Favourite Food Books

There are dozens and dozens of 'favourite' recipe books that I have on my bookshelf which I would consider well-known, owned by most of the food-obsessed.  For example, to list a few:

• Stephanie Alexander's The Cook's Companion and The Garden Companion - the first, I read cover-to-cover when I was first given it, 7 years ago, and I now open it at least weekly, looking for reassurance of a basic muffin recipe, guidance on choosing a suitable fish for a curry, or simply to curl up and read about offal.
  
• Japanese Cooking A Simple Art* - an incredibly comprehensive, beautifully written and straightforward guide to Japanese cuisine, including tools and ingredients, theory behind meal composition and hundreds of recipes.
  
• Martha Stewart's Baking Companion - such pretty photographs!  An inspiring read whenever I feel like baking something ambitious, and a useful checkpoint for classic recipes.
  
• Nigella Lawson's How To Eat - I literally taught myself to cook using this book!  I was given it when I was around 20, and read it cover-to-cover at least three times during the first year I owned it.  It is probably the most battered, food-splattered and 'loved' book I own.  I learnt to cook brilliant roast chicken, pastry, custard, roasts, soups, stocks, as well as loads of great lunch and dinner menus.
  
• David Thompson's Thai Food (try and find the original pink fabric cover, so lovely) - David Thompson's knowledge of Thai food, from ingredients to recipes to history to customs, is legendary, and whenever I feel like cooking Thai, this is the first place I check.  It is also (in its original edition) one of the prettiest books on my shelves.
  
• Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles Cookbook  - I was given this by my Godfather, whom I adore.  I have eaten at the Les Halles restaurant in New York, and the meal was extraordinarily good.  Nothing fancy - a rustic terrine, steak Bearnaise with frites, and a creme brulee - but one of the most memorable food experiences I've had.  The book reads like Bourdain speaks - that is, rough, direct and incredibly funny.  Worth reading even if you don't want to cook any of the recipes!
  
• Secrets of the Red Lantern - such a beautiful and haunting book.  The enticing and authentic Vietnamese recipes and interspersed with the bittersweet true story of the authors' family's journey from communist Vietnam to Australia, via refugee camps, leaking boats and a number of small business ventures.

The above are standards on any 'top cookbooks' list.  But now I hope to share some less well-known books, and maybe someone will discover a new favourite...

• Soul Food and Brown Sugar - the venerable Joyce White is arguably the Queen of Soul Food.  Her two hardcover books comprise of recipes collected from black churchgoers around North America, each with a little story about the contributor and their home church.  The recipes are well-tested, and are, on the whole, not shy of fat or butter.  I had the pleasure of interviewing Joyce for my thesis on American food and its relationship with community - she is so passionate, witty and warm, and listening to her talk would make even the most disciplined dieter yearn for chicken'n'dumplings, smothered chicken-fried steaks, spicy simmered greens and sky-high layer cakes covered in ethereal sugary frostings.
  
• Hungry Monkey- written by the laugh-out-loud funny Matthew Amster-Burton (restaurant critic and former rock journalist), Hungry Monkey comes with a ringing endorsement from Anthony Bourdain.  Subtitled 'a food-loving father's quest to raise an adventurous eater', this book (part recipe book, part memoir) chronicles Amster-Burton's life as a stay-at-home dad to little daughter Iris.  Their main common interest is food and cooking, and through the ages 0 - 4, Hungry Monkey shares hilarious anecdotes, tips and recipes for parents - and anyone else who enjoys food, really!  I initially stumbled across this book at the library, and devoured it in two days before running to purchase it online in hardcover.  I have since read it twice more.
  
• Cherry Cake and Ginger Beer - This is another book that I discovered by chance at the library, and instantly fell in love with.  For anyone who enjoyed losing themselves in books like Famous Five, Milly Molly Mandy and Paddington, this book is an absolute treasure.  Author Jane Brocket has created and refined recipes for so many literary favourites, from sticky marmalade buns to dense and fruity cherry cake to homemade lemonade for a picnic to treacle-laden rice pudding.  Each recipe begins with an introduction, describing the book and context from which it is taken.  The entire book is a joyously nostalgic journey - and best of all, the recipes are brilliant, I have yet to try one that isn't fabulous.
  
• Ladies, A Plate - given to me as a wedding present by two of my mother's lovely friends, both from New Zealand, this is a compilation of home recipes from women around New Zealand (recipes dating from between 1920 - 1970 on the whole).  The title comes from days of yore, when invitations to social events would conclude with the phrase, "ladies, a plate" meaning that women were expected to bring a plate of something homemade, sweet or savoury, to share.  My most frequently used recipes from this book are the date loaf, the Afghan biscuits and the chocolate Highlanders.
  
