In the Kitchen with KRL! Bibliography

I think it's safe to say that we all love lists. The one we posted below is by no means inclusive, but just a taste of what we have to share. I think it's a matter of sheer numbers more than anything else. The cookbook world is burgeoning with great titles to buy these days, lists packed with old favorites but also with tons of new titles that are inspired by our ever widening world of international cooking. Every week seems to unearth yet another type and style of ethnic or regional or local cooking previously uncelebrated, and the cookbook publishers are never far behind with a cookbook or ten for us to buy and place on our shelves, or, at the very least, put on our must see lists.

Food blogs and recipe sites and cookbook sellers are also blossoming like never before. Since most of us who frequent cookbook aisles in the bookstores or the local public library love to eat, and since quite a few of us love to cook as welll, the online sites have grown astronomically to help us to expand our cooking repetories, help us find last minute recipes, and help us uncover new and exciting cooking techniques and tools we never knew existed. Online sites help guide us to new restaurants, turn us on to the latest ingredients, and help point us in the direction of the best and lastest local sources of cooking gear, food festivals and the like. Because of the 'net we are not only better able to look at cooking in a global fashion, we can look at the world of cooking and apply it to our lives and bring it to our tables.

The following bibliography was developed for our upcoming Cooking With KRL! program. Think of it as a kickoff list, an appetizer of sorts, something to help you whet your appetite and get you cruising our library catalog or the Internet. The world of cooking is at your fingertips, so let's go exploring!

Cooking with KRL!
Bibliography

Electronic Media

KRLCatalog http://www.krl.org/
Use the subject heading "Cookery".

Online food sites
Food Network http://www.foodnetwork.com/
Joy of Baking http://www.joyofbaking.com/
Epicurious http://www.epicurious.com/
My Recipes http://www.myrecipes.com/
Better Homes and Gardens www.bhg.com/recipes
101 Cookbooks http://www.101cookbooks.com/

Celebrity sites
Graham Kerr "Galloping Gourmet" http://www.grahamkerr.com/
Jacques Pepin http://www.jacquespepin.net/
Donna Hay www.donnahay.com/au
Martha Stewart http://www.marthastewart.com/
Rachael Ray http://www.rachaelrayshow.com/
Emeril Lagasse/ http://www.emerils.com/
Tom Douglas http://www.tomdouglas.com/
Jamie Oliver http://www.jamieoliver.com/
Nigella Lawson http://www.nigella.com/
Nigel Slater http://www.nigelslater.com/

Cooking DVD's
Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations
Julia Child
Rachel Ray
America's Test Kitchen


Online Cookbook sellers
http://www.ecookbooks.com/
http://www.cooking.com/
http://www.amazon.com/
http://www.borders.com/
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/
Old Cookbooks:
http://www.oldcookbooks.com/
http://www.vintagecookbook.com/

Blogs
http://nycdonutreport.blogspot.com/
http://www.101cookbooks.com/
http://glutenfreegirl.blogspot.com/
http://chocolateandzuchinni.com/
http://coconutlime.blogspot.com/
http://orangette.blogspot.com/

Radio shows
The Kitchen Sisters http://www.kitchensisters.org/
The Spendid Table http://splendidtable.publicradio.org/

Newspaper food columns
http://whatscookingamerica.net/Q-A/newspaper.htm

Nigel Slater's Guardian column
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/series/nigelslaterrecipes

Cookbook Awards:
International Association of Culinary Professionals: http://www.iacp.com/
James Beard Award: http://www.jamesbeard.org/

Books

Memoirs
Art of Eating /MFK Fisher
Garlic and Sapphires / Ruth Reichl
Tender at the Bone / Ruth Reichl
When French Women Cook/Madeline Kamman
My Life in France/Julia Child
MFK Fisher: Among the Pots and Pans /Joan Reardon
Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment / Julie Powell
The Kitchen Diaries/Nigel Slater
Toast/Nigel Slater
Kitchen Confidential /Anthony Bourdain

