Happy October.
Today, in honor of the late Marcella Hazan, I want to talk about books.
A few years ago at a wedding, I met up with my friend, Andrew. We had known each other in college, but I hadn’t seen him since then. I had just started my first book; he had spent the last several years working in the kitchen at Zuni Cafe in San Francisco. We sat on the patio outside the party for hours, talking about food and writing and why we had both landed in the kitchen. At one point, he took me over to the gift table, and he showed me the unwrapped book he had slipped into the pile amidst the appliances and serving platters.
“Have you read this?”
I had not. I had never even heard of it.
“Find it as soon as you get home. Read it. It will change the way you think about all of this. I promise.”
I did exactly as Andrew demanded. And from the first pages of Honey From A Weed, Patience Gray had me.
Good cooking is the result of a balance struck between frugality and liberality… It is born out in communities where the supply of food is conditioned by the seasons.
Once we lose touch with the spendthrift aspect of nature’s provisions epitomized in the raising of a crop, we are in danger of losing touch with life itself. When Providence supplies the means, the preparation and sharing of food takes on a sacred aspect. The fact that every crop is of short duration promotes a spirit of making the best of it while it lasts and conserving part of it for future use.
There have been other moments in the last decade, few enough that I can count them on my hands, but numerous enough to kick off my culinary education. My friend, Meg, bringing me Nigel Slater’s Appetite for my twenty fifth birthday. (“You said you wanted to learn how to cook, right? Here you go.”) Janet, pulling Laurie Colwin off the low bookshelf in her dining room. (“Everything changes, now. There is life before Laurie Colwin, and life after”) Ron, who introduces me to Patricia Wells and Marcella Hazan. Alice Waters and Deborah Madison, who, each in their own time, holler to me from bookstore shelves. And then of course there is Mollie Katzen, who has been teaching me how to fry onions and garlic in butter all along.
Those of us who love cookbooks love them all different ways. For me, I’ll happily hold on to a book if it has a few recipes I return to. Some books keep me inspired even if I never exactly follow the recipes, and others are sturdy pillars of reliability. But those books, those ones that change everything? I think most home cooks have a few of these books, handed to them by friends or parents, or found in the bookstore or library just in that moment they were most needed. These few volumes do more than share recipes. They create and shape us, and they teach us how to cook and eat.
I was hoping that for today’s first of the month, we could put books in each other’s hands. Which books have shaped you as a cook and an eater? How did you find them, or who shared them with you?
Occasionally I teach workshops, and I have one coming up this fall. Join me and stellar novelist 
Tartine Bread. My husband’s uncle gave this book as an out-of-the-blue present when I was a novice breadmaker. I read it straight through and then had to let it sink in for awhile before I could get up the guts to follow Chad Robertson’s method for starting a starter. But somehow I knew I would, even though it scared me. A month later I took the plunge and my starter developed on schedule. Then I took a whole weekend to make bread from Chad’s recipe and enjoyed every step of the way, even when I wasn’t sure if it would turn out. It did (mostly) and each loaf since has given me some more knowledge and confidence. It’s a beautiful book, beautiful bread, a beautiful experience.
Kara, I’ve been working on sourdough all this year, and somehow I’ve been saving Tartine Bread–maybe I knew I’d come to it when I was ready? Your comment (and the others here, too) pushed me over the edge, and I just ordered it from the library.
The best book I know about working with a starter and making sourdough.
“The Art of Simple Food” (Waters) is the book that reminded me I didn’t have to cook progressively more ‘advanced’ dishes the more comfortable I got in the kitchen. I used to think that as I gained skill I should also start making more complicated things. Simple, seasonal food is so satisfying.
Marcella Hazan’s “Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking” is another. I love Julia Child’s book, but Marcella Hazan gives us so much flavor with less in the way of procedure.
I first saw Hazan’s book on my aunt’s shelf along with The Art of Simple Food. Those were the only two books there, so I figured they must be good. (They were. Are, I should say.)
While deciding which book to share, I will be checking back here again and again for new-to-me books. Wonderful topic, thank you thank you!
