Desert Island question: If you could only have one cookbook...

Deborah Madison: Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone.

rwj

I'm with Howie. No question, the Joy of Cooking. I base this on its comprehensiveness. Everything from the perfect hard-boiled egg to jam-making, pot roast, etc.

[Jenise]

Deborah Madison: Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone.

rwj

Robert, looking back at that pic of you bearing cassoulet in the Pictures thread, and thinking back on dishes you mention cooking these days, most of the food you mention is veggie. I note that you like my Miroton recipe but then attempted an all-veggie version. Yet your chili is witness to the fact that you do still eat some meat. Are you in transition?

[Jenise]

I'm with Howie. No question, the Joy of Cooking. I base this on its comprehensiveness. Everything from the perfect hard-boiled egg to jam-making, pot roast, etc.

For all that I don't look to Joy for inspiration, have to admit that since I acquired my first copy about six years ago I don't know how I made biscuits, yorkshire pudds and stuff like that. I know I did, but where did the recipes come from? Those aren't things you can just 'wing'. Would indeed be hard to get by without this reliable compendium.

Deborah Madison: Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone.

rwj

Robert, looking back at that pic of you bearing cassoulet in the Pictures thread, and thinking back on dishes you mention cooking these days, most of the food you mention is veggie. I note that you like my Miroton recipe but then attempted an all-veggie version. Yet your chili is witness to the fact that you do still eat some meat. Are you in transition?

No, Jenise, I am not in transition. But you may remember that I had some health issues come up this year. These issues have prompted me to change the way I eat.

I used to not be uncommon for me to eat a 1 lb. (or more) steak by myself in one sitting. I had a saying in the kitchen, "It's nothing a little cream can't fix." Sometimes I would eat meat 3 - 4 times a day. No wonder my cholesterol was a little on the high side.

I still eat meat, just not as much. When I do eat it I take in only about 3 - 4 ounces in a sitting. That gives me about 25 - 30 grams of protein, which is fine. The rest of my diet is made up of grains, legumes, and veggies. Basically I eat more balanced.

Having said that, the Madison book has been a part of my repertoire long before the health issues. I think that it is a good, comprehensive book for veggies, breads, desserts, etc. I can do meat just fine. I don't really need a book for that. But I like her inspired veggie recipes. And I have never had one of her recipes work any other way than she says it will. It is just a good cook book.

rwj

From the cover of Creole Nouvelle - the author's name slips my mind at the moment. Oh, I see she *mentions* it.

With Joseph Carey's amusing stories, scalding opinions and informed wit and information galore, what more could one want from a cookbook, except to open it up and start cooking? I look forward to doing just that and the sooner, the better."—Deborah Madison, Author of Local Flavors, Cooking and Eating from America's Farmers' Markets

...No question, the Joy of Cooking. I base this on its comprehensiveness. Everything from the perfect hard-boiled egg to jam-making, pot roast, etc.

Does it still have a recipe for bear?

From the cover of Creole Nouvelle - the author's name slips my mind at the moment. Oh, I see she *mentions* it.

With Joseph Carey's amusing stories, scalding opinions and informed wit and information galore, what more could one want from a cookbook, except to open it up and start cooking? I look forward to doing just that and the sooner, the better."—Deborah Madison, Author of Local Flavors, Cooking and Eating from America's Farmers' Markets

That's great Chef! You go!

rwj

Potato sausage- roughly one third each of pork, beef, and potatoes. All were ground and mixed, adding in a chopped onion, salt and pepper. It was packed in beef casings and soaked in brine, overnight I think. The sausage was boiled and when eaten the casings were peeled from the meat.

On Christmas Eve it was served with potatoes (also boiled I think) and what was called Swedish rye bread.

...for the rest of your life, which would it be?

Cookbook? What is this thing, cookbook?

...No question, the Joy of Cooking. I base this on its comprehensiveness. Everything from the perfect hard-boiled egg to jam-making, pot roast, etc.

Does it still have a recipe for bear?

Yes - on page 517. Beaver is on page 516.

Jeez, that's a tough question.

Only one? Probably "The Way To Cook" by Julia Child. I don't use many recipes from it at all. But techniques, methodologies, and systematic procedures for studying culinary methodology that I've inherited from it, I use every day.

-Paul W.

Howie wrote:

Yes - on page 517. Beaver is on page 516.

Thanks for the teamwork Howie. I was almost certain bear was in there, but I only have one copy and its in the desert, to where we return tomorrow. Ahhh. (That's a sigh, not a scream.)

