The OEconomist

One of my New Year’s Resolutions is to cook something from every (serious) cookbook I own. I figure if I can’t cook from a cookbook at least once a year, it doesn’t deserve to be on the shelf.

Here’s the list of cookbooks I need to cover, and some ideas of things I might like to cook from them.

(This is part 1; I’m probably about halfway through the cookbook shelf now.)

Lorna Sass, “Whole grains: Every day, every way”

I’ve actually already cooked from this one, but there are still plenty of recipes I would like to try if I get the chance.

• Farro soup with kale and cannelini (p. 124)
• Chinese black rice, orange, and avocado salad (p. 131)
• Wild rice and turkey salad with pear dressing (p. 141) — sounds like Thanksgiving leftovers to me!
• Farro risotto with butternut squash, ham, sage, and toasted walnuts (p. 146) — I’d probably do this without the ham
• Corn grits with collard greens and andouille (p. 170)
• Farro with fresh tomato sauce and basil (p. 173)
• Kamut, broccoli rabe, and sausage medley (p. 175)
• Brown rice pilaf with walnuts and dried cranberries (p. 203)
• Farro with portobellos and thyme (p. 217)
• Rolled grain porridge with currants, apple, and walnuts (p. 252)

God damn, why don’t I cook from this book more often?

David Ansel, “The Soup Peddler’s Book of Slow and Difficult Soups”

He has veg and non-veg soups, but all the ones that jumped out at me were vegie.

• Posole Sonora (p 75) – a vegetarian posole
• Shorbat Rumman (p 78) – Iraqi pea soup with pomegranate and mint
• Ash-e-joh (p 137) – Persian barley soup with herbs

Johanne Killeen and George Germon, “On Top of Spaghetti”

I only had to go through the first chapter here to find four that I loved the sound of.

• Rigatoni with zucchini sauce (p 32)
• Linguine with spicy lentil sauce (p 35)
• Pappardelle with Olives, thyme, and lemon (p 40)
• Linguine with bitter greens and pancetta (p 41) (uses watercress!)

Madhur Jaffrey’s “World of the East Vegetarian Cooking”

Honestly, I’m not very impressed with this cookbook. I think the author tries to spread herself too thin covering all of Asian cuisine, from the Caucasus to the Philippines. She’s strongest (not surprisingly) when she’s talking about Indian food. Also, lots of her dishes are annoyingly simple, and named in English even when the original name is commonly known (eg. hummus). I think this book is a bit marginal, but still managed to find a few things I’d like to cook.

• “Dry” potatoes cooked with mustard seeds (p. 51)
• Indian chickpea salad (p. 83)
• Besan (p. 88)
• Bean curd with a deliciously spicy sauce (p. 172)

Steve Sando and Vanessa Barrington, “Heirloom Beans

• Bruschetta with cranberry beans and garlicky kale (p. 36)
• Cellinis and martinis (p. 49)
• Roasted salsa verde (p. 55)
• Italian marrow beans with tuna (p. 93)
• Cuban black beans sofrito (p. 113)
• Huevos Rancho Gordo (p. 135)
• Borlotti beans in tomato sauce with creamy polenta (p. 147)
• Pasta with beans, broccoli rabe, and bacon (p. 151)
• Spring lamb with flageolets (p. 165)

Jamie Oliver, “Jamie’s Italy”

• Caponata (p. 8 )
• Crostini with squashed cannelini beans with garlic (p. 25)
• Sliced mushrooms with melted mozzarella and thyme (p. 29)
• Pasta con acciughe e pomodoro (with anchovies, raisins, and pinenuts) (p. 118)
• Panzanella (p. 154)
• Tomato, fennel, and squid salad (p. 166)
• Eggplant parmagiana (p. 266)

Ian Hemphill, “Spice notes and recipes”

• Chakchouka (eggs cooked in a spicy North African sauce) (p. 149)
• Chilli chocolate black beans (p. 151)
• Cinnamon and pumpkin wholemeal bread (p. 162)
• Coriander, apple, and rhubarb crumble (p. 174)
• Beetroot, feta, and toasted cumin salad (p. 181)
• Nutmeg cake (p. 275)
• Sage shortbread with goat’s curd (p. 357)
• Slow roasted tomatoes with sumac (p. 383)

Claudia Roden, “The New Book of Middle Eastern Food”

You’ll notice here that a lot of the recipes I picked are standards. I’m interested in trying this fairly authoritative source and seeing how the traditional recipes work out. And maybe I’m a bit homesick for Australian-Mediterranean food.

• Cevisli Biber (roasted pepper and walnut paste) (p. 59)
• Baba Ghanouj (p. 65)
• Batrik (bulgur salad with nuts) (p. 77)
• Zucchini salad with raisins and pine nuts (p. 87)
• Megadarra (rice and lentils with caramelised onions) (p. 97)
• Fasulye Piyazi (haricot bean salad) (p. 98)
• Spinach pies with raisins and pine nuts (p. 123)
• Spinach with garlic and preserved lemon (p. 286)
• Borlotti beans with onions and tomatoes in olive oil (p. 327)
• Pilaf with currants and pine nuts (p. 340)

Rejects

Along the way, I decided that the following cookbooks just weren’t calling to me, and should probably be disposed of:

• Brother Victor-Antoine d’Avila Latourrette, “Twelve Months of Monastery Salads”. I have no trouble inventing salad recipes myself, even if I didn’t already have 95 salad bookmarks on del.icio.us; plus, Brother Victor is way more into Belgian endives and tinned tuna than I am.

Still to go…

• Cradle of Flavor: Home cooking from the spice islands of Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore
• 50 great curries of India
• Moosewood Restaurant: New Classics
• The Joy of Cooking
• How to cook everything vegetarian
• Women’s Weekly COOK
• The CWA Cookery Book and Household Hints
• The PMWU Centenary Cookbook
• From a Monastery Kitchen
• The Low GI Diet Cookbook
• Healthy eating for Diabetes

Skipped on the grounds of “non-seriousness”

A kitschy set of “Woman’s Day Encyclopedia of Cookery” from about the 70s, picked up off the street (with pictures rather like these — sorry if you were eating), and a magazine holder full of thin paperback cookbooks mostly from Australian Women’s Weekly, the good bits of which are somewhat duplicated in the “COOK” book.