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. Kingsolver and her family moved from arid Arizona to rural Virginia and vowed to only eat food that they produced or is produced in their own county by farmers they know. It was the first book that planted the idea in my mind that I could control every part of what I ate, from the gardening to storing and cooking. Besides the big ideas it is an absolute pleasure to read and there are recipes with every chapter.
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver also had a big impact on me. My mother-in-law gave it to me years ago. At that time, my husband and I were already interested in healthy eating ( like don’t eat foods with high fructose corn syrup, and buy organic foods as much as possible, etc.) But this book made me realize the importance of knowing where our food comes from, and growing your own food and how it should be grown, eating seasonally, and how food is so entwined with our lives.
Yes, me too!
AVM was huge for me too. I read it the summer after I graduated from college while on vacation in CO. It lead me to the slow food movement and a commitment to healthy, quality food.
“Plenty” by Yotam Ottolenghi was a game changer, as was “Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone” by Deborah Madison. If I had to choose what to bring on a dessert island, these would be among my sacred stash. I collect cookbooks so there are so many that I love for different reasons, much like you mentioned. Some transport me to another world, some always make me leap from my chair (even when I’m in need of comforting and feeling in a food rut) because they are so flexible and accessible, others inspire because of their interesting juxtaposition of flavors and textures or succulent photography. Each one is a friend and companion that surround myself with and I return to again and again.
When I was in high school I read Frances Moore Lappe’s Diet for a Small Planet” and it made me realize that our food choices might affect more than our own dinner table. armed with thatbig picture, it was then “The Vegetarian Epicure” (Anna Thomas) and “the Moosewood Cookbook” (Mollie Katzen) that really launched me into becoming a cook in my own right. Both Moosewood and the Epicure are still on my shelf – and Frances Moore Lappe is speaking this evening in Waterville (Maine) and I do SO wish I could go!
After posting this, I was thinking about the fact that all those books, even though they fromed a foundation of howmI approach food end I still have and sometimes use them, are from my life a few decades ago. Which ones have changed me (again) more recently? I had a really fun experience reading Alana’s “Homemade Pantry” with the online book club and it really got me thinking about my kitchen as a hub for what we eat, not just a place to make things sometimes.
Oh dear. I flubbed the HTML tags. That should have said the From Scratch Club online book club, and I was trying to make it link. Guess I don’t know how to do that because it dropped words and bolded things instead. But you can find it on Google if you are interested.
Oops. Apologies for the typos. I’m on an iPad and I miss them sometimes!
Mine have been mentioned here already: Alice Waters, Marcella Hazan, Mollie Katzen. I finally got a copy of your book from the library and I haven’t put it down. We’ve made the mac & cheese for before my labor began, and the granola for after. Tonight we’ll try the fig newtons. I really, really love it and am trying to convince my husband that I need my own copy. Thanks for sharing!
Oh, thank you Pamela. And my mac and cheese for labor! That feels like such an honor. 🙂
I bought Tamar Adler’s book An Everlasting Meal at a used bookstore about a year ago, and it helped me cook in a way that I think has made me happier, since. Perhaps that’s a strange way to put it, but that’s what it feels like.
Hannah,
I agree with you completely; several books mentioned here bolstered my cooking skills and increased my repertoire but An Everlasting Meal helped me be comfortable with my approach to cooking.
I love this one, too. I feel like Tamar Adler did that rare thing where she helped us all to expand the way we cook, without limiting herself to recipes. It’s such a beautiful book.
I love Earth to Table by Jeff Crump. It’s subtitled Seasonal Recipes from an Organic Farm, and with exception of one bread recipe, everything has been perfectly delicious.
A dear friend gave me Laurie Colwin’s books years ago. I loved her approach to food – she’s a good novelist, too!
I grew up with Mennonite cookbooks from my mother and grandmothers. I have More with Less, Mennonite Community, and Mennonite Country-Style. They all taught me how to cook the basics, be hospitable, and handle the leftovers. They are my most-used cookbooks, even though I’ve got Alice Waters, Mollie Katzen, Martha Stewart, etc., on the shelf as well.
