“Cook”ing” Books

There are few pleasures in life more comforting than sitting down with a good book and letting it whisk you away to another world outside of your own.  For me, often times while turning the pages of a cookbook, I travel to another country, to another city or even simply into someone else’s home.  My particular favorites include beautiful images of the dishes meticulously detailed on adjacent pages.  And it’s an added bonus if the authors have included a bit of the recipe back-story – what was their inspiration, flavor descriptors, pertinent details about the dish’s origin or how they’ve put their own twist on things…really anything that gives me insight to what I’m about to cook that isn’t limited to measurements or techniques.  This back-story helps inspire me to be creative, as very rarely do I follow a recipe to a tee.  I make it my own, give it my own back-story!

But books about cooking don’t have to be cookbooks in the traditional sense of the word.  For those of us enamored with the cooking world, exploration and inspiration can also be found in memoirs or biographies.  Ideas are often discovered in fictional tales of kitchens and food or even in travel books where food culture is explored alongside points of interest, lodging recommendations and climate expectations. 

Yes, some of my most inspiring reads have been books about cooking or the people doing the cooking.  So mix it up – expand your library of “cookbooks” and see where you can go!  Here’s a few of my favorites to get you started. 

Cookbooks

·       Made in Italy - David Rocco

·       The Home Cook: Recipes to Know by Heart - Alex Guarnaschelli

·       Perfect Recipes for Having People Over – Pam Anderson

·       The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook – Deb Perelman

Cooking Books

·       Eat My Globe: One Year in Search of the Most Delicious Food in the World – Simon Majumdar

·       As Always, Julia:  The Letters of Julia Child and Avis DeVoto – Joan Reardon

·       Julia and Julia:  My Year of Cooking Dangerously – Julie Powell

·       The Hundred-Foot Journey – Richard C Morais

·       The Mother-In-Law Cure: Learning to Live and Eat in an Italian Family – Katherine Wilson

·       The Sharper Your Knife, The Less You Cry: Love, Laughter and Tears in Paris at the World’s Most

·       Famous Cooking School – Kathleen Flinn

·       Food: A Love Story – Jim Gaffigan