes based on recipes I already know by heart.

The only cookbooks I own right now are Wild Fermentation by Sandor Katz and Everlasting Meal Cookbook by Tamar Adler (all about leftovers and how to use things up!).

There are also 3 or 4 websites I frequent that have to do with cooking foraged foods.