Great Fiction food moments
“ A Clean, Well Lighted Place”/Ernest Hemingway
The Hobbit/Tolkien
Wind in the Willows/Kenneth Grahame
Like Water for Chocolate/Laura Esquivel
And to help tie that "food theme" into your monthly bookgroup meetings:
The Book Club Cookbook/Judy Gelman

Mysteries
A Puree of Poison/Claudia Bishop
A Catered Murder/Isis Crawford
Corpse Suzette/G. A. McKevett
Chocolate Snowman Murders: a Chocoholic Mystery/Joanna Carl

Reference
Larousse Gastronomique
Food Lover's Companion
Oxford Companion to Food
Bowes and Church Food Values

Cookbooks

Award Winners
James Beard
The Border Cookbook/Cheryl A Jamison and Bill Jamison
KitchenAid
Moosewood Cookbook/Mollie Katzen
IACP
Local Breads/Daniel Leader and Lauren Chattman

Classics
Joy of Cooking/Irma Von Starkloff Rombauer
Better Homes and Gardens
Betty Crocker
The Gourmet Cookbook

Celebrity
Martha Steward Living Cookbook/Martha Stewart
Flavors/Donna Hay
Guy Food/Rachel Ray
Every Day’s a Party/Emeril Lagasse
Tom’s Big Dinners/Tom Douglas
Jamie’s Kitchen: a complete cooking course/Jamie Oliver
How to be a Domestic Goddess/Nigela Lawson

Ethnic
Travel
Tale of 12 Kitchens/Jake Tilson
Culinaria Series
Italian
Marcella Says.../Marcella Hazen
Lidia's Italian Table/Lidia Bastianich
Spanish
1080 Recipes/Simone and Ines Ortega
Jewish
Jewish Cooking in America/Joan Nathan
Asian
Seductions of Rice/Jeffery Alford
Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet/Jeffery Alford
Thousand Recipe Chinese Cookbook/Miller
Washoku:Recipes from the Japanese Home Kitchen/Elizabeth Andoh
Mexican
Seasons of My Heart: A Culinary Journey Through Oaxaca, Mexico/Susana Trilling
My Mexico: A Culinary Odyssey with more than 300 Recipes/Diana Kennedy
Rick Bayless Mexico One Plate at a Time/Rick Bayless

Regional
Southern
Fannie Flagg's Original Whistle Stop Cookbook/Fannie Flagg
Ya'll Come Eat/Jaime Deen
Georgia Cooking in an Oklahoma Kitchen/Trisha Yearwood
In a Cajun Kitchen/Terri P. Wuerthner
Southwest
Los Barrios Family Cookbook/Diana Barrios Trevino
Savor the Southwest/Barbara Pool Fenzel
Fonda San Miguel/Tom Gilliland
Northwest
Pike Place Market Cookbook/Braiden Rex-Johnson
Ray's Boathouse/Ken Gouldthorpe
West Coast Cooking/Greg Atkinson
Kathy Casey's Northwest Table/Kathy Casey

Single Food Focuses
Bake Until Bubbly:The Ultimate Casserole Cookbook/Clifford A Wright
Country Egg, City Egg/Gayle Pirie and John Clark
Onion/Brian Glover
Delicious and Dependable Slow Cooker Recipes/Judith Finlayson

Vegetables
The Produce Bible/Leanne Kitchen

Chocolate
Chocolate: a Bittersweet Saga of Dark and Light/Mort Rosenblum
Chocolate Cake/Michele Urvater
Ghiradelli Cookbook/Ghiradelli Chocolate Company

BBQ
Barbeque Nation/Fred Thompson
Asian Grilling/Su-Mei Yu
Peace, Love and Barbeque/Mike Mills and Amy Mills Tunnicliffe

