Here are the top ten from the list of fifty greatest cookbooks I posted about last week:
10. Great Dishes of the World, Robert Carrier
9. Sichuan Cookery, Fuchsia Dunlop
8. The Classic Italian Cookbook, Marcella Hazan
7. Thai Food, David Thompson
6. English Food, Jane Grigson
5. Roast Chicken and Other Stories, Simon Hopkinson with Lindsey Bareham
4. Kitchen Diaries, Nigel Slater
3. The Book of Jewish Food, Claudia Roden
2. French Provincial Cooking, Elizabeth David
1. The French Menu Cookbook, Richard Olney
I’ll have to look into some of these, particularly the #1 pick with which I am not familiar.
Yikes, I don’t really consider myself a cook, but I thought we might have one of these cookbooks, at least a Joy of Cooking. The list seems a bit regional-oriented though?
The one good regional cookbook that I’ve used is Chef Paul Prudhomme’s Louisiana Kitchen, which I think is almost universally acclaimed as the best cajun/creole cookbook. But most of those recipes take too long for me to make. In reality, I’m a Rachel Ray’s 30 minute recipes kind of guy.
Pretty clearly a Brit list.
I have Roden’s Book of Jewish Food, which is a wonderful read and has some very good recipes. But it’s really more about the diversity of the Jewish people and the foods they (we) eat than a cookbook in the pedagogical sense.