Culinary Cohorts, 1: Favorite Cookbooks

I love entertaining and Thanksgiving is one of the most elaborate meals I make all year. In the flurry of cooking, setting the table, eating and cleaning up, I did not snap one picture all day. And as yummy as the leftovers are, they do not look nearly as appetizing in photos once they have been portioned into small plastic containers. Rather than blog about the meal that was (and its various reincarnations), I thought I'd occasionally write about some of my favorite cooking-related things. Today it is cookbooks.

In my mind, there are three types of cooks in the world:

• The Creator, the innovative chef who creates cuisine and sets trends in cooking (e.g. restauranteurs, professional chefs)
• The Comforter, a person who whips up comfort foods at a moment's notice using recipes that have been passed on by tradition and demonstration for generations (e.g. Italian mamas, Korean mother-in-laws)
• The Copycat, a person who gets their cooking inspiration from recipes from other sources (i.e. the rest of us)

I am largely a Copycat and make no apologies for it and I have my oldest sister to thank for this. My parents are first-generation Korean and both are Comfort Cooks. As I mentioned in a previous post, I grew up eating Korean food every meal of almost every day. The few times we ate something other than Korean food at home, it was usually because my sister found a recipe somewhere and made it for us. She is the one who taught me how to properly measure a cup of flour (don't tap it on the counter), how to sift dry ingredients (we used a strainer since we didn't have a sifter), and how to read a liquid measuring cup (down at eye level). To this day, I think of her whenever I make Nestlé Tollhouse cookies.

For years I bought cookbooks simply because they had interesting titles (The White House Family Cookbook) or the pictures were pretty (Salad). I have also picked up many books for $1 at the local library's used books store (Soupcon: Recipes from Chicago's Junior League). Most of these books have found new homes on other people's shelves.

Today I have a self-imposed limit of one bookcase for cookbooks so very few new books make it on to my shelves any more, mainly because it means I have to give up something else to make room. Some recent acquisitions with which I have been very pleased include:

• Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day, by Jeffrey Hertzberg and Zoe Francois - Freshly baked bread anytime you want it
• Japanese Hot Pots, by Tadashi Ono and Harris Salat - Fabulous one-pot meals that are as beautiful to look at as they are delicious to eat
• Into the Vietnamese Kitchen, by Andrea Nguyen - Authentic Vietnamese flavors from ingredients you can buy in most megamarts
• Deceptively Delicious, by Jessica Seinfeld - What mom doesn't love instructions for hiding vegetables and other nutritious ingredients in kid-favorites like chocolate chip cookies?

I have a few titles/authors that I buy as soon as they are published (including the Good Eats series from Alton Brown and Cooking Light Annual Recipes), although it is getting harder and harder to choose something to give up in their place. And there are those books that I reach for first and will always treasure, including:

• The Complete America's Test Kitchen TV Show Cookbook, which also happens to be my favorite book to gift to people living on their own for the first time or newlyweds
• The Farmhouse Cookbook and Italian Farmhouse Cookbook by Susan Hermann Loomis, full of wonderful stories about family farmers and their food traditions, not to mention wholesome and delicious recipes
• Vegetarian Times Cooks Mediterranean, THE BEST vegetarian cookbook, EVER!
• The Bread Lover's Bread Machine Book by Beth Hensperger, the carb lover's dream
• Authentic Mexican, by Rick Bayless, the Chicago restauranteur, whose recipes readily satisfy my south-of-the-border cravings.

And finally, there are those novelty titles that have become family favorites:

• Campbell's Classic Recipes, the only cookbook my finicky son says he will have in his house when he grows up
• The Everything Fondue Cookbook, which provides plenty of inspiration for one of our favorite Friday evening meals
• Ben & Jerry's Homemade Ice Cream and Dessert Book, the title says it all.

I think that's enough about cookbooks for now. The Geek is smoking salmon for tonight's dinner so I am on to visions of smoked fish and cream cheese.