catching up on the December meme: books

[kindkit]

Comments

[cerisaye]

My favourite cookery books are Elizabeth Luard's European Peasant Cook Book, Nigel Slater's 30 Minute Suppers, Real Food and Plenty, Yotam Ottolenghi's Taste and Jerusalem, Claudia Rosen's Middle Eastern Cookery, Gail Elliot's Vegetarian Cook Book, and Madhur Jaffrey's Indian Cooking. I like simple, every day cooking with emphasis on fresh ingredients and interesting flavours. I have a lot ofcookbooks collected over 30 years or more. I rarely watch TV chefs though I follow cookery writers in the Guardian and Observer newspapers

[kindkit]

Mmm, that sounds like a nice selection. I've heard really good things about the Ottolenghi books in particular.

[halotolerant]

This post has officially made me hungry *g*

I cook everything that's from a book out of either Jamie Oliver's 'Ministry of Food' (explains basic techniques to culinary noobs like me well) or Elizabeth Davidson's assorted works. Oh, and since there's a copy of Julia Child's French Cooking book in the house, I use that for crepes and omelettes, which seems to work very well, once in a blue moon when I do them.

[kindkit]

I've never tried to make crepes because they're a bit scary. Do you really need to have a special crepe pan?

[halotolerant]

Well, I don't use one, but then my culinary bar is not set massively high *g* But basically when I was cooking from an English recipe, the crepes were always a bit rubbery and sad, and the Julia Child one creates a much fluffier results. I favour her for anything with eggs.

[kivrin]

I forgive her for telling me that plastic wrap i.e. clingfilm wouldn't melt when used to line a cake pan, even though it totally did.

She WHAT? Oh, Nigella.

[kindkit]

I googled it after I ended up with a chocolate loaf cake into which plastic wrap had dissolved. (I ate it anyway. I tasted fine and I'm not dead yet.) Supposedly, there's a special kind of clingfilm used in professional kitchens that's thicker and has a higher melting point--on a BBC cooking show I saw a chef wrap quenelles in clingfilm to poach them, so I suspect this to be true. Still, a cookbook written for home cooks ought to be tested using equipment available to ordinary home cooks. Apparently subsequent editions of the cookbook recommend lining the cake pan with aluminum foil.

To be fair, I ought to have listened to my common sense, which was telling me that it wouldn't work. But when a cookbook specifically tells you "don't worry, it won't melt!" there's a temptation to listen to The Expert instead.