A Cooking Compendium: 6 Recipes, 12 Cookbook Recommendations, and 4 Thoughts About Food in General

This isn't a cooking blog but the occasional recipe makes its way here. As my Facebook friends will tell you, I love to cook and I love to feed people. My Facebook posts seem to rotate between bike rides and cooking (What can I say? Biking makes me hungry!) with a side of public policy and reminders to vote. Hey, that sounds like this blog.

To inspire your own foodie updates, here's a round-up of recipes I've posted here, along with notes on a few of my favorite cookbooks and other posts on food in general.

Recipes

• Peach Elderberry Chutney: A Farmers' Market Experiment
• Cornbread and Cornbread: New England Spider Cake and Crackling Corn Bread
• Not Exactly a Recipe for Potato Soup: My Vegetarian Trickery
• Recipe Time: Interpretation of a Kinda Chunky Tomato/Red Bell Pepper/Black Bean Soup
• By Popular Demand: A Recipe for Spicy Fries
• Seriously Good Oatmeal Cookies

As for cookbooks, I have a full bookcase in my kitchen. I like to read cookbooks and taste the recipes in my head--many a calorie-free meal is enjoyed this way.

I most often use recipes as a starting point for inspiration and then improvise based on ingredients on hand unless it's one of those recipes where chemistry and proportions seem to really matter. I appreciate cookbook writers who think the way I do and throw in parenthetical remarks like "using rosemary instead of basil takes this in a whole new direction."

A few of my favorites:

• Madhur Jaffrey's World Vegetarian. She's on Twitter now! Follow @madhursworld. The Spanish Egg and Potato Cake is a new family favorite and reading the book is like a trip around the world's great kitchens.
• The New Laurel's Kitchen. Mostly for bread but I'll be trying her ketchup recipe soon.
• 3 Bowls: Vegetarian Recipes from an American Zen Buddhist Monastery. Try the Herbed Sesame Polenta with Roasted Vegetables, Brown Rice with Quinoa, and Quinoa-Mushroom Nut Loaf.
• The Brilliant Bean. Family favorites: Lemony Garbanzo Bean Cake, Chocolate Midnight Bean Torte.
• Everyday Italian. Sweet Husband's favorite. He's adapted several recipes for my vegetarian palate including the Farfalle with "Turkey Susage" (Peppered Tofurkey lunchmeat works just fine), Peas and Mushrooms; the Wild Mushroom Risotto with Peas is incredible because he uses the full amount of butter specified whereas I'd cut it back so I just pretend not to know when I eat his; the Marinara Sauce is peppery and wonderful; and the Cantaloupe, Strawberries and Grapes with White Wine and Mint makes a wonderful light summer dessert.
• The Art of Low-Calorie Cooking. "Art" is right: Beautiful food photography of gourmet food prepared with no sacrifice of flavor; source of the Crackling Cornbread recipe linked above. Try the Giambotta--a delicious kettle full of veggies--and the Winter Squash and Gruyere Gratin--rich and creamy goodness.
• Almost Vegetarian. I turn to this one occasionally.
• Great Good Food. Nicely organized by season; I use the pie crust recipe from this one.
• The Athlete's Palate Cookbook. The latest bookcase addition; so far I've only made the Asparagus Omelet Tart in a Dill Polenta Crust--needs a little more zing in the polenta crust but it was delicious.
• Jane Brody's Good Food Book. An old standby; my copy falls open to the Oatmeal Muffins on page 601 (we'll just pretend the recipe name doesn't include those nasty raisins--I leave them out). A bookcase full of cookbooks accumulated over the years demonstrates how nutrition trends come and go--I didn't realize until I looked this up on Amazon to link that the subtitle refers to "the high-carbohydrate way." Pre-Atkins, obviously, and perfect for a household with a metabolic burner like my bike-racing Sweet Husband since he needs lots of carbs.
• Another standby--the one my mother raised six kids with--Joy of Cooking. I have an edition I got in 1986 that lists 1975 as the last copyright date; I've heard less than flattering remarks about more recent editions. This is still the go-to for basic recipes like Fresh Cherry Pie.
• Joy of Cooking Christmas Cookies. I had to pick this one up because the main Joy of Cooking doesn't include some of the standards my family counts on like the Candy Cane Cookies with crushed peppermint.

Thoughts About Food

• Eating Shoots and Leaves: Real Food, Not Bad Grammar
• Farm to Jar: Happy Kitchen Madness
• A Little Light Reading: Transportation and Health, Summer Parkways, and the Density of Smart People
• Yet Another 11 Little Secrets

Happy cooking, happy eating!

Once upon a time I set up an Amazon Affiliates account and these links go there so if you bought one, in theory I'd get a benefit but I've never yet sold enough to get paid by Amazon. I'll update to Bookshop.org one of these days; I'd rather you just go to your local bookstore if you can get these there.