Alana I love this post – so many of my favorites are already on this list (Waters, Madison, Katzen, etc) — I would add The Breakfast Book — but wanted to jump in right here to say, we too have a few Mennonite cookbooks handed down from my husband’s side of the family, and I love them – without ever talking about being ‘seasonal’ or ‘thrifty’ or anything, they are precisely that, and a good reminder that not so long ago, there weren’t really names for those things because they were just the things people did.
I’ll keep checking back to see the book list grow. Love it.
The Homemade Pantry! I picked it up at the library. It introduced me to the world of food bloggers, got me back into the kitchen making granola, yogourt, and ricotta cheese, and it inspired me to take my cooking/food preparation to the next step. My sister introduced me to Molly Katzen when we were in our early 20’s (that was 20 years ago!) and I have just discovered Deborah Madison’s Vegetable Literacy.
I really enjoyed the article on Marcella Hazan and the quote from Patience Gray. Thank you for introducing them to me.
Aw, thank you, Cat. Very humbled to be in such ranks as those in your list.
Well, mine isn’t officially a book but it has shaped the way I bake. Several years ago, my grandmother gave me her collection of baking recipes. It’s her culinary history; traditional Ukrainian recipes she learned in her youth, recipes learned during her years in France (including WWII) and recipes from her final home in Canada. She embraced all of these cultures and combined them into a culinary style all her own. Baking with her over the years showed me the broad spectrum of what food means to us. She passed away just over a year ago and I will continue to build on the foundation she gave me to nourish my family and friends. Now, that’s my kind of inheritance.
Lucky, lucky you! What a gift that you could learn all this from her, and also, I’d imagine, such a gift to her to know that all her amazing knowledge would live through you.
Honestly, my vintage Betty Crocker cookbook from the late 50’s. Not only because the recipes are tasty, the artwork is adorably kitschy, and at one point it suggests I lay down on the kitchen floor when feeling like I need a brief rest, but because it’s simple. When I first started learning to cook (a short 3 years ago), I could easily follow the directions and have the result be completely edible food. From there I got daring and started combing the interwebs for anything that struck me as interesting. Now, I’ve gotten myself a reputation as a great cook – all thanks to Betty teaching me the basics. And, yes, I do occasionally take a little rest on the kitchen floor. 🙂
I love my mom’s old Better Homes & Gardens binder for the same reason. The fifties fashions and fabulous place settings, plus the advice slay me. But it also has recipes that my mom made throughout my childhood, and it’s one of the books I used when I was learning to cook. I found my own copy of the same edition in a second hand store and was thrilled!
Most of these books are classics because they’re good, right? Fanny Farmer is like that to- just simple and perfect.
Rao’s Cookbook. My mother-in-law is the best cook, and her mother was apparently even better. We have grandma Rosie’s cookbook but it’s in broken Italian/English (“cook until done”- sweet, thanks), and many of those recipes are in Rao’s or an older, and I believe out of print, Dom DeLuise cookbook. I know Italian-American food isn’t the most glamorous but it’s the food I grew up with and what I turn to when I want something that will satisfy my soul.
In terms of actual cookbooks, I’d have to say Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s “The River Cottage Cookbook” for its focus on simple, seasonal food and the fact that it contains a good deal of information on actually producing your own food. Admittedly, I love all his books, though. I also adore Darina Allen’s “Forgotten Skills of Cooking” for its truly varied range of traditional skills, ingredients, and recipes. Plus, both are gorgeous.
In terms of books that are more generally focused on food, I’m a huge fan of MFK Fisher’s “How to Cook a Wolf”. With all the current economic issues and austerity measures, it’s a lovely reminder to experiment, be flexible, and think for ourselves when it comes to cooking, especially in the face of limiting factors. I also loved Sandor Katz’s “The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved” as a solid reminder about the politics of food and alternative approaches to how we eat.
Totally agree on the River Cottage Books, and on his take on things in general. I really love his Family cookbook, too.
When I was in graduate school in the late 80’s, I lived in a large farmhouse with many other students. A friend and I would read The Enchanted Broccoli Forest and Moosewood Cookbook over coffee or tea and plan what we’d cook. Although I rarely use those books anymore, they were the first books that taught me to cook on my own and I still love them.
Well, definitely Tartine Bread which pushed me from the theoretical into the practical. My mom’s beat up More-with-Less (and her recipe box) from which I learned to cook. And Laurel’s Kitchen, both editions, which explained to me why I do what I do. I read Laurel over and over again for the inspiration ,though austere 80s vegetarianism is no longer my thing.
Oh I love this discussion.
When I first started trying to bake my own bread I had disaster upon disaster until my husband bought me Peter Reinhart’s “Whole Grain Breads” at which point I consistently started turning out some fantastic breads. After that I became interested in making my own true sourdough breads and found this little spiral bound book (that I can’t find) that was an amazing resource. I even used it to transfer a number of the peter Reinhart recipes to fully fermented versions. I was diagnosed with Celiac Disease 9mos ago and have not been able to bake bread since then so while I can’t bear to get rid of these books yet, I also can’t use them.
When I first left home at 18 my mom gave me “Recipes from the Night Kitchen: A Practical Guide to Spectacular Soups, Stews, and Chilies” by Sally Nirenberg and “Chilies to Chutneys” by Neelam Batra. I had been cooking off an on for years growing up but mostly the same few things and those book completely transformed how I looked at cooking creatively. I still have them and while I rarely use the recipes as written, I still turn to them for inspiration.
Deborah Madison’s “Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone” is what I turn to time and time again for inspiration when I want simple but flavorful ways of preparing a wide variety of vegetables.
It all started with “Mastering the Art of French Cooking”–on my mother’s bookshelf. As a teenager, no birthday was complete without the meringue and butter cream extravaganza Julia herself chose as her birthday cake (“The Los Gatos Gateau Cake”). As an adult, “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” made me shop and cook in an entirely different way. And for sheer entertainment value, along with so many delicious answers to the question “What’s for dinner?” you can’t beat Amanda Hesser’s NYT cookbook.
Read The Homemade Pantry, it will change your life!!! Seriously, it really changed my way of thinking in the kitchen, showed me that I can do things “from scratch”. Thanks Alana!!!
Yes, me too (again)!
(blushing)
Wild Fermentation by Sandor Katz got me super fired up to preserve foods through fermenting 4 years ago and still does.
Hi Rachel! You and your fermenting ways are what convinced me to try it for myself. The first thing I ever made was the fermented carrots you posted on your blog. We ate them all in one sitting.
🙂
The Supper of the Lamb: A Culinary Reflection by Robert Farrar Capon and An Everlasting Meal by Tamar Adler.
Life changing books for me were Animal Vegetable Mircle and Omnivores Dilemma. Those are what led me to all this cooking, fermenting, homesteading, slow-life-living nonsense in the first place.
I recently just commented about this on Alana`s previous post, but Art of Simple Food and Homemade Pantry are the two books with the most wear in their spines on my shelves. Art Of Simple Food really makes it happen for me- it’s my cook something NOW book. Homemade Pantry is the book I turn to for inspiration- it has a very random mix of things, it’s fun to read. I think both books make it incredibly easy to make adaptations to the recipes and that makes me feel like I know what I’m doing. Which in my opinion is what 90% of cookbooks/foodbooks lack.
I’ve read or own the majority listed here and agree Tamar Adlers Everlasting Meal and Nourishing Traditions are also very very good.
I got my first cookbook for my 11th birthday, and I still have it and use it. It’s the Anne of Green Gables cookbook, with recipes for the food Anne makes throughout the stories. I’ve made the scones so often, there’s flour stuck to the page from 2 decades ago, and I almost don’t need to know that it’s on p.22 because I’ve more or less memorized it. The caramel pudding from scratch is close second in terms of favourites. This book changed everything for me because it was the start of being completely independent in the kitchen. Years later it’s the ultimate in comfort food to make something I’ve been enjoying since I was 11.
Your book. It’s leading the way…….
