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Italian Grill by Mario Batali


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My Kitchen Year: 136 Recipes That Saved My Life


Ruth Reichl - 2015
    No one was more stunned by this unexpected turn of events than its beloved editor in chief, Ruth Reichl, who suddenly faced an uncertain professional future. As she struggled to process what had seemed unthinkable, Reichl turned to the one place that had always provided sanctuary. “I did what I always do when I’m confused, lonely, or frightened,” she writes. “I disappeared into the kitchen.”My Kitchen Year follows the change of seasons—and Reichl’s emotions—as she slowly heals through the simple pleasures of cooking. While working 24/7, Reichl would “throw quick meals together” for her family and friends. Now she has the time to rediscover what cooking meant to her. Imagine kale, leaves dark and inviting, sautéed with chiles and garlic; summer peaches baked into a simple cobbler; fresh oysters chilling in a box of snow; plump chickens and earthy mushrooms, fricasseed with cream. Over the course of this challenging year, each dish Reichl prepares becomes a kind of stepping stone to finding joy again in ordinary things. The 136 recipes collected here represent a life’s passion for food: a blistering ma po tofu that shakes Reichl out of the blues; a decadent grilled cheese sandwich that accompanies a rare sighting in the woods around her home; a rhubarb sundae that signals the arrival of spring. Here, too, is Reichl’s enlivening dialogue with her Twitter followers, who become her culinary supporters and lively confidants. Part cookbook, part memoir, part paean to the household gods, My Kitchen Year may be Ruth Reichl’s most stirring book yet—one that reveals a refreshingly vulnerable side of the world's most famous food editor as she shares treasured recipes to be returned to again and again and again.

The Silver Spoon


Clelia D'Onofrio - 1950
    Originally published in 1950, it became an instant classic. Considered to be essential in every household, it is still one of the most popular wedding presents today. The Silver Spoon was conceived and published by Domus, the design and architectural magazine famously directed by Giò Ponti from the 1920's to the 1970's. A group of cooking experts was commissioned to collect hundreds of traditional recipes from the different Italian regions and make them available for the first time to a wider audience. In the process, they updated ingredients, quantities and methods to suit contemporary tastes and customs, at the same time preserving the memory of ancient recipes for future generations. They also included modern recipes from some of the most famous Italian chefs, resulting in a style of cooking that appeals to the gourmet as well as the occasional cook A comprehensive and lively book, its simple and user-friendly format makes it both accessible and a pleasure to read. It provides an introduction to every course, and an explanation of the main type of ingredients. Never translated before, The Silver Spoon has now been adapted to an international market, with every recipe checked for suitability, measurements converted and methods rewritten to accommodate cultural differences, yet maintaining the authenticity of real Italian cooking. The new layout emphasizes its contemporary appeal and the colour coding of each section simplifies the process of cross-referencing ingredients and methods. A section with original menus from the 15 most famous Italian chefs of the last 50 years has been expanded to include original menus from Italian celebrity chefs working outside Italy. This is a substantial and prestigious cookbook that will share the bookshelves with other titles such as The Joy of Cooking and Larousse Gastronomique, another classic of national cuisine. With over 2,000 recipes illustrated with specially commissioned artwork and photography, the book is destined to become a classic in the Italian cooking booklist for the international market.

Feast: Food to Celebrate Life


Nigella Lawson - 2004
    Feast, Nigella's most festive book yet, offers savory, spicy, and delicious recipes for Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukah, Eid, New Year's, Passover, Easter gatherings, and any time you want to celebrate food and life. This book is filled with festive recipes, and in it, Nigella offers tips, tricks, and shortcuts that will ensure you dine with ease, style, and fun. Feast also includes some surprising gems, like Nigella's Chocolate Cake Hall of Fame, and her best cheeseburger. And like her other cookbooks, Feast is a cookbook that will be treasured all year long.

My Paris Kitchen: Recipes and Stories


David Lebovitz - 2014
    In that time, the culinary culture of France has shifted as a new generation of chefs and home cooks—most notably in Paris—incorporates ingredients and techniques from around the world into traditional French dishes.      In My Paris Kitchen, David remasters the classics, introduces lesser-known fare, and presents 100 sweet and savory recipes that reflect the way modern Parisians eat today. You’ll find Soupe à l’oignon, Cassoulet, Coq au vin, and Croque-monsieur, as well as Smoky barbecue-style pork, Lamb shank tagine, Dukkah-roasted cauliflower, Salt cod fritters with tartar sauce, and Wheat berry salad with radicchio, root vegetables, and pomegranate. And of course, there’s dessert: Warm chocolate cake with salted butter caramel sauce, Duck fat cookies, Bay leaf poundcake with orange glaze, French cheesecake...and the list goes on. David also shares stories told with his trademark wit and humor, and lush photography taken on location around Paris and in David’s kitchen reveals the quirks, trials, beauty, and joys of life in the culinary capital of the world.

