Favorite Cookbooks

Often a cookbook can serve as a doorway into cooking.  A cookbook doesn't judge if you make a mistake and it can definitely withstand frantic and virulent cursing when a recipe is confusing or you notice that some component of a recipe needs to refrigerate for 24 hours and you were hoping to have it for dinner that night.

So a cookbook can be your friend on your culinary adventure -- and a good friend can be hard to find.

I asked my mother, Kitchen Witch One, what were her favorite cookbooks. Here is her list:

Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking by Marcella Hazan
Joy of Cooking (1983) by Irma S. Rombauer and Marion Rombauer Becker
Fast Food My Way by Jacques Pépin
The Australian Women’s Weekly The Barbecue Cookbook
Cooking for a Crowd  by Susan Wyler
La Varenne Pratique by Anne Willan
Delia Smith's Christmas by Delia Smith

Perfect Recipes for Having People Over  by Pam Anderson

This list seems quite short when you see how many cookbooks she owns.  From all those cookbooks, she only has this many favorites? Let me just say I'm not going to be rushing to carry all the boxes of cookbooks if my parents decide to move again. Books can bring so much joy but they can also be very heavy.


My list is comparatively shorter:

Well Fed and Well Fed 2 by Melissa Joulwan. I love these cookbooks. The second Paleo cookbook I ever bought was Well Fed and my mom kind of fell in love with it and the carnitas recipe (which always makes my life easier). This cookbook made me fall in love with cumin. I previously was of the opinion that cumin was very reminiscent of body odor - but no more -- well it still reminds me of B.O., but at least it's tasty B.O.  Well Fed 2 is worth its weight in goal solely for the variation of burgers, balls, and bangers. I love to eat new flavors - I get bored with the same things over and over again - but these meat recipes are so tasty (ALWAYS DOUBLE THE RECIPE) and easy.  It makes deciding what to eat for lunch super easy.

Nom Nom Paleo: Food for Humans by Michelle Tam and Henry Fong. One of my favorite blogs because of mushroom chips. I love this cookbook. I actually bought it for my mom for her birthday - What do you get the woman who has a lot of cookbooks? Another cookbook! But I've kind of been enjoying her gift more than she has…Am I a selfish daughter? Very possibly. But Big-O Bacon Burgers. Big-O Bacon Burgers. Big-O Bacon Burgers!!!

Do you have a favorite cookbook? Feel free to share in the comment section.

Introduction - Samantha's Food History

I live to eat. When I plan vacations, the main things that I worry about are: 

1. Where am I going to eat?
2. Where am I going to sleep? (This is also important).  

The success of vacations are measured by the quality of the food.  The visit to Seattle in the midst of an ice storm sounds like it has the potential to be the worst vacation ever, but then you factor in fried cheese curds, BBQ pork humbow,  and Pike Place Market, and it's one of the best vacations I've ever had. 

BBQ pork humbow at Pike Place Market

I remember the restaurants in the places where I used to live as child with a laser-like focus.  At five years old, I had already created a map in my head of the places where I liked to eat or could get food.  

So food has always been on my mind and it was easy to lose myself in the textures, flavors, and comfort that food could provide. Consequently for most of my life, my weight has also been an unpleasant reminder of my love of food. Diets were the equivalent of a gastronomic prison sentence. 

My mother has always been the cook in the house. My dad would occasionally pull out some Italian dish - fiddling around with ratios of tomato paste to bread crumbs in his Sicilian Spidini, but I think I would be more likely to win the lottery than see my dad cook like this again in my life (scrambled eggs don't count).  My mother is an intimidating culinary presence so trying to wrestle the "cook of the house" mantle away from her is a challenge. However, my mother is a pretty pitiful baker and so baking was a relatively safe way that I could cook and experiment without threatening her status or endangering her beloved kitchen.  I'm that crazy person who likes to make the most time-consuming recipes or bake things from scratch. This is another way that my mother and I differ.  

I would bake pies, cookies, bars from the Joy of Cooking,  croissants and bagel bombs from Momofuku Milk Bar's cookbook and then on January 16, 2012, I decided to start living life sans gluten.  This was a spontaneous decision (a true rarity for me), but I felt so much better the next day that I was sold.   Eating gluten-free provided me with an opportunity to cook more in my household. I bought some gluten-free and Paleo cookbooks,  but I don't think I'll ever be able to complete with the veritable wall of cookbooks that my mother owns (the background picture of this blog). 

Cooking more provided me the opportunity to relate more with my mother. We started going to grocery stores together, talking about food. She would reluctantly and at times brusquely answer my cooking questions - "Do you think this pot is big enough?" 

So while cooking has provided us this opportunity to bond, it has also fueled some of our greatest arguments. My mother and I are very different people - I like to measure and follow a recipe. She's a little more carefree and likes to "concoct" dishes.   

I've recently come to the realization that I am a carboholic. Eating gluten-free greatly reduced my intake of carbs because while there are some really great gluten-free products they don't always come close to the gluten-y goodness of pizza, bread, etc.  However in this new year, I have decided to eliminate grains all together and start living a more Paleo way of life.  

In the midst of rolling out meatballs, I brought up the idea of starting a blog with my mother to talk about our love of cooking, our memories of food (and eating),  and our relationship together.  This is the result.  :)