Advice Inquiry Archived Do you have a favorite cookbook or cooking blog? (TraditionalWives)
submitted ago by ChapterJuni
Posted by: ChapterJuni
Posting time: 3.5 years ago on
Last edit time: never edited.
Archived on: 9/2/2017 10:00:00 AM
Views: 672
SCP: 10
11 upvotes, 1 downvotes (92% upvoted it)
Advice Inquiry Archived Do you have a favorite cookbook or cooking blog? (TraditionalWives)
submitted ago by ChapterJuni
view the rest of the comments →
[–] 9392229? 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago
I get most of my meal ideas from traveling, and from other people who cook. I also worked at a restaurant in college, and a modern French fine dining restaurant during grad school. Every time my family gets together we decide to cook food from another country/region, and slowly we've developed mental portfolio. For every day, I don't make anything needing a recipe. I just see what we've got in the fridge and figure out what I can make with it.
Two weeks ago I was at the shore with friends and their parents. One woman is a New Yorker of Syrian-Italian decent, and makes the best dolmas, so she explained to me how to make them. It's not a recipe with measurements of ingredients, but more of a process. As soon as I find a local butcher to sell me a lamb shank, I'll be testing it out.
I do collect old-time recipe books from estate sales and library sales. My favorite was actually made by my grandmother and her sisters with their church group, and is an accumulation of recipes and preservation techniques used by homesteaders back in the day. It talks about pickling eggs to bake with throughout the winter, pickling whole watermelons, preserving meats, root cellaring, canning, etc. Interesting stuff.
Aside from a few specific desserts (which I find vary greatly with slight changes in ingredients), I don't feel the need to collect recipes because when I love something, I just remember how to make it, and if I've never made something, it's to easy to look online for a few recipes.
I do like window-shopping recipe books for ideas. Especially if they're from a type of cuisine with which I am not familiar.