Cookbook meme

Yippee, Jennifer of Taste everything once has made me the next in line for playing the Cookbook meme 2005. I do not have a lot to display for you folks but here you go:



Collection in kitchen


collection in study, right


collection in study, left

1. Rationale behind what we're seeing?

I would like to think there is a rationale but there is none. Its all here 'coz there is no place elsewhere for these to be. A lot of it has been gathered at library book sales. Many are vegetarian books. I recently got old, battered copies of The joy of cooking and Larousse Gastronomique from a library sale. Waiting to try the right recipe from the two well-known books. But my most used recipes are in word documents, note pads and magazine clippings.


notes

2. Most recommended?

Oh there are several. I love the Fannie Farmer cookbook for thoroughness, Nigella's books for writing and Alice Medrich's books for her authoritarian voice. I also love The sandwich book by Nancy Silverton- recipes are long-winded but worth it.

3. Cookbook that made you what you are?

I am relatively new to cooking but the food shows on TV particularly Caprial's cafe and From Martha's kitchen got me started. At one point, every thing I cooked was from the Food network website. Now I get my kick by reading cookbooks than by watching them on TV. Probably I have read more cookbooks than made stuff in the kitchen.

4. Porniest cookbook?

Martha Stewart's Hors d'Oeuvres handbook, Mai Pam's Pleasures of the Vietnamese Table, Nigella's Domestic Goddess. I have read most of Thai and Vietnamese cookbooks and I love the food and people pics.

5. My Choice cookbook?

Its funny, but I don't have any. I always turn to the Internet- a google search, Epicurious or my favorite Recipezaar. If I am clueless of what to cook I make Indian recipes just as my mom would make. I recently bought 1000 Indian recipes by Neelam Batra and it is something I use very often to make north Indian dishes. I highly recommend it.

6. If you were a cookbook, which cookbook would you be?

This is really easy. It would have to be two books actually- Flatbreads and flavors and The turmeric trail. Both of them are good writings about the eating experience, food in a social and regional context rather than being recipe-focused. I loved the Turmeric trail 'coz it brings back a lot of memories of growing up in a South Indian household. Truly a cultural experience...

7. If your cookbook were extremely valuable, so valuable you might hide it with other valuables, where would that place be?

I would scan all my valuable books onto a word doc and store it in a CD. More valuable are the hand-written recipes copied from various sources, collected over a few years. I have to find a place now to hide them but I doubt if anyone else would find them valuable.

I am tagging Nicole of Baking sheet. Nicole, I wonder where you get all your delicious looking recipes from?