Happy Holidays to all of you avid home cooks. 

We had a wonderful Christmas and as usual there were many kitchen items exchanged between my wife and me. I hope to tell you about them all in the next couple of weeks and share with you how I’ve been using them.

My 9 year old daughter using her own savings gave me this wonderful looking, giant cookbook by Aliza Green called Starting with Ingredients – Quintessential Recipes for the Way We Really Cook.

Looks just like the kind of cookbook I will love to learn from. With over thousand pages describing over one hundred ingredients, this cookbook focuses on most of the popular ingredients we cook with every day and describes what they are, how to shop for them and most importantly how to cook them.

For example, she looks at Fennel, one of my favorite and in my opinion, under utilized vegetables used in most households. I love to cook with it or eat it raw in salads. Aliza describes the history of fennel, where it is grown and when it is in season, how to choose it, how to use every part of it and then provides a whole bunch of recipes using it in various dishes and cooking methods.

She has recipes for Tuscan Tuna Salad with Fennel, Chicken Salad with Fennel, Lemon Zest and Currants, Fennel and Tomato Casserole, Braised Fennel with White Wine, Bay and Thyme & Whole Grilled Red Snapper Stuffed with Fennel.

The book is filled with food facts, buying tips, cooking methods and plenty of ideas how to use the ingredient. It’s one of those cookbooks you can just sit down with to read and enjoy whether you use her recipes or not.

Besides, just holding this massive book provides a workout to burn off some of the calories you’ll gain trying all the recipes in it.

I am still browsing through it and will report back on any of the recipes I try, but from what little I’ve seen, this one is a must for anyone who really wants to know more about what they are cooking and why.

You can find it at Amazon here.

Summer is here and my girls are out of school on vacation. My 8 year old came home with a reading list for her summer reading so we took a visit to the local library to pick up a book.

I love libraries and I have to admit I don’t get to them very much but that is going to change. On this trip I was wondering down the “Adult Isle” and what do I come upon but rows and rows of cookbooks. There were dozens of them, some new, some old. Many I already own, but many more that I don’t

I have never thought to take out a cookbook from a library but why not. There are lots of good reasons to check out a library cookbook.

· Gives you a chance to look it over before purchasing it.
· You may just want one or two recipes from it.
· You don’t want a bookcase filled with cookbooks.
· You buy cookbooks and just let them sit on that bookshelf.
· You want to save a couple of bucks

I have a fairly good-sized cookbook collection that does fill a whole bookcase. I don’t think I ever met a cookbook I didn’t like or didn’t want to own. Although with the Internet so readily available, I find myself doing a lot more research on the Net.

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Right now Philadelphia is hosting the 22nd Book and the Cook event that pairs cookbook authors with local restaurants. In past years, the event has brought Philadelphia such food stars as the late Julia Child, Craig Claiborne, Ming Tsai and many more.

So I thought is would be fun to learn more about YOUR favorite cookbook authors and YOUR favorite cookbooks. I am a big collector of cookbooks but like many home cooks, I don’t use them as much as I would like to.

I refer to recipes a lot for ideas, but when it comes time to put together a meal during the week, I usually come up with something on the fly or fall back on one of my old standards. This is something I’m hoping this blog will get me away from doing. By having to attempt and write about new recipes, I’m forcing myself to come up with new ideas and techniques.

What Are Some of My Favorite Cookbooks?

Wow, this is a tough question since I have so many that I love to just read and get ideas from.  I do, however, look for certain essentials like:

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