Vegetarian
Amazing Soy/Dana Jacobs
Beautiful Bowl of Soup: the Best Vegetarian Recipes/Paulette Mitchell
Enchanted Broccoli Forest/Mollie Katzen
Tasahara Recipe Book/Edware Espe Brown
Laurel’s Kitchen/ Laurel Robinson

Baking
The Metropolitan Bakery Cookbook/James Barrett and Wendy Smith Born
Baking Illustrated, A Best Recipe Classic/Editors of Cook's Illustrated Magazine
Baking with Julia: based on the PBS series hosted by Julia Child/Dorie Greenspan

Sauces
Salsas and Tacos/The Santa Fe School of Cooking
Get Saucy/Grace Parisi
Mole!/Gwyneth Doland
Asian Flavors/Wendy Sweeetser

Seafood
New York Times Seafood Cookbook/Edited by Florence Fabricant

Just a few ideas! Share anything and everything you love that might make this list even better!

Cooks Talk!

Upcoming program: In the Kitchen with KRL!

What's lovely about writing in a blog is that you don't have to be an expert about anything, you can just pretend to be! With a nice camera, a flair for writing, a good imagination and a nice software package you can publish your tales online and share your feelings and thoughts with the world. Cookstalk! is a great example of that. We don't pretend to be great chefs or food experts, we just like to talk about food!

What's one better than just writing in a blog is knowing that you can, on occasion, have a platform out there to share not only your thoughts, but local resources available to the public as well! The Kitsap Regional Library will be hosting two cooking resource programs in November to help highlight our month's theme, which is..taa dah!..cookbooks! And while displays and bibliographies scattered about the branches will show off some of the latest and greatest book titles in our collection, my colleague and I will go one step further and not only share with you the best and brightest of our cookbook collection, but online resources, great food blogs, electronic cookbook purveours, memoirs and food focused literature, amongst a wealth of other treats and resources.

Our chat will primarily focus on "what makes a cookbook great", but know right off the bat that this program is a perfect time for show and tell, not only to show off what's great in our collection, but to give you recipe and gift ideas for the upcoming holiday season. It's one thing to go to a bookstore or an online site with a vague idea to buy something, but it's another to have a title in mind, something that you have handled and put into play. It's great to be able to buy the latest Naked Chef or Nigella tome for your friends and family, but it's another to be able to give it and recommend it because you knocked out and really loved the recipes contained therein. So check out our books, give them a test drive and see what you think! Try before you buy!

So, if you are in the mood to celebrate cookbooks and have a desire to discover some new cookbook favorites for the holidays as well, come by the Port Orchard Branch on Sunday November 2nd at 2 PM or the Sylvan Way Branch on Sunday November 23rd at 2 PM. As always, there will be freshly prepared refreshments and doorprizes, too! See you there!

Cooks Talk!

A simple marinara sauce!

All good cooks know shortcuts, or ways to get a good but simple meal to the table in minutes. good cooks know what to stock, what is essential and what they have to have on hand to pull off not only a satisfying meal but a healthy one as well.

Making a tasty tomato sauce is one of the easiest and most enjoyable kitchen experiences going. Who is not beguiled by the scent of simmering sauce, redolent with garlic and basil? Who can pass up a tasty plate of noodles and sauce, especially if it's accompanied by a nice crisp loaf of fresh bread and cool, refreshing side salad?

Savor the following NY Times article and then rush off to your pantry and get out the makings for this simple and delightfully basic sauce!

Cooks Talk!

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/13/health/nutrition/13recipehealth.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Nice pans!

Several years ago I attended a local rummage sale and walked away with a box full of copper and Commercial pans for twelve dollars. At the time I had no idea what I had just bought. I knew nothing about pots and pans outside of the collection of cast iron and Revere Ware goods I had been using for years. I had no concept of the variety of types and styles of industrial kitchen goods outside of the occasional stainless steel utensil I would find second hand. I didn't know NSF from a hole in Swiss cheese. I just knew that those pans looked solid, were nicely built and reasonably priced. I had to have something to use along with the oodles of cookbooks I had been accumulating. No sense getting into a new recipe with all my old pots and pans when heavy duty "new" stuff would serve me even better.

