This might sound weird, but I know I’m not the only one…I read cookbooks like novels. I love to read them cover to cover. You can learn many little things from different kitchens, cooks, chefs, and cultures from around the world. Well written cookbooks flow like a story. They start with a good foundation of learning about the author and chef of the book. They give you some ground rules about techniques that are used throughout the recipes. My bookshelves are loaded with cookbooks from all over the world – from celebrity chefs to self-published home cooks, like myself. I have pulled together some pretty good cookbooks I found on Amazon, and new finds for you to check out.
Today We Are Cooking . . .: Recipes That Teach You to Think Like a Chef
Cook like a pro with this approachable collection of over 100 foolproof recipes for go-to, comforting dishes from chef and creator Tini Younger. Social media sensation Tini Younger is a trained chef who loves classic and familiar comfort food dishes. This means she knows how to make the best possible versions of all the foods you crave, from dips and wings for game night to cheesy pastas for cozy nights in. Her recipes are foolproof and easy to follow yet created using a culinary pro’s sensibility, with top-notch technique and layers of flavors and textures in every bite.
Bad B*tch in the Kitch: Craveable Asian Recipes to Ditch the Takeout: A Cookbook
Cassie Yeung likes to think of herself as a chef for the people—no professional culinary training here, just a girl who really loves to cook (and eat, obvi). She believes that the #1 rule in the kitchen is to have fun, let loose, and cook the way you want to. For Cassie, that means yelling “behind!” in her own kitchen, softening butter against her skin, and showing off her baddie nails as she pleats dumplings like a boss. In Bad Bitch in the Kitch, Cassie serves up the food she loves most: the Asian dishes she grew up eating and now craves on the regular. So many people know and love Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese, and Singaporean cuisine, but they don’t always know how easy it can be to recreate their favorite dishes at home. Cassie shares some of her go-to dishes, dialed in for home cooks, in chapters such as:
Appetites: A Cookbook
Anthony Bourdain is a man of many appetites. And for many years, first as a chef, later as a world-traveling chronicler of food and culture on his CNN series Parts Unknown, he has made a profession of understanding the appetites of others. These days, however, if he’s cooking, it’s for family and friends.
Appetites, his first cookbook in more than ten years, boils down forty-plus years of professional cooking and globe-trotting to a tight repertoire of personal favorites—dishes that everyone should (at least in Mr. Bourdain’s opinion) know how to cook. Once the supposed “bad boy” of cooking, Mr. Bourdain has, in recent years, become the father of a little girl—a role he has embraced with enthusiasm. After years of traveling more than 200 days a year, he now enjoys entertaining at home. Years of prep lists and the hyper-organization necessary for a restaurant kitchen, however, have caused him, in his words, to have “morphed into a psychotic, anally retentive, bad-tempered Ina Garten.”
Matty Matheson: Home Style Cookery: A Home Cookbook
Home Style Cookery is the New York Times bestselling recipe-packed cookbook from Matty Matheson—executive producer and actor on Hulu’s Emmy Award-winning series The Bear—offering advice for the home cook who wants to be more creative and ambitious when cooking for family and friends.
This cookbook is Matty’s definitive guide to mastering your kitchen, covering everything from pantry staples (breads, stocks, and pickles) to party favorites (dips, fried foods, and grilled meats), to weeknight go-tos (stews, pastas, salads), and special occasion showstoppers (roasts, smoked meats, and desserts) in 135 of his absolute favorite recipes to cook for the people you love.
Homemade on a Weeknight
written by yours truly. This is was first cookbook, which I self-published and truly loved writing. It a collection of over 100 recipes that my family has loved over the years. It is a starting point for my foray into the cookbook authorship world and one I hope to follow up soon!
The Choi of Cooking: Flavor-Packed, Rule-Breaking Recipes for a Delicious Life: A Cookbook
Built on a foundation of balance and compassion, The Choi of Cooking is Roy Choi’s magnum opus, reflecting his personal journey of cooking, living, and learning from mistakes. When Choi realized that falling victim to his greasy cravings was not sustainable, he began to eat more nutritious foods—but he did it his way, to build a more realistic lifestyle not based on extreme dieting or deprivation. This equates to vegetable-forward recipes, with plenty of pit stops of comfort along the way, and tons of flavors layered in every single bite.
Do you have any favorite cookbooks to share? Do you have any Cookbook suggestions that you want me to check out?
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Now Let’s Get Cookin’!
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Estelle Forrest self-published this cookbook after a lot of playing around in the kitchen. You can purchase your own copy here:
AVAILABLE IN PRINT OR KINDLE eBOOK VERSIONS
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