Kate Hillier

What Cookbooks do you own? How about us all submitting Lists of our various Cookbooks?

  1. Jane Grigson's English Food
  2. Jane Grigson Fruit
  3. Jane Grigson Vegetables
  4. Claudia Roden A book of Middle Eastern Cookery
  5. Classic book of 1000 Indian Recipes 
  6. Classic Book of 1000 Chinese Recipes
  7. Claudia Roden The Food of Italy
  8. Edward de Pomaine Cooking in Ten Minutes
  9. Indian Vegetarian Cookery Jack Santa Maria 
  10. Nigella Lawson How to Eat
  11. The Masterchef Cookbook
  12. Otto Ottolenghi Plenty my first foray into Gourmet Vegetarian Recipes
  13. Alistair Little Cooking for Friends
  14. Delia Smith Complete Cookery Book Good for basics
  15. Rose Elliot The Bean Book for classic wholefood Veggie Recipes
  16. Chinese Food made easy Ching hua Chung
  17. Claudia Roden Picnics an intriguing book to open eyes to what can be eaten outdoors
  18. Good Food Magazine various 100 recipe books
  19. Jamie Oliver The Naked Chef
  20. Rick Stein Seafood Odydessy
  21. Rick Stein Seafood Lovers Guide to Britain
  22. Nigel Slater Real Food in 30 minutes
With the advent of TV Chefs and willful Product placement in Good Food magazine, I have made deliberate attempts to move my Library to the Old Gaurd, before Derivative Recipes, TV Chefs selling books on back of programmes etc.  I am very skeptical about the value of them except in very rare circumstances: The Gaurdian does fabulous Food with Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall, and Nigel Slater both offenders but fab Recipes none the less.
 So I thought we could post up our Cookery Book Libraries with commentary and take discussion from there. Hello to all from the Qaulity Budget Cookery Department.

Tags: books, cookery, inspiration, recipes

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Holly CollierPermalink Reply by Holly Collier on August 28, 2010 at 3:13pm
Good idea! Here are mine:

1) Riverford Farm Cook Book (of course!)

2) Nigel Slater: Tender, Vol. 1

3) The Silver Spoon

4) The Cranks Bible

5) Vegie Food

6) Rose Elliot: Learning to Cook Vegetarian

7) Nigella Lawson: How to be a Domestic Goddess

8) Meals in Minutes Vegetarian (Australian Women's Weekly Cookbooks)

9) Anjum Anand: Indian Every Day (this was a gift from someone, wouldn't have bought it myself).
---

You'll have guessed that I'm a vegetarian. I LOVE Nigel Slater's Tender and it's perfect for seasonal eating with Riverford boxes. I agree with your comment about the Guardian's food sections. I have their 'The New Vegetarian' page bookmarked, which has great recipes: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/series/thenewvegetarian
Kate HillierPermalink Reply by Kate Hillier on August 28, 2010 at 5:23pm
I have a vegetarian friend and so Vegetarian Food has crept up in importance alongside quality meat eating.
The Guardian Food Section is reliable, authoritative, tasty etc. (Mind you I think ALL Broadsheet Recipe Columns are anyway.
I have not heard of Nigel Slaters 'Tender' but point me and I will investigate.
nice to meet you BTW.
Holly CollierPermalink Reply by Holly Collier on August 28, 2010 at 7:26pm
Nigel Slater's 'Tender' is quite new: http://www.nigelslater.com/tender.asp - it's based on the produce he grew in his own garden and the recipes he cooked with it.

Nice to meet you too :-)
Kate HillierPermalink Reply by Kate Hillier on August 28, 2010 at 7:36pm
I can see the Veg Box/ Nigel Slater connection. Organic Boxes they pick for you is a new thing for me. This week I chose my items. Organic Boxes are probably mind and taste expanding.:)
Clare BurgessPermalink Reply by Clare Burgess on September 2, 2010 at 5:00pm
Have you tried the Tangy Tomato Rice from Indian Every Day? It's one of my favourite rice dishes and perfect at this time of year. And the Sunny Lentil Curry was the first Dal I could eat (I have texture issues I won't go into detail but they are weird and annoying) I'm trying to perfect it in the slow cooker now.
Kirsty HalePermalink Reply by Kirsty Hale on August 31, 2010 at 3:52pm
Nigel Slater is recipe king as far as I'm concerned. Tender Vol ii will be out for Christmas I think. Claudia Roden is also good but they have been mentioned before. I find these useful too:

The Moro cook books - all of them! The first one is great, but in Moro East they use their allotment as a basis for the recipes, useful for grow your own but also for life with a veg box.