• Laura Calder's French Food at Home - this is 'home cooking', French-style.  Healthy, fresh ingredients, not too many of them, simple cooking instructions and lots of small dishes.  Canapes, entrees, salads, mains, light desserts - few are even vaguely demanding, most are perfect for after-work dinners or relaxed weekend lunches.  Some of the recipes I love from this book include salmon poached gently in olive oil;  'Housewife Chicken', a one-pan meal; chicken cooked in carrot juice (brilliant!); flounder cooked in parsley; and the most treasured recipe I have found, her instructions for scrambling eggs over low, low heat for close to 20 minutes - words cannot describe how good this is! There are no pictures whatsoever, which normally disapoints me in cookbooks, however Calder's writing is so evocative that I don't miss the photos, and still feel great motivation to try new dishes.  As a bonus, there are plenty of little notes and tips, for example on boning a bird or 'nice and useful things to know about souffles'.
  
• The Moosewood Cookbook - my parents were vegetarian when I was born (close to vegan, really), and my father even worked part-time at Soul Foods, which is something of an institution in Melbourne and was one of the first Vegetarian cafes.  The Moosewood Cookbook I own was their copy, and is well-loved.  A true celebration of all things hippy, the recipes are all hand-written, the pages covered in beautiful illustrations and swirls.  First published in 1977, it has since been revised, and I'm sure the new version is lovely too.  Even if you never cook 'vegetarian food', there are so many wonderful dips, salads, sides and vegetable dishes in the Moosewood.  The recipes cover a range of styles including recipes either taken from or inspired by the cuisines of Japan, Mexico, Brazil, France, Italy, Russia, America, Switzerland, Hungary, the Ukraine, India, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, the Balkans, Macedonia and others.  There are loads of really interesting (yet still simple) recipes, FAB desserts, and honestly, the pages are so beautiful that it's worth buying the book to read and admire.
  
• The Oxford Companion to Food - this is a reference book, not a recipe book, but for anyone who enjoys food, it's great to have on the bookshelf.  I often grab it to check something simple (for example, where Carob comes from) and find myself curled up with the oversized book, an hour later, immersed in a world of obscure mushrooms, the origins of bread, traditional cereal grains, or the history of African cooking.  It's also wonderful to have on hand to settle disputes, if you are nerdy enough to get into arguments over such things as to what dish the word 'Kugel' originally described.
  
• Bubby's Homemade Pies -I have a lot of pie books, and while I consider Ken Haedrich to be the expert on pies, Ron Silver ('Bubby') opened one of my favourite places to eat in New York, Bubby's, and this book, with its gorgeous cover, heavy-weight pages and elegant illustrations, is a real treasure.  Bubby's uses mostly organic, local ingredients, and makes everything from scratch, and this slow-food ethos is reflected in the book.  Recipes include, for example, a pear pie with caramel sauce and creme fraiche, a ginger-honey apple pie, home-made 'pop tarts', a goat-cheese pie with pomegranate molasses, as well as indulgent classics such as blueberry-peach pie, Southern-style fruit cobblers, sour-cherry lattice pie, pecan pie and chicken pot-pies with homemade stock, as well as recipes for things like marshmallows, candied pecans, ice creams and curds.  PS - go to the Bubby's website and check out the menus.  If you're anything like me, they will make you want to get on a plane right now to go eat some breakfast in NYC!
  
• James Lileks Gastroanomalies and The Gallery of Regrettable Food - Lileks collects hilarious, disturbing photographs of 'cuisine' from the 1950s and 1960s, annotating them with his own witty remarks.  The sort of books that leave you howling with laughter, tears rolling down your face...  for example, he laments the travesty of black-and-white newspaper food photography, with one image captioned 'meat or ice-cream?  Can you tell?'.  Take a sneak peak here, 

One last word - Booko.  I know everyone raves about Book Depository ('cheep cheep' prices and free delivery worldwide!) but you must use Booko.  It is an Australian site which scans the whole internet, in real time, and gives you a foolproof summary, in Australian dollars, of the total price (including shipping) of any book, collected from dozens of websites including Book Depository, Amazon, Readings etc.

*A funny story about my copy of Japanese Cooking - A Simple Art.  Years ago, in roughly 1985, I was a little girl and my father was studying psychology at university.  A classmate of his by the name of Roza Pakin lent him her copy of this book - she wrote her name and home phone number in the front cover.  It was a new book, and being such a large hardcover, would have been very expensive.  Anyway, Roza stopped turning up to lectures, and at the end of the semester, dad called her number (no answer) and even tried going to her house (she'd since moved).  So dad kept the book - but he was always so tortured about not being able to return it (and with the name glaring at him every time it was opened) that he could never bring himself to use it!  Dad is the sort of guy who drives 30 minutes out of his way to return money if a shop accidentally gives him $20 extra change, you see.  So a couple of years ago, he passed it on to me.  I adore it, and use it loads.  But if anyone knows the whereabouts of Roza Pakin, I will happily return it.  Maybe ;)