Between Joy of Cooking and Jacques Pepin's Complete Techniques, you'll have all you need to know for years.

As for online stuff, I also dig 101cookbooks.com.

newberry wrote:Real Fast Food by Nigel Slater

I like the Nigel Slater books too. "Real Food" has a recipe for Roast Chicken Laksa (it's actually a Peter Gordon recipe) which is amazing. I swear this soup can cure all known illnesses... or at least make you forget you're sick.

I got the new Slater book for Christmas, but I've not tried anything from it yet.

If you're into Asian food the Longrain book is excellent. If you're in Sydney is worth eating there too. It has a nice bar as well.

I threw that Moosewood book away, as everything I made from it was complete shit.

I have never hated a cookbook that much.

On the other hand, this book is very nearly universally recognized as the jumping off point of the idea of gourmet food and culture in the US. If you're serious about learning to cook well, most food snobs will point at this book and grunt whilst staring out a window and waiting for you to go away. They're just kind of like that, y'know.

The most enjoyable food books for sheer reading pleasure are Mediterranean Food and French Country Cooking by Elizabeth David, from the fifties. They are widely available and dirt cheap, and read like poetry. I have not tried any of the recipes, for fear it would spoil my enjoyment of the books.

John W. wrote:Any recommendations for interesting cookbooks or some good recipes out there?

First - do not hesitate. As mentioned above, get a subscription to Cooks Illustrated. Second go out and buy an issue of Cooks Illustrated (Borders) to read until your delivery starts. Even Daniel Boulud refers to these guys, hidden in the hills of Vermont, for the basics of American cooking. An absolutely amazing resource for the every day stuff we all cook incorrectly.

Third. That little fukkin Brit poof Jamie Oliver is an absolute genius. A comfort food to culinary master. Pick any book of his - Like Alfred Portale he will not ever let you down but his recipes are easier.

The "Joy of Cooking" is indeed a good place to start but Jesus after about of year of cooking from it that book gets tired. It's like every recipe in that book calls for some kind of vinegar...and a lot of it.

"Charlie Palmer's Casual Cooking" is great. "The Soup Bible" is off-the cuff-excellent. And "The Buyer's Guide to Olive Oil" is a step in the right direction. That Tyler Florence dude is a total corksoaker, but he puts a good book together (NB: the guy's name is Tyler Florence).

Man, I'm hungry...

I'll second DFTR's Moosewood sentiments. Horrible cookbooks. Taste like sawdust, and I tend to eat vegetarian more than not.

I go to www.epicurious.com

Sourmilk wrote:The "Joy of Cooking" is indeed a good place to start but Jesus after about of year of cooking from it that book gets tired. It's like every recipe in that book calls for some kind of vinegar...and a lot of it.

That's just crazy. That book has the best, most wide-ranging variety of basic, staple recipes in English. The whole point of a book like that, in contrast to 99% of all other cookbooks, is that every recipe is a starting point and it arms you with what you need to know to eventually add variations of your own and, ultimately, not need recipes at all. That's what differentiates cooks from people who just think they like to cook.

I'm still getting there.

I'm not disagreeing with you. It's just that after year three I swear I couldn't look at the cover of that book anymore.

Heh...if I kept seeing a bottle of vinegar in my head every time, I wouldn't have either.