Armed Polite Society
Main Forums => The Roundtable => Topic started by: BridgeRunner on December 07, 2009, 12:25:57 PM
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So, usually I get my husband some gaming stuff or other, but I think he'd like something different this year.
He's gotten really into watching cooking shows, and really into attempting to cook. The trouble is he has no interest in doing things the easy way (mixes, etc), and no technique to make doing things the hard way work out.
I have quite a few cook books, but he's expressed some interest in getting one for himself. I dunno why, but I can dig the whole sense of ownership thing. If the man doesn't go searching through his wife's cook books, I guess I can get him one.
He needs something with not an overwhelming number of recipes. No specific type of cuisine, either. Mostly fairly quick stuff, with lots and lots of guidance on techniques. If it says to braise or saute or whisk, he needs a reminder of what those mean. Is there such a thing as a novice cook book with interesting, simple, and good recipes that is not too housewifely? Fairly available ingredients would be a big plus, for obvious reasons. Well, and often when he decides to cook it is because I am too busy or tired to cook a real meal, so he takes over.
Cooking is just something he never learned at all, and now he wants to.
We both really enjoy Alton Brown's show "Good Eats". I may just get him one or two of Alton Brown's books, but am open to other ideas or specific recommendations--he's got something like five books out.
TIA!
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In this scenario, my very first choice would be: How to cook everything, by Mark Bittman.
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"Kill it and grill it: A Guide to Preparing and Cooking Wild Game and Fish" by Ted & Shemane Nugent.
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A subscription to Cooks Illustrated magazine would be great. You get 6 issues a year and they are loaded with tips, tricks and some great recipes. They will take tried and true recipes and make them better. I have been getting it for years now and have tried numerous recipes from them and they always turn out great.
http://www.cooksillustrated.com/
bob
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2nd Cooks Illustrated.
If it says to braise or saute or whisk, he needs a reminder of what those mean. Is there such a thing as a novice cook book with interesting, simple, and good recipes that is not too housewifely?
Anything by Alton Brown. He'll learn the techniques and science about cooking. It's fun, interesting, and not at all feminine. If neither of you have ever watched his show, Good Eats, buy/rent some DVDs and enjoy.
Chris
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Alton Brown on...
making sauces: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vW1zwHhBctY
man foods: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHwasrpAx88
Chris
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3rd Cooks Illustrated and AB to the whatever power.
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"How to Serve Man."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5x0BSgLKnSk&feature=related
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"How to Serve Man."
I wasn't really looking for recipes from the less civilized parts of the South Pacific, but thanks!
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Those all sound great, but how about something that will teach him the basic techniques?
Something like Better Homes & Gardens? Yeah, not a big excitement quotient, but the dish is more likely to come out edible when cooked by a noob.
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Jfruser, AB teaches basic techniques and even explains why you use them vs another technique.
He did an entire show on chocolate chip cookies and showed the results from using different ingredients (http://www.foodnetwork.com/good-eats/three-chips-for-sister-marsha/index.html)
Chris
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Maybe one of the various One Pot Cookbooks?
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When I read this thread title I thought "Alton Brown." Glad to see I wasn't alone. :D
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"Joy of Cooking" covers the bases pretty well.
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http://www.amazon.com/Fannie-Farmer-Cookbook-Marion-Cunningham/dp/0553568817/ref=tmm_mmp_title_0 (http://www.amazon.com/Fannie-Farmer-Cookbook-Marion-Cunningham/dp/0553568817/ref=tmm_mmp_title_0)
At 1248 pages, this book has more than you have asked for, but it covers good, basic foods. It has sections to teach all the special cooking vocabulary, and has been one of the most useful cookbooks I have ever purchased. Be sure to get this version, as I can not vouch for the stripped down, revised edition with all the fat and cholesterol removed from the recipes.
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Search the used book stores for a Playboy Cookbook. It NEVER failed me over the last 45 years. Receipes are fairly simple and good.....chris3
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Brad
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Search the used book stores for a Playboy Cookbook. It NEVER failed me over the last 45 years. Receipes are fairly simple and good.....chris3
It has recipes?