Antonio Carluccio - simple recipes in an Italian style, actually I include the River Cafe books in this category too.

Sarah Raven's Garden Cook Book

The River Cottage Preserves handbook

I hope we get lots of posts for this, I love collecting cook books and couldn't post them all up! We have a great local book shop that let's me browse for ages, so I don't have to resort to Amazon.
Nia WearnPermalink Reply by Nia Wearn on September 2, 2010 at 8:20am
All of them - well, not all, but 300+ at the last count.

(The live in the pantry now, I'm promised another shelf to keep them on)

The one we use the most is a treasured 1952 edition of the Good Housekeeping Cookbook - but that doesn't mean I'm not excited about the new Nigella book hitting the shelves...

We're both keen cooks and we've been having veg box's for 6 years - my Hubby is Vegetarian and I love baking so they just kind of collect. Some are very silly, and some have never been used (I've not cooked anything from the kitchen of the White House yet, of from the Axis of Evil) but we tend to pick them up from Charity shops or they've been gifts (or Amazon wishlists are full of them). There's 2 - A veg identifier and a Fruit identifier that were indispensable when we first started getting a veg box from a local cooperative in Liverpool, before we swapped to Riverford when we moved. I'd never seen a Kohl Rabi before, let alone cooked with one.

The first cookbook I brought myself was Nigella Bites, and it's still one of my favorites, and my Hubby was packed off to uni with Nigel Slater's Real Food - so with those as formative cookbooks it was never going to end well.
Clare BurgessPermalink Reply by Clare Burgess on September 2, 2010 at 10:09am
Totally in awe of the 100+ strong collection. I have 56 although there are a few that I have't added.

Some are definite favourites which probably stands out best in the menu for the rest of the week:

Chili Cornmeal Crusted Tofu (Veganomicon) and Maple-Mustard Glazed Potatoes and String Beans (Vegan With A Vengance)

and

Chimichurri Baked Tofu and Chard with Raisins and Capers (both Viva Vegan)

Also you can tell that I have a block of tofu left over and I'm going away on Saturday.

There is a definite international thing going on with my food. The first cook book that I bought for myself was Cooking Like Mummyji by Vicky Bhogal which is great honest to go Anglo Indian Food. And Every time I've moved and when I go on holiday with a kitchen it always gets packed.
Kate HillierPermalink Reply by Kate Hillier on September 2, 2010 at 11:31am
My step mum used to have a whole bookshelf on one wall covered entirely in Cookbooks. For me a good Cookbook is the cornerstone of good cooking, that of course and the right ingredients like our beloved Riverford Fruit and Veg.
Monica ShawPermalink Reply by Monica Shaw on September 2, 2010 at 7:43pm
That Chili Cornmeal Crusted Tofu from Veganomicon is AWESOME - so is the Hot Sauce Glazed Tempeh from the same book.
Clare BurgessPermalink Reply by Clare Burgess on September 3, 2010 at 10:15am
It was, it was so awesome! And the Maple-Mustard Glazed Potatoes and String Beans are the best thing ever. The Runner Beans are so ridiculously caramelized by the end of it that I completely regret not finding it earlier in the season!

Also: I took a picture


So yeah, definitely recommend anything by Isa Chandra Moskowitz!
Monica ShawPermalink Reply by Monica Shaw on September 2, 2010 at 7:59pm
I am pretty minimalist and tend to purge myself of cookbooks I've never used. The ones that have managed to stick around:

How to Cook Everything Vegetarian - Mark Bittman (best book ever)
The New Tastes of India (Rasa Cookbook) - Sivadas Sreedharan
Veganomicon - Isa Chandra Moskowitz
The Kitchen Diaries - Nigel Slater
The Essential Madhur Jaffrey
Bread Matters - Andrew Whitley
Green Seasons - Rachel Demuth
The Perfect Scoop - David Lebowitz
Ottolenghi

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