[David M. Bueker]

Another vote for "The Way to Cook" from the dear departed Julia Child. Since I am one who tinkers with things it's a great basic resource and jumping off point.

Larousse dry? [My reaction too --Max] Oh, I don't think so! I find it hugely entertaining. Which is why I lean toward the '88 version, it's so antiquated and daringly tongue in cheek at times. I love to just read it. The newer version is much more matter of fact, however useful.

Uh, Jenise (or anyone), if you find the 1988 entertaining, even "antiquated," lose not an instant getting a copy of the Crown 1961 -- they're common, more below. The 1988 and 2001 English-language editions differ in detail but both basically are modern, international, factual, and with lots of color photos. The 1961 is different. The 1961 is why the title is famous in North America. More:

A. Summary (posted in September on another forum): Crown 1961 was the first, and for a long time the main, Anglophone edition, produced in such quantity it has been ubiquitous on the used market since the 1970s, in almost every US used bookstore I've checked that has a cooking section, for example. (I have four or five copies, some of them often lent out; I've cited it here and on other online food fora since the 1980s). It is close to the 1938 French, including Francocentric chauvinisms and eccentricities [1,2] thoroughly expunged from later editions, and is interesting just for those. Examples below illustrate touches so dramatically missing from the new, more international, more sanitized 1988 Crown Anglophone edition (and the newer one, 2001). LG did not go as far as Escoffier, who explicitly omitted, for instance, curry recipes because they are "not to European taste," but it had remarks about ghastly foreign habits -- American fondness for sweet sauces and "automated" restaurants (surely written in the 1930s when Automats were more fashionable) and other corruptions from which (1938, 1961) "French cooking has nothing to gain."

[1] Discoursing on the history of coffee houses: Having first introduced, sort of reverently, the appearance of early examples in Paris in the late 1600s, the Larousse then, characteristically, dismisses them: "But these miserable cafes were really no more than dirty little smoking-saloons, frequented only by confirmed smokers, travelers from the Lebanon, and several Knights of Malta."

[2] "You have heard the news: excommunicated. Come and dine to console me. Everyone is to refuse me fire and water; so we will eat nothing but cold glazed meats, and drink only chilled wines." -- Talleyrand (Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord), in a letter to his friend the Duc de Biron (better known as the Duc de Lauzun), April 1791. Sources include Larousse Gastronomique, 1961 Crown English-language edition (but missing, like so many other tidbits, from the two "modern" editions).

B. More useful in wilderness. Random example: "ACRIDOPHAGE -- One who feeds on locusts. This food may seem extraordinary to the epicures of Europe, but it is quite acceptable to African gastronomes. It appears that the taste of locusts resembles, if somewhat remotely, that of raw shrimps."

C. Recent discussion in the wine forum here cited 1961's horror at corrupting influences on French restaurants, or bistro operators who list dishes under "pretentious titles which bedeck the worst mediocrities." Or attention to details of a menu prepared by Richelieu for foreign guests, the vegetables to be carved "into grotesque shapes on account of the Germans."

Biggest one I could find. Since I suspect I might need the pages for other more important things than reading.

Richard

Biggest one I could find. Since I suspect I might need the pages for other more important things than reading.

Here again, the Larousse delivers, at over 1100 pages in the 1961 (1350 in the 2001). Large pages, absorbing.

Have a good weekend! Dial into the "Talkshoe" Saturday 10AM PT / 1PM ET, for more useful tips.

-- Max

Large pages, absorbing

Max,

WHAT were you thinking of?! I, of course, was only referring to their usage as kindling.

Richard

Large pages, absorbing

Max,
WHAT were you thinking of?! I, of course, was only referring to their usage as kindling.
Richard

Absorbing reading, naturally, and lots of it -- as illustrated before and (below) after those comments. (Why, how did you read it?)

--
E. Briffault ends his Paris à Table (1846) with this assessment: "The two-pronged fork is used in northern Europe. The English are armed with steel tridents with ivory handles -- three-pronged forks -- but in France, we have the four-pronged fork, the height of civilization."

-- Larousse Gastronomique under "fork," and uncharacteristically this is in the 1988 and 2001 English editions but not the 1961, which is matter-of-fact and international on the subject of forks.

On a desert island??? If the point of the book is to use island foods, it will depend upon the island. If the point is for the book to be a good vicarious read that has no utility for the island's larder, then the Four Season's cookbook (from the NY restaurant) is about as good as it gets.