Brad
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kitchen science
http://www.amazon.com/Kitchen-Science-Guide-Knowing-Success/dp/0395480728
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Some appliances come with cookbooks . . .
http://www.hulu.com/watch/19046/saturday-night-live-bassomatic
And of course, cooking information is available on video, too . . .
http://www.hulu.com/watch/3523/saturday-night-live-the-french-chef
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The Joy of Cooking
Betty Crocker
Julia Childs
Fix It and Forget It (or as my kids refer to it, "Shut up and Eat It")
Google is your friend.
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The Joy of Cooking
Betty Crocker
Julia Childs
Fix It and Forget It (or as my kids refer to it, "Shut up and Eat It")
Google is your friend.
Yeah...i am pretty aware that basic cookbooks exist.
Joy of Cooking I own, so it's not a great candidate. it's also a little dated
Betty Crocker I also own, and it's very dated.
Julia Child is french cooking, quite specifically, classical french cooking
Fix it and Forget it i'm not aware of.
I was hoping for suggestions and comments, which I've gotten, which is GREAT!
If talking about anything that could be found via Google was somehow bad, no one would ever say anything.
How to Cook Everything looks promising. I may do that, and one of the Alton Brown books.
The one-pot concepts aren't really what I'm looking for. He can already throw stuff in a pot according to directions. He wants to learn to really cook.
Thanks everyone!
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BW,
I was referring to use Google to get the best price on cookbooks, not for getting suggestions and ideas. :angel:
The Fix it and Forget it cookbook is all crockpot recipes.
Sounds like you just need to wrap-up the books you already have, along with a map to kitchen in the box. =D
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I was referring to use Google to get the best price on cookbooks, not for getting suggestions and ideas. :angel:
Alrighty then. Just wasn't sure how to read that.
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Alrighty then. Just wasn't sure how to read that.
That's the problem with the interwebz. You can see body and facial postions or hear tonality, which makes up 90% of communication.
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My wife and I are at the age in which the peers of our children are starting to get married. If the couple likes to cook at all, or would like to learn about cooking, our standard wedding gift is two cookbooks: How to Cook Everything, by Mark Bittman, (as I mentioned earlier) and the New York Times Cookbook. HTCE is an excellent cooking primer while the NYTC is a little bit more advanced but still has some very good basic recipes and instructional techniques. If we are giving one cookbook, for the relative non-foodie couples, it is HTCE.
On a side note, we find it interesting and somewhat horrifying as to how few young people cook nowadays. We have always enjoyed cooking and eating well, and thank goodness that our kids picked that up. When my youngest left for college a couple of months ago, her roommates thought she was Julia Child since she knew how to make an omelet. The roommates are at the Top Ramen and frozen burrito stage.
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I highly recommend Jamie Oliver's books
The Naked Chef
and Cook with Jamie: My Guide to Making You a Better Cook
would be my suggestions, but most of his are good.
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Some appliances come with cookbooks . . .
http://www.hulu.com/watch/19046/saturday-night-live-bassomatic
And of course, cooking information is available on video, too . . .
http://www.hulu.com/watch/3523/saturday-night-live-the-french-chef
SNL French Chef skits take on a whole new meaning now that I know Julia Child was a member of the OSS. Somehow I think she was a bit handier with a knife than portrayed:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121910345904851347.html
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Millcreek, I think a lot of that has to do with how many people simply don't cook at all anymore. My mother-in-law heats things up from time to time and actually cooks a full meal maybe a half-dozen times a year. I have never known my father-in-law to prepare any kind of foodstuff more involved that a bologna sandwich (not fried, cold). When they eat at home, they toss an animal protein--pre-cut chicken breasts or pre-cut salmon fillets into foil and throw it on a propane grill. They open up a bag of salad, and that's dinner.
We've figured out that if we are going to their home for a meal we have to eat first and bring snacks. Nothing against them, at least not in this regard--they are mostly sedentary middle-aged people; I'm fairly athletic and have been lactating or pregnant or both for over four years now--just an illustration of how little importance they give to food and its proper preparation and service. Meals are over inside of ten minutes.
