Julia Child: The Way to Cook
A little dowdy, but it's a great teaching book.
Lynne Rossetto Kasper: The Splendid Table
For real Italian cooking.
Tish Boyle: The Good Cookie
You can never have too many cookie recipes.
Francois Payard: Simply Sensational Desserts
One of my go-to books for special occasion desserts. Also has the very best recipe for tarte au citron (and I've tried a lot of them).
Hilaire Walden: Sensational Preserves
Whenever I need inspiration for something new to seal in jars, I turn to Hilaire.
Edon Waycott: Preserving the Taste
Wonderful recipes for my canning habit.
Rick Bayless: Mexico One Plate At A Time
I'd like to thank this book for helping me to win my husband's heart. (Tamales made easy.)
Anne Willan: La Varenne Pratique
This book is my culinary school.
Irma S. Rombauer: Joy of Cooking
I use an older version, before it was stupidly 'modernized'. It's a fine reference for American basics, and the book I always reach for when making biscuits or pancakes.
Alice Medrich: Cocolat
I've made a lot of the gorgeous desserts from this book, but I also turn to the section on component recipes for when I'm inventing.
Michael Ruhlman: Charcuterie
Fun with pork.
Patricia Wells: Bistro Cooking
If I could only have one cookbook, this would be it.
Terrance Brennan: Artisanal Cooking
I love Brennan's straightforward approach to fine cooking.
It's a melancholy thing, putting the garden to bed. Never mind the heartbreak of hacking back, uprooting, burning, and composting plants that were so lovingly nurtured. I can think of no more poignant herald of the long, cold months to come.
But gardeners are optimists by nature, and no sooner have I finished tearing down a season's effort than I've begun preparing and planning for another round. Maybe it's just a sophisticated form of denial.
Eight years ago on Labor Day I threw what was probably the most significant dinner party of my life. The universe had pointed out the guy I would spend the rest of my life with, but I was at a loss as to how to secure his attention. That night, I hosted a Mexican feast and invited the fellow in question along with a number of friends we happened to have in common. He was about to move into a house a mile up the road from me, and inviting him to dinner seemed like the neighborly thing to do. He stayed after everyone else had left, and we sat and talked long into the night. We've hardly been apart since – we were married 5 months later and live happily in the house a mile up the road.
When I mentioned last week that I'd invited guests for dinner over the weekend, my wise husband suggested that I cook Mexican.
Our early spring seems reluctant to let go. I know summer doesn't officially start until the 21st of June, but it's not unreasonable to expect some hot sunny weather from the end of May forward. It's been mostly in the 60s, even on sunny days, with temps in the low 40s or even 30s overnight – not even warm enough to sleep with the windows open (to my mind, one of the great joys of spring). And then we keep getting days like today: grey, dark, rainy, blustery, and COLD, hovering somewhere in the low 50s. It's the kind of day that forces you into a sweater and wool socks, demands a fire in the woodstove, and marches you into the kitchen to make a pot of soup.
Hard to believe, but it's almost that time again. Winter held on pretty tight until a few days ago, but the sun finally came out and it warmed up to seasonal levels – and all that snow finally started to melt away in earnest. If you can imagine, the chair in the garden was totally buried in snow for a good part of the winter.
Planning the garden is one of the things that keeps me from going nuts during the long grey cold months. Seed companies have it just right that they start mailing their catalogs just after the first of the year – they know forlorn housebound gardeners will leaf through the pages of bright photographs and lusty descriptions and drive themselves mad with desire for green leaves and dirt. And then order lots of seeds.
A few weeks back, I spied a small basket of ripe yellow quinces at my local year-round farmstand. I greedily snapped up four of them, thinking I'd make a sample batch of quince jelly. If it was any good, I'd order up a quantity of the little darlings and go big.