Homecooks and gallantines

Enjoyed all the references to James Beard.

Whenever anybody asks me about cookbooks, I tell them to get "American Cookery" which was reissued a couple of years ago. I got one for each of my kids, who are accomplished and enthusiastic cooks themselves.

I've read that the title is that of the first cookbook printed in the American colonies. (I guess the copyright had expired.) It's also the best organized, with the best index of any cookbook I've ever seen.

The other basic, of course, is "Joy of Cooking" which is the Encyclopedia Britannica of cooking.

With these two books you can learn to do everything you need to do in the kitchen. (A home cook, at least.)

My other hundred or so cookbooks are just frills and embellishments on these. But they're what makes time in the kitchen, fun.

So, I keep buying more.

Mike

[ 02-08-2001: Message edited by: MikeLM ]

I like the James Beard quote about being able to read and learn. After 12 years of not cooking at all, I had forgotten so much about everything that the kitchen seemed like a foreign country. I discovered that, after a few false starts, all the reading I've been doing had actually sunk in--I could do lots of things much better than I'd ever been able to do before. And many things sort of seemed natural that really had come from the books I've read.

[KC]

Forgive me, but I believe there was another famous chef (besides James Beard) who tried to make classic techniques, complex recipes, and gourmet cooking both accessible and comprehensible to the "average American housewife." Anybody remember Julia Child? Her television series? Mastering the Art of French Cooking?

[shroomgirl]

HIYA KC yep we write about her often on this site....Julia and Alice Waters have been real inspirations to alot of us, and impetus for many of us to cook for a living...or teach. We haven't forgotten her just remembering James Beard....and times when a gallantine was picnic food in a Womens Magazine.

[Mezzaluna]

Sure! Julia put in a recipe in her Julia Child and Company called "Chicken Melon". It 's a sort of large ballotine, but it's the same principal: poultry skin farced with poultry meat and seasonings. I've never tried making it but I clearly remember the show and feel it's doable by most experienced home cooks.