Everyday Food: Fresh Flavor Fast: 250 Easy, Delicious Recipes for Any Time of Day


Martha Stewart - 2010
    Organized into familiar categories—including sandwiches and pizzas, appetizers, salads, soups and stews, pastas, main courses, and side dishes—this highly anticipated follow-up to the bestselling Everyday Food: Great Food Fast helps you whip up the perfect dish any time of day.   Here is a book for the way we cook and eat now, with an emphasis on stretching meals (for example, leftovers from a roasted chicken are used to make a quick gumbo and roasted vegetables perform a second act as a vibrant pizza topping), turning to economical ingredients that deliver great results (such as flank steak, served with a piquant parsley-garlic sauce), and making healthier versions of comfort foods without skimping on flavor (like a lower-calorie chicken potpie). A section on enticing vegetarian main dishes as well as a roster of irresistible desserts round out this comprehensive collection. Here’s a taste of what’s inside:   Breakfast: Jam-Filled French Toast  Sandwiches and Pizzas: Eggplant and Mozzarella Melt  Appetizers: Goat Cheese Crostini  Salads: BLT Salad with Buttermilk Dressing  Soups and Stews: Minestrone  Pastas: Spaghetti Puttanesca  Main Courses: Meatballs with Rosemary  Vegetarian: Mushroom and Parmesan Risotto  Side Dishes: Roasted Sweet Potato Fries  Desserts: Gingered Blackberry and Plum Shortcakes    Brimming with great time- and budget-saving tips as well as smart kitchen techniques, Everyday Food: Fresh Flavor Fast helps you use what you have on hand to make everyone’s favorite foods. With an easy-to-read format, a photograph of each and every dish, and plenty of ideas to keep you inspired, this is the cookbook you will turn to day after day for wonderfully simple, delicious meals.

The Casserole Queens Cookbook: Put Some Lovin' in Your Oven with 100 Easy One-Dish Recipes


Crystal Cook - 2011
    Their recipe won them such a following in Texas that Bobby Flay took notice and challenged them to a Throwdown. It turns out that the Casserole Queens, as the duo is known, are much more than one-hit wonders of the one-dish dinner. They have built an entire business around revamping the ultimate quick-fix dinner for modern tastes. In The Casserole Queens Cookbook, they share their fresh, updated, from-scratch recipes for traditional dishes. Tuna Noodle is brought up a notch with a homemade cream sauce and a kick of cayenne pepper; Halibut Enchiladas with Salsa Verde are surprisingly light and vibrant; Mandarin Meatloaf has a sweet orange flavor that recharges a beloved weeknight staple. There are home-style desserts, like Gooey Apple Butter Cake, and great brunch dishes, such as Frenchy Toast Casserole. The Queens have thought of everything, providing advice on scaling and freezing casseroles so that anyone can stock the freezer with go-to dinners. With 16 pages of color photographs, plenty of expert tips, and lots of style, The Casserole Queens Cookbook is the home cook’s handbook for making tasty meals any night of the week.

Get Cooking: 150 Simple Recipes to Get You Started in the Kitchen


Mollie Katzen - 2009
    Here are 125 foolproof , basic recipes for soups, homemade pasta, roast chicken, burgers, vegan specialities, chocolate chip cookies—and more—that anyone can enjoy making, no matter how inexperienced they are in the kitchen.

Bobby Flay's Throwdown!: More Than 100 Recipes from Food Network's Ultimate Cooking Challenge


Bobby Flay - 2010
    The results are always entertaining—and delicious. In his first-ever cookbook collaboration with Food Network, Bobby shares the recipes and fun from his popular show.  For each episode, both Bobby’s recipe and his challenger’s are included, comprising a cross-country tour of regional specialties and good-hearted competitive spirit. Travel to San Antonio for puffy tacos, Philadelphia for cheesesteaks, Harlem for fried chicken and waffles, and Charleston for coconut cake. Try both dishes to pick your favorite, or challenge friends and family to a battle of your own. Either way, you’ll find tons of fantastic flavors in this best-of-the-best book from the first seven seasons of Throwdown!.  The ultimate companion cookbook to one of America’s favorite food shows, Bobby Flay’s Throwdown! lets home cooks and fans in on the action, featuring favorite Throwdown! moments and behind-the-scenes peeks alongside beautiful, all-new color food photography created just for this book. So if Bobby Flay ever strolls into your backyard asking “Are you ready for a Throwdown?” you definitely will be!