Needless to say I haven't gone out and bought anything new lately, as the price of a new pot or pan can be somewhat prohibitive on a librarian's salary. I do like to look and see what's new on the market, though. And I never tire of lessons and such that make me a more savvy person in the kitchen. It would be great, I suppose, to see a brand new set of heavy stainless steel goods hanging and sparkling from my kitchen pot rack, but whenever I cook I employ those beat old masters of mine and manage to pull off some fabulous dishes. I've found that new isn't always necessary, nice as it can be.

I must say, though, that I look at purchasing cooking gear the same way I look at buying any kind of tool for the house: buy cheap and you'll replace it many times over, buy quality and you'll own it for life. And as much as I would like to own, say, a nice French ceramic cast iron casserole, I'll read up about them first and know what I'm looking for when I come across them at the next rummage sale I attend. Knowledge is power, indeed, and a nice way to save a few bucks as well!

Cooks Talk!

Great NY Times article on what to look for in a pan:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/08/dining/08curi.html?_r=1&oref=slogin



Nice LA Times article on gadgets and gizmos to buy and pass up:

http://www.latimes.com/features/food/la-fo-worthitornot8-2008oct08,0,4672867.htmlstory

Steamers!

I like rice and so does the rest of the world in all it myriad forms and types and styles. It's good with just about anything, fits itself into darn near any meal, and it pretty much one of the easiest foods to prepare. Nevertheless if you aren't paying attention you can end up with a pot of scortched rice on your hands. It's not a reflection on the cook, as it is on a number of factors: the age of the rice, the quality of the pot, the variables in the ratios of rice to liquids, preparation style among others.

The answer to those problems seems to be adding a countertop rice cooker to my kitchen tool collection. Is it a necessary item? Seems to be, if those millions of happy rice cooker users are any indication. Someday I will break down and buy a steamer. I suppose that it would cut down the occasional problems I have with scorching a pilaf or undercooking a pot of steamed rice. They are ubiquitious tools found in millions of kitchens, they cook up a perfect pot of rice time after time, can be used to pull off any number of dishes other than rice, and help to free up valuable stovetop space when you are desperate to pull off a wok full of vegetable stirfry, a pot full of curry and a pan readying itself for a round of pot stickers all at the same time!

Cooks Talk!

Nice NY Times article on steamers!
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/01/dining/01rice.html

Cooking for the young ones

I know all about foodmills. And blendered food. I know how to steam and mash and puree just about anything. It helps to have had four kids to feed over the years. You learn not to become squeamish over pulverized spinach or majorly macerated chicken breast. It's just part of the deal to be able to deal with runny plums and very loose pumpkin and squished squash. It's all part of the bargain, and it's all to the good. A good eater is a happy eater, especially later on in life.

I found the following article out of the New York Times to be especially interesting. There's no doubt about it, living in the big city affects the way you approach eating. It's that daily exposure to new and different and interesting foods, not only familiar ethnic foods and traditional family flavors, but also those from around the world. Living in a small town has it's disadvantages. I'm always excited when a new restaurant opens up here in town, but I know that it's only a speck in the eye when it comes to the variety of flavors and cooking styles available in a major metropolitan city.

Cooking is an exciting adventure, and cooking for children should be no exception. I remember being very tuned into size and shapes of those early foods, being turned onto sensitivity issues and the like from the start. But I also knew that experiencing different foods and flavors was important. So it was a thrill to see that that writer was so tuned into contemporary ingredients, fanciful flavors and unique combinations of tastes and was willing to share them with her toddler. I grew up in a fairly mono-flavored home, and rebelled against flavors and textures and anything unique. Reading this I wished my mom was more experimental. For someone who loves to cook, it's great to see that simple yet interesting foods have finally made their way to the high chair tray.

Cooks Talk!

Interesting eating adventures for baby!
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/01/dining/01baby.html