This weekend, a friend said her in-laws have thousands of cookbooks. We happen to know that these two are great cooks, and probably don't cook exclusively from books, but that this massive library is the inspiration for their work.
We were happy to see that the cookbooks won yesterday's survey for where people go for their recipes. We can now, with confidence, open the floodgates of discussion on favorite cookbooks and begin doing weekly cookbook reviews.
Aren't you excited?
batali's Babbo cookbook changed my life.
everytime i bother to actually follow a recipe, i learn a whole new concept to apply to many other things. among the big time concepts... was "saucing" homemade ravioli with just a bit of butter, aromatics, including dried orange peel, and cooking water.
and then... i learned how to make barley with a risotto method, stirring in a magical emulsified green heaven of scallions and olive oil... read and learn new things...... otherwise i don't FOLLOW cookbooks. Deborah Madison had a lot to teach me in terms of flavor combinations. And Tom Colicchio;s Think Like A Chef is a great book for imparting concepts to apply to your own surroundings and markets.
that's my piece!