Christmas Cookbook Additions

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year everyone! Hope you all had a restful break from real life for a week or two! I know by now it's a week or two past Christmas, but I wanted to share some of my favorite Christmas gifts with you, since of course they involve cooking! Much to my mother's chagrin, I continue to collect cookbooks...they never seem to get old to me, and there's always a new cookbook coming out from new chefs and on new topics (Mark Bittman's book, Salt on yes, you guess it, SALT!...I think I need that, after all, it was the title of my college essay). This year, I got a few classic cookbooks that will definitely get some use in my kitchen:


The Flavor Bible by Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg is more than just a cookbook...it lists every kind of ingredient you could possibly imagine and what flavors pair well with that ingredients. For cooks like me who hate following recipes to a tee and are always looking for a new kick to that classic recipe, this cookbook is definitely a must. It was a huge help when I was trying to put together my menu project for school where we had to create our own themed menus and recipes (it will be the topic of my next post, don't worry!)


The French Laundry by Thomas Keller...need I say more? The chef of famed restaurants, Per Se, Bouchon, Bouchon Baker, ad hoc and of course, The French Laundry brings his intricate recipes to life in this gorgeous cookbook filled with behind-the-scenes stories of the farmers and purveyors who make his restaurant what it is. Although it's definitely not a new cookbook (it was first published in 1999), it's as close to dining at The French Laundry as I can get (hint hint, someone take me to San Francisco please?).


And probably the best cookbook of them all, my great-great grandma's Fannie Farmer cookbook published in 1917, given to me by my Nani. While it's probably not something I'll cook from, it's so interesting to see how much cookbooks have changed since then and the types of things that were popular (lots kidneys and cream!). All the cookbooks in the world couldn't have meant more to me than getting this cookbook, it's something I'll cherish and save for the rest of my life.

I'll leave you with the epigraph from the beginning of the Fannie Farmer cookbook:

"Cookery means the knowledge of Medea and of Circe and of Helen and of the Queen of Sheba. It means the knowledge of all herbs and fruits and balms and spices, and all that is healing and sweet in the fields and groves and savory in meats. It means carefulness and inventiveness and willingness and readiness of appliances. It means the economy of your grandmothers and the science of the modern chemist; it means much testing and no wasting; it means English thoroughness and French art and Arabian hospitality; and in fine, it means that you are to be perfectly and always ladies--loaf givers."
-Ruskin