Baking: From My Home to Yours


Dorie Greenspan - 1980
    The 300 recipes will seduce a new generation of bakers, whether their favorite kitchen tools are a bowl and a whisk or a stand mixer and a baker’s torch.Even the most homey of the recipes are very special. Dorie’s favorite raisin swirl bread. Big spicy muffins from her stint as a baker in a famous New York City restaurant. French chocolate brownies (a Parisian pastry chef begged for the recipe). A dramatic black and white cake for a "“wow” occasion. Pierre Hermé’s extraordinary lemon tart.The generous helpings of background information, abundant stories, and hundreds of professional hints set Baking apart as a one-of-a-kind cookbook. And as if all of this weren’t more than enough, Dorie has appended a fascinating minibook, A Dessertmaker’s Glossary, with more than 100 entries, from why using one’s fingers is often best, to how to buy the finest butter, to how the bundt pan got its name.

The Amish Cook: Recollections and Recipes from an Old Order Amish Family


Elizabeth Coblentz - 2002
    THE AMISH COOK, a full-color cookbook based on Elizabeth's columns, compiles more than 75 traditional Amish recipes, photographs of the Coblentz farm, practical gardening tips, cherished family tales, and firsthand accounts of traditional Amish events like corn-husking bees and barn raisings. A truly unique collaboration between a simple Amish grandmother and a modern-day newspaperman, THE AMISH COOK is a poignant and authentic look at a disappearing way of life.‚Ä¢ ‚ÄúThe Amish Cook‚Äù column is syndicated in more than 100 newspapers nationwide.‚Ä¢ Elizabeth wrote THE AMISH COOK in longhand by the light of a kerosene lamp.‚Ä¢ Elizabeth has been a writer for the Amish newspaper, The Budget, for 40 years.

Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking


Michael Ruhlman - 2009
    Why spend time sorting through the millions of cookie recipes available in books, magazines, and on the Internet? Isn’t it easier just to remember 1-2-3? That’s the ratio of ingredients that always make a basic, delicious cookie dough: 1 part sugar, 2 parts fat, and 3 parts flour. From there, add anything you want—chocolate, lemon and orange zest, nuts, poppy seeds, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, almond extract, or peanut butter, to name a few favorite additions. Replace white sugar with brown for a darker, chewier cookie. Add baking powder and/or eggs for a lighter, airier texture. Ratios are the starting point from which a thousand variations begin. Ratios are the simple proportions of one ingredient to another. Biscuit dough is 3:1:2—or 3 parts flour, 1 part fat, and 2 parts liquid. This ratio is the beginning of many variations, and because the biscuit takes sweet and savory flavors with equal grace, you can top it with whipped cream and strawberries or sausage gravy. Vinaigrette is 3:1, or 3 parts oil to 1 part vinegar, and is one of the most useful sauces imaginable, giving everything from grilled meats and fish to steamed vegetables or lettuces intense flavor. Cooking with ratios will unchain you from recipes and set you free. With thirty-three ratios and suggestions for enticing variations, Ratio is the truth of cooking: basic preparations that teach us how the fundamental ingredients of the kitchen—water, flour, butter and oils, milk and cream, and eggs—work. Change the ratio and bread dough becomes pasta dough, cakes become muffins become popovers become crepes. As the culinary world fills up with overly complicated recipes and never-ending ingredient lists, Michael Ruhlman blasts through the surplus of information and delivers this innovative, straightforward book that cuts to the core of cooking. Ratio provides one of the greatest kitchen lessons there is—and it makes the cooking easier and more satisfying than ever.