I've learned a whole lot about cooking, but already knew about eating. I was raised with a bizarre and kind of cool melding of middle-America+Ashkenazi Jewish folk cooking, where the folk part modifies both the American and the Jewish. I was also raised poor, and the kind of poor most Americans don't know from. We weren't completely dirt-broke most of the time, but because of the high cost of kosher food, we were food poor. The idea of making chili without beans is completely foreign to me, and a chuck steak serves at least six.
But, we had dinner every night. We had formal feasts twice a week. When my family eats, it takes at least an hour or so, and can last all afternoon or evening, and every time we show up (well, now, after those fun years of them not speaking to Ian) the table is set, tablecloth and all, and my mother starts cooking. The first time I cooked an Easter dinner I think I weirded Ian out a little bit. He was not remotely prepared for my idea of a festive meal, which involved four course totaling about ten dishes, every fancy wedding gift serving platter pressed into service, all of our friends invited, and each dish having some symbolism relating to Easter in some way. I didn't do it that well, but for me, it seemed the minimum one could or should do for something so momentous as our first Easter in our home.
For a long, long time, I luxuriated in the awesomeness of the cheap food that normal America gets. Meat that is six or seven bucks a pound for nice cuts, a whole block of decent cheese for three bucks! Astonishing. Way overdid it for a long time on the stuff I couldn't have as a kid. Twenty years of waiting all week for those three bites of real beef on the sabbath (as opposed to ground beef, which we had on weekdays from time to time) can really create one heck of a long-term craving for the stuff.
Now we're evening out a little, getting more balanced. We've started eating veggie meals from time to time, for no reason other than it helps keep us thinking about food and helps us avoid falling into the really boring meat+starch+vegetable=meal trap. My in-laws do think we're nutty to put this much thought into food, especially considering everything else we have going on in our lives, but I just cannot imagine a life where dried-out chicken breasts, pre-cut and packaged, are one's major form of nutrition, to be cooked and consumed in the space of about five minutes. That's just a travesty.
That doesn't make me a good cook, which I'm not, but all of it does give me and apparently now Ian, the motivation to learn to cook properly when he was raised without anything beyond quickie cream-of-X soup casseroles and scalped chicken breasts.
Wow, that was thread-drifty. :lol:
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Today's younger generation eats at fast food places........and.......it shows..........Go to a Barnes & Noble or a Border's, or such book store. They have whole sections on cookbooks......chris3
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Reed College alumni have resurrected The Impoverished Students' Book of Cookery, Drinkery, & Housekeepery (http://bookstore.reed.edu/shop_product_detail.asp?mscssid=3F6355C7DE294B5894DB0311BF3B6047&catalog_group_id=Mg&catalog_group_name=R2VuZXJhbCBCb29rcw&catalog_id=375&catalog_name=SW1wb3ZlcmlzaGVkIFN0dWRlbnRzIEJvb2sgT2YgQ29va2VyeQ&product_name=SU1QT1ZFUklTSEVEIFNUVURFTlRTJyBCT09LIE9GIENPT0tFUlkgRFJJTktFUlkgQU4&pf_id=IMPOVERISH0876780710&type=3&target=Default.asp). I haven't laid eyes on it for decades, recall it being more fun than useful, but am ordering for several friends and family for the gag value.
(Yes, "gag' is very much a double entendre!)
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Well, I got him a copy of How to Cook Everything (Bittman) and I'm Just Here for the Food (Alton Brown). Bought them locally, so it cost me more than I'd estimated. I think Amazon must have been selling Brown in paperback, because their regular price was a LOT less than what I paid, but if I can suffer through fewer failed attempts at real cooking, it will be worth it.
Not that I'd give a gift solely for my own benefit, but, well,
A couple weeks ago he decided to get out my old Betty Crocker cookbook and make a really puffy omelet. He didn't know what cream of tartar is, just that it recommended using some to increase fluffiness. He used about three times as much as was warranted, and served an omelet completely coated in acidic grit. I think that these two cookbooks will strongly discourage any major mistakes along those lines.
Oh, and I also ordered him a "curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal" t-shirt. $29 for a freaking $16 dollar t-shirt. Fat man surcharge plus UPS shipping. :mad: