Allotments 4 All

I have a large collection of cook books and love them all and yesterday my husband bought me a surprise - the new Anjum book 'New India' (she has a show on BBC2 right now) - if you are reading this Tim you'd really like the book I think

But my two favourite books are Cyrus Todiwala's 'Cafe Spice' and Jocelyn Dimbleby's 'Almost Vegetarian'

What is your favourite and why  :)

I often use the free book that came with my gas cooker, many, many years ago.  Find the ingredients easy to find, food quite simple, not too rich and we look the old fashioned cooking.  Apart from that loads and loads of cookery books from charity shop which I glance through but mainly type out recipes that were successful and use those and of course use recipes 4 all on this site.

It has to be my first ever cookbook and it's in front of me now...a paperback and every page is sellotaped in and most have food marks from whichever recipe I was using...it's called The Art of Parisian Cooking and when I bought it in the early 60s when I was in France I didn't know how to cook, so my first ever dish was Homard Thermidor.....first, catch your lobster ;D..but I cheated and we went v. early one morning to the fish market nearby and bought 2 live ones and kept them in the bath until the evening ::) I still use the book a lot.

My second book I still have and still refer to:Marguerite Patten's Everyday Cook Book, bought about 1970. That's when I learned to make English gravy 8)

Third is a set of 3 regional Italian cookbooks and they get used quite a bit too.

All other books I've had have been given away but I wouldn't part with these three (or 5.)

The Internet is such a great source of info and recipes these days that it's been a quite painless procedure to downshift.

Elizabeth David's "French Provincial Cooking" - the book that taught me to love cooking. And not so much for the actual recipes, but for the whole approach to food, ie that you take good ingredients, treat them with care, but keep things simple. Too much professional food seems over-fussed these days.

Yes Trevor I'd go with anything by Elizabeth David too. ..and like you it's her approach that appeals, and I still use her recipes.

I have no perticular fav, but I too have a large collection of books, I try and cook from a variety of them, as I like to experiment at the mo its momo(morocan) and moro(spanish/moorish)with a little dash of Marco Pierre white lastest, at Christmas time Raymond Blancs Blanc Christmas always get well used  :) :)

I'm embarassed to admit it, as it's so uncool, but it's Delia Smith's Complete Cookery Course. I have a lot of cookery books, but this is the one I'm most likely to turn to if I want to know how to make dumplings, or how long to cook a given weight of meat, or what to do with pheasant/lamb shoulder/chicken livers - or other basic stuff like that. I have to adapt it to gluten-free flour but nevertheless, she seems to have most of the vital info that you need for most forms of cooking.
My very favourite Gluten-Free cookery book is 'Best Ever Wheat and Gluten Free Baking' by M Wenniger. The title is no lie - it's the best one I've seen, by miles. It doesn't waste half the book giving you recipes for soups and salads that you could find in any non-GF cookbook. It takes a bit of translating from the American, in places, and we don't have some of the products she refers to in the recipes; but I have a really fabulous chickpea yeast bread recipe from that book, which is now my basic bread, and is good enough to eat un-toasted, which is really something for gluten-free.

Helen, don't be embarrassed, Delia is the best!  I have other books but my old set of hers is still the most used.  Her recipes were always well tried and tested before she published them and she always added so much information.  I am just using her Christmas recipe book at the moment too, and have found her vegetarian one useful for my daughter although some of the recipes are duplicates.

I also love my old Be-Ro recipe book and my children do lots of baking from there - can you still get Be-RO flour?

I have a lovely new book called Apples for Jam which has some wonderful home cooking type recipes in which we all love.  Strangely the recipes are grouped in colours which I find a bit difficult but it is worth it for the delicious recipes.

T.

You are going to think I'm a sandal cheesecloth wearing hippie (I'N NOT!) but The Bean Book by Rose Elliot is the best for me!

Almost budgie bells on my plimsoles  ;D

Good Housekeeping - Cooking for Today 1973
Readers Digest - The Cookery Year 1976 (Wedding pressy 1977)
Good French Cooking - Mapie (Comtesse Guy de Toulouse-Loutrec) 1978
Kenneth Lo - Cooking with a Salton Electric Wok 1985
Nigel Slater - Real Cooking 1997

Just couldn't choose the favourite, they all are!

Ninnyscrops

Ooh yes, Nigel Slater recipes are good.

Hyacinth, there was one exception to Delia's thorough checking... I saved a recipe for risotto from the Radio Times once and gave it a try. It was probably the fault of the RT - but the liquid was omitted! I did wonder how a few tomatoes and a spoonful of this or that was going to hydrate all that rice. Sure enough, it came out like gravel. Oops.

Mary Berry's Ultimate Cake Book.  To me, Mary Berry is the doyenne of cookery.  I have learnt so much from her books - different types of pastry and why something goes wrong (and how to fix it).

I had a count up of how many cook books I had a little while ago and was shocked that I have about 70 (20 of which I use on a regular basis).  Do I have a cook book habit?

how could I have forgotten Nigel Slater  :o his 'Appetite' book is one of my 'messiest' cook books which is an indication of its regular use  ;D

not  forgetting Nigel slaters Kitchen diaries, a delight  for frugal or feast

For this time of year,Delia Smith's Christmas.

You can't beat Delia. :)

She did lose brownie points with me though, for making silly declarations about free-range chicken being elitist. And her recent progs, where (allegedly - I didn't see them) she was using packet mixes and pre-cooked ingredients. Swimming against the tide rather, when people are wanting to cook proper food from fresh ingredients these days; we don't need Delia's help to shove an M&S ready meal in the microwave! :D

I think she was trying to show how some ready made ingredients can be useful.More to incorporate into your cooking than the whole meal.First time I have heard that she said free range are elitist. :o

Her books are great,she beats all the TV cooks of today hands down. :)

i wouldn't be without my copy of Larousse Gastronomique to me its like the holy bible of cook books, rick steins seafood is another book that gets a lot of use. Being a chef i have a vast collection of cook books from a copy of mrs beetons everyday cook book from 1929 to le repertoire de la cuisine another book in find invaluable is Leiths Cookery Bible.

I found a couple of quite funny (if harsh) articles about her new 'How to Cheat' book:

http://saveyourfork.wordpress.com/2008/03/19/ill-see-your-organic-free-range-chicken-and-raise-you-a-tin-of-lamb-mince/

http://caughtinthemiddleman.wordpress.com/2008/03/11/cooking-up-a-storm/

but couldn't find an actual quote of what she said about battery chicken. She's reported as having said, as a reposte to the Jamie Oliver/ Hugh FW campaign, that battery chickens were necessary so that poor people could feed their families properly.

Personally, I'd rather eat chicken once a week or even fortnight, and pay a decent price for it, than expect to eat it near-daily - it's not bread, it's meat, you don't *need* to eat it all the time. Free-range isn't even that pricey any more - you can get a whole chicken for as little as £4 in Tesco.

For the carnivores in my family, I like the 'Meat' book by Hugh F W , which concentrates on a huge range of meat recipes using all sort of cuts of meat, including offal.... :-\

Otherwise I like a very simple book called 'Potatoes'.....loads of recipes both veggy and meat including breads and desserts using spuds. Their fish pie recipe is fab. ;D

I also use Jocasta Innes 'The Paupers Cookbook' which I have recommended before to someone wanting a good cookbook for students, or for the now 'credit crunched'. It has a load of really good recipes for left overs, and simple but nutritious meals on a limited budget.