Skip to main content

Best of Lists.... Cookbook Edition

One of the things that has kept me interested in the printed word during my winter with crime fiction was cookbooks. At this point I do not have the proper words to describe the attraction as I cook very little from cookbooks or related food magazines. Pretty pictures and wish fulfillment are about all I have at the moment to explain my curiosity.

I know some people find Top Ten lists odious and beside the point, but I like to call those people crazy. Top Ten lists are harmless fun. Here are seven recent ones for the best cookbooks of 2011.

The New York Times list is insistent that their readership expand their global view of cooking. I love those weighty tomes about Middle Eastern cooking and the like. Perhaps it is a bit naive  to only praise these books for their pictorial beauty, but living where I do invariably means using Google to search for 'substitute for X exotic spice.' My picks from this list are Tender by Nigel Slater and Hugh Acheson's A New Turn in the South. 

The Bon Appetit list was complied by the owners of Rabelais bookstore in Portland. It is a pretty populist list, Mission Street Food, Milk Bar, and Joe Beef are the more well known titles to appear. If I had to pick a title to add to my shelf it would be Bocca Cookbook by Jacob Kenedy. I'm a sucker for cool looking dust jackets and things that are in London.

The Amazon list is a spare but culturally accepted ten titles. The only list so far to include the hugely acclaimed Gabrielle Hamilton memoir. I guess that title will pop on Best Bio lists. The Modernist Cuisine book makes an appearance, as does the third incarnation of Alton Brown's amusing Good Eats series. I'd go with M. Pepin's Essential Pepin if I could. Maybe I will.

The Huffington Post borrows BA's annoying slide show display, which is troubling. Claudia Roden's The Food of Spain peeks its head out again as does Andrew Carmellini's vaguely right wing sounding American Flavor. I'll be coming into a little money in the next week. And with those tens of dollars I'll be picking up Heston Blumenthal at Home.

Epicurious adds the Blumenthal book to their list, along with The Homesick Texan and Truly Mexican. I've read some of Michael Ruhlman's non-fiction on cooking but none of his more directly related food missives. The book I'd grab here is Plenty by Yotam Ottolenghi.

The NPR list begins with me questioning that this might be the longest post of THD 5 year existence. Anyway, I ran across Molly Stevens book, All About Roasting, a month or so ago. It immediately spoke to my Midwestern sensibilities for its obvious practicality. I'm going to eat meat, so lets figure out how to cook it without destroying it.

Serious Eats restricts their list to the time test number of 10. Mario Batali appears with his Simple Family Meals. I read Heat earlier this year and I found Mr. Batali to be kind of a douche. However as near as I can tell he writes a hell of a cookbook. The Ruhlman and Camellini books show up again, but I might have to go with the Batali from this crowd.

-- Additions 12/5  --

The San Francisco Chronicle's main list focuses on books released in the last couple months. A secondary list goes over books released earlier in the year. In the main list is the Pepin book, along with the Ruhlman. The Eleven Madison Park and The Food 52Cookbook has also been a popular choice among a couple lists. The SF Chronicle list of course picks a handful of SF centric titles, but the one that intrigues me the most is The Whole Beast Butchery by Ryan Farr of 4505 Meats.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Very Best of Mr. Dennis Lehane

I thought this post would appear in October. Ya, know when SHUTTER ISLAND: THE MOVIE was supposed to be released. And then it wasn't. Something about Leo not being able to do 'press' for the movie. Doesn't really matter the reason, a February release date has one of those fancy Hollywood meanings: Not Good. Look I'll be honest, I didn't connect with SHUTTER ISLAND. I loved the fifties setting, the haunted house atmosphere, and impending doom of the Hurricane. Even the set-up of the story was intriguing but how it played out just didn't work for me. Some interesting characters, a bunch of great set pieces, but the ending announces itself with an expected, thud that went nowhere. Am I still going to the movie? Its Lehane, Scorsese, Leo, and Ruffalo of course I am. Anyway the list. 8. Prayers for Rain - 1999 The last Kenzie-Gennaro book follows our heroes as they investigate a guy who is terrorizing women into committing suicide. The book played like an episo...
4 comments
Read more

Small Mercies - The Return of Dennis Lehane

 A time honored tradition at The Hungry Detective HQ is to perform the twice annual, and largely ceremonial, 'Dennis Lehane New book 20XX" Google search. Nothing comes up on his long abandoned Website, except notification of the script work for his television and film projects.  Grousing aside, 2022 was a big year for Mr. Lehane. BLACK BIRD, a show he created, played on Apple+ to solid acclaim. The show's star, Paul Walter Hauser, won a Golden Globe. But despite that I have yet to watch it. Not for any other reason than I am a movie person more than a TV person. The TV I do watch is watched in an arcane order that is difficult to decipher and even more baffling to explain. Short story, I need to watch ANDOR [Editor's Note: Slow going on ANDOR despite everyone telling me it is amazing.] And then BLACK BIRD, or maybe SLOW HORSES. I'll get there...  Anyway at the dead end of 2022, I did the search. Found out he wrote a book. SMALL MERCIES . I was excited to hear it. I...
Post a Comment
Read more

A Fogotten Post: A Remembrance

[Editor's Note: Started this missive, never came back to it. Still relevant, I suppose.] I am reading MURDER IN OLD BOMBAY by Nev Marsh. This was... technically still is... on my to buy pile. In the before time... the overwhelming to be read pile time... I would have bought this and thrown it on the shelf to read in the near or more likely distant future. I hope I like it enough to buy the second in the series. Buying a book is fun, buying a book that is good is better. [Editor's Note: Abandoned this book, unfinished.] BLACKTOP WASTELAND - S.A. COSBY So glad I didn't buy this last summer. Good decision to put off buying and reading what would have certainly been one of the best books of the year. New goal for the remaining 2021 calendar. Don't be dumb. Buy Mr. Cosby's follow up and read day one! [Editor's Note: I did buy a signed copy of RAZORBLADE  TEARS, meanwhile B.W. won every award, except the Edgar where it wasn't even nominated!? Also Signed firsts of...
Post a Comment
Read more