Haven’t been able to get your book yet, but will do so as soon as possible. Of the books I’ve read in the past couple of years, I’d have to pick Tamara Adler’s ‘Everlasting Meal’ as the most inspirational, and the one that informs me daily in what I cook and how I cook it. To go way back, I too, learned how to cook from two very different books: ‘Betty Crocker’ and Julia Child’s ‘Mastering—‘. Also found James Beard’s books very helpful–everything I made from his books turned out well. I love baking, so Rose Levy Beranbaum’s books are well-used. There’s so many others I love: Laurie Colwin, Nigel Slater, Alice Waters, David Lebovitz, Claudia Rodin, Carol Field , Marcella Hazan, Dorie Greenspan, Sally Schneider, Jacques Pepin, Patricia Wells,James Peterson, Mark Bittman, Deborah Madison, Bernard Clayton, John Thorne, Martha Rose Shulman, King Arthur Flour books, and I could go on and list many others, including Ottolenghi’s works. Each of these has transformed my cooking/baking by inspiring, teaching, allowing me to explore new tastes and new worlds. I would recommend that a beginner cook go to a used book store and see what’s available. For me, cooking is a life-long adventure and reading cookbooks is my favorite bed-time reading. How can you not have happy dreams if you fall asleep after reading a wonderful recipe with interesting back-story? And, I love to keep learning–food is an enthralling subject!
Bittman’s How to Cook Everything, a wedding gift 13 years ago, which later led me to Food Matters and The Food Matters Cookbook. The last two changed the way I look at food and how I cook.
The Homemade Pantry has been like a gateway drug for me. I’ve started making things from scratch just because I can. I may not always use the specific recipe, but it has definitely inspired me to invest in mason jars, buy from the bulk bins, and experiment. I now make biscuits and nut milk (not in the book) from scratch, as well as instant oatmeal and ice cream. I love it when people ask me why on earth I’d make marshmallows… 1) because I can and 2) seriously, have you ever had a homemade marshmallow? They’re amazing!
That’s a great way to describe it- a gateway drug. So true.
Can’t wait for Alana`s new book!!
After ‘Animal Vegetable Miracle’ and ‘The Homemade Pantry’ my two go-to cookbooks are ‘The Clueless Vegetarian’ and Jenny Rosenstrach’s ‘Dinner: A Love Story’. I love the you-can-do-it-ness of both (all!) these books.
And the tomato soup recipe from Patrick Taylor’s ‘An Irish Country Doctor’ made me realize I never have to buy canned soup ever, ever again.
It’s so hard to choose, but I’m going with “How to Cook Everything” by Mark Bittman. For so many years I’d heard people go on and on about The Joy of Cooking, and how if they wanted to make something they’d never done before all they would have to do is follow Joy of Cooking and it would be perfect. But the book never worked for me and I so much wanted a resource as perfect as it had always been described. How to Cook Everything is that book for me. All the classics, simply explained, without a zillion confusing steps. Plus, I learned to trust myself more and start branching out with his alternate suggestions (which seemed a little overwhelming at first). It was the first book that made me feel like I had the basics covered, and that I always had a book to turn to when wanting to try something new.
Cook’s Illustrated Cookbook was huge at helping me gain confidence in the kitchen. Before this book I would try any old recipe from the internet. If it didn’t work I would never know if it was my failure or the recipes. Being a scientist I am hugely appreciative of their approach to recipe development. And their explanations for why they use a certain technique allows me to carry those lessons over into my own recipes.
From Julia Child’s Kitchen is another big book in my house. It contains two recipes that are very important to my husband. The pan-fried burgers with dijon sauce and caesar salad is his absolute most favorite meal. It’s the first meal I ate at his parents home, and it is the one meal he requests every time he goes home. His mom wrote the recipes down for me on nice card stock and I also bought a copy of the book to tuck them into for safe keeping.
One more! Jaden Hair’s Steamy Kitchen Cookbook brought my favorite asian-fusion foods into my home in a fun and easy way. http://www.amazon.com/Steamy-Kitchen-Cookbook-Recipes-Tonights/dp/0804840288/ref=la_B0028ONKK8_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1380925769&sr=1-1
I would be lost without Fanny Farmer! She’s my go-to reference for just about everything in the kitchen, and the index in her cookbook may be the best and most complete index ever. My mass market paperback copy is in several pieces–the spine broke at the piecrust recipe and the biscuit recipe.