The Homemade Pantry: 101 Foods You Can Stop Buying and Start Making


Alana Chernila - 2012
    Come on in, but be prepared—it might not be quite what you expect. There is flour on the counter, oats that overflowed onto the floor, chocolate-encrusted spoons in the sink. There is Joey, the husband, exhausted by the thirty-five preschoolers who were hanging on him all day, and he is stuffing granola into his mouth to ease his five o’clock starvation. There are two little girls trying to show me cartwheels in that miniscule space between the refrigerator and the counter where I really need to be.” In her debut cookbook, Alana Chernila inspires you to step inside your kitchen, take a look around, and change the way you relate to food. The Homemade Pantry was born of a tight budget, Alana’s love for sharing recipes with her farmers’ market customers, and a desire to enjoy a happy cooking and eating life with her young family. On a mission to kick their packaged-food habit, she learned that with a little determination, anything she could buy at the store could be made in her kitchen, and her homemade versions were more satisfying, easier to make than she expected, and tastier.              Here are her very approachable recipes for 101 everyday staples, organized by supermarket aisle—from crackers to cheese, pesto to sauerkraut, and mayonnaise to toaster pastries. The Homemade Pantry is a celebration of food made by hand—warm mozzarella that is stretched, thick lasagna noodles rolled from flour and egg, fresh tomato sauce that bubbles on the stove. Whether you are trying a recipe for butter, potato chips, spice mixes, or ketchup, you will discover the magic and thrill that comes with the homemade pantry.            Alana captures the humor and messiness of everyday family life, too. A true friend to the home cook, she shares her “tense moments” to help you get through your own. With stories offering patient, humble advice, tips for storing the homemade foods, and rich four-color photography throughout, The Homemade Pantry will quickly become the go-to source for how to make delicious staples in your home kitchen.

Old Havana Cookbook: Cuban Recipes in Spanish and English (Bilingual Cookbooks)


Rafael Marcos - 1999
    It was a popular winter destination for North American tourists in the 1950s, and this cookbook recaptures the spirit of Old Havana-- Habana la vieja-- and its celebrated culinary traditions. Cuban cuisine, though derived from its mother country, Spain, has been modified and refined by locally available foods like pork, rice, corn, beans and sugar, and the requirements of a tropical climate. Fine Gulf Stream fish, crabs and lobsters, and an almost infinite variety of vegetables and luscious tropical fruits also have their places on the traditional Cuban table. This cookbook includes over 50 recipes, each in Spanish with side-by-side English translation-- all of them classic Cuban fare and old Havana specialties adapted for the North American kitchen. Among the recipes included are: Ajiaco (famous Cuban Stew), Boiled Pargo with Avocado Sauce, Lobster Havanaise, Tamal en Cazuela (Soft Tamal), Quimbombo (okra), Picadillo, Roast Suckling Pig, and Boniatillo (Sweet Potato Dulce), along with a whole chapter on famous Cuban cocktails and beverages.

Magnolia Table: A Collection of Recipes for Gathering


Joanna Gaines - 2018
    Magnolia Table includes 125 classic recipes—from breakfast, lunch, and dinner to small plates, snacks, and desserts—presenting a modern selection of American classics and personal family favorites. Complemented by her love for her garden, these dishes also incorporate homegrown, seasonal produce at the peak of its flavor.Full of personal stories and beautiful photos, Magnolia Table is an invitation to share a seat at the table with Joanna Gaines and her family.

Food Matters: A Guide to Conscious Eating with More Than 75 Recipes


Mark Bittman - 2008
    Think about it this way: In terms of energy consumption, serving a typical family-of-four steak dinner is the rough equivalent of driving around in an SUV for three hours while leaving all the lights on at home.Bittman offers a no-nonsense rundown on how government policy, big business marketing, and global economics influence what we choose to put on the table each evening. He demystifies buzzwords like "organic," "sustainable," and "local" and offers straightforward, budget-conscious advice that will help you make small changes that will shrink your carbon footprint -- and your waistline.Flexible, simple, and non-doctrinaire, the plan is based on hard science but gives you plenty of leeway to tailor your food choices to your lifestyle, schedule, and level of commitment. Bittman, a food writer who loves to eat and eats out frequently, lost thirty-five pounds and saw marked improvement in his blood levels by simply cutting meat and processed foods out of two of his three daily meals. But the simple truth, as he points out, is that as long as you eat more vegetables and whole grains, the result will be better health for you and for the world in which we live.Unlike most things that are virtuous and healthful, Bittman's plan doesn't involve sacrifice. From Spinach and Sweet Potato Salad with Warm Bacon Dressing to Breakfast Bread Pudding, the recipes in Food Matters are flavorful and sophisticated. A month's worth of meal plans shows you how Bittman chooses to eat and offers proof of how satisfying a mindful and responsible diet can be. Cheaper, healthier, and socially sound, "Food Matters" represents the future of American eating.