The cookbook that has most affected the way I cook is The Cheeseboard Collective Works. A dear friend gave it to me years ago, annotated with her own notes on all the recipes she’d tried, which makes it a treasured keepsake as well as a cooking game-changer. I’d tried making bread many times, but could never manage to produce beautiful loaves like my mother’s, until I read the detailed descriptions in this cookbook. Suddenly it all clicked for me and I was a bread baker! Now I make their Plain and Simple Bread twice a week, and several other recipes on a regular basis as well.
The book “Real Food”, by Nina Planck, didn’t exactly change the way I think about food–rather, it reinforced everything I’d vaguely felt to be true. She makes a great case for moderation in all things, and the enjoyment of food and life.
And I am currently obsessed with the Smitten Kitchen cookbook in a way that I’ve never experienced before with a cookbook–I want to cook from it every day. I’ve loved every recipe that I’ve tried so far, and the flat roasted chicken, broccoli salad, and huevos rancheros have become part of my regular repertoire.
I love to see all my favorites listed. A new favorite is Gwyneth Paltrow’s It’s all Good. Like her or not, the girl has good taste in food! The recipes are real food that families eat and yet have the unique combination of being different, but still using ingredients I (mostly)have at home. She also introduced me to smoked paprika. Yum! Clean by Alejandro Junger was an eye opener too, much like Omnivore’s Dilemma and AVM.
“The Kitchen Counter Cooking School” by Kathleen Flinn. When I was still terrified of the kitchen she showed that cooking can be easy and fun. She also shows the effort is worth it by comparing the simple recipes to “the boxed kind,” (shudder).
I’ve been cooking and canning for 40+ years so life changing cookbooks have come along regularly. First, it was Julia Child. Next the Tassahara Bread Book and The Complete Book of Breads (Claytor) that got me into baking and Good to the Grain (Boyce) more recently that changed the way I think about flour. Well Preserved (Bone), Canning for a New Generation (Krisshoff) and Preservation Kitchen (Virant) have all giving new direction to my canning and preserving. When I first became a gardner The Victory Garden Cookbook (Morash) was my go-to Bible. More recently have relied on The New Southern Garden Cookbook (Castle) and Simply in Season (Lind and Hockman-Wert). Super Natural Every Day (Swanson) and Whole Grains for a New Generation (Krissoff) have helped to shift my interest in grains and beans. Among my ethnic cookbooks the ones that have pulled me farthest into a new cuisine are New Thai Cuisine (Hyam), Easy Chinese Recipes (Yinn Low), and The New Persian Kitchen (Shafia). Looking back I must say that everyone’s life changing cookbook is likely to be the first one that caused the reader to become passionate about cooking.
I love many of the books listed here! I love baking and cooking many kinds of things and have been so inspired by Alice Waters, Mark Bittman, Barbara Kingsolver, and many others. Three weeks ago, though, we found out my 16 month old daughter is allergic to wheat (!) and oats (!) and sensitive to chicken and milk and eggs and just a whole host of things. I’ve stumbled upon “The Healthy Gluten-Free Life” by Tammy Credicott. She has recipes for all the delicious things I love to make from scratch…just using a ton of new ingredients I’ve never heard of. Tomorrow is pancakes using teff and sorghum flour, xantham gum, tapioca starch, and a few other things. We’re expanding our pantry ingredients, and this book has given me hope about my ability to continue to make homemade things to feed my family!
This one isn’t a cookbook but a very important food book for me: Food Rules by Michael Pollan.
It is so simple and straightforward and I often find myself going over the rules in my head as I walk around the periphery of my local supermarket (rule 12) wanting to go up to people and question them about the contents of their trolley.
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle changed the way I thought about food preservation, gardening, and local foods. It’s also inspirational and wickedly funny, as most Barbara Kingsolver books are. It’s definitely at the top of my list.
Jam Today by Tod Davies. This book is written like a story so before you know it you’ve put the book down and you’re digging around in your cabinets and fridge for something yummy to make. This book gave me courage to cook and to relax about the whole thing.
Several of my favorites have been listed but I wanted to include “Homemade with Love” by Jennifer Perillo. The book is beautifully constructed and so informative but one of the most notable features is the stories that are included with each recipe. As I love “The Homemade Pantry” for this similar reason both books I have found, with each recipe, develop a pride in making your own food as well as the motivation to share through food.