Get a slow-cooker at the thrift store. Slow-cooked pintos require very little prep but a lot of time - get a bag for $nothing$, wash and soak the night before, set to low when you leave and come home and there's lots. They also freeze very well.

Whole chickens are infinitely cheaper than boneless skinless and easy to cook. You can feed two people for three days on a chicken; take the plastic off, wash it, pat it down, stuff some veggies in it for flavor (celery, half an onion, an apple) and bake it in the toaster oven (uses less juice than your range). The bones and such will make stock, but I find that I never really need "stock." That may change...

Rice cookers make rice trivial and cheep. You can get a 10lb bag of rice for 12 bux. 10 lbs of rice will last you and a friend months.

Ground turkey in bulk (5+lb) is very cheap. Buy it, take the plastic off, cut it into 1/2lb chunks, pick them up in ziploc baggies like dog poop, push out all the air and huck 'em in the freezer. Try and keep them ball-shaped if you intend to thaw them in the microwave or thin and flat if you intend to thaw them on the counter.

Any vegetables you buy at your local farmer's market will be fresher, healthier and cheaper than what you get at the supermarket. Not only that, chicks dig farmers' markets. Go every week. Find your local farmer's markets here.

Successful cooking is a blend of two important things: good ingredients and careful, light-handed preparation. Chances are you're naturally inclined to over-season the crap out of things; most people are. You will find, however, that a good cut of meat with a little salt and pepper will beat the shit out of a mediocre cut of meat slathered in K.C. Masterpiece. I recommend Edouard de Pomaine's 1930 classic French cooking in Ten Minutes not so much for the recipes but for the philosophy. Most every preparation in it is "take something, do something to it and eat it." Pomaine demystifies cooking in ways Erma Bombeck and Betty Crocker never could.


Ask at your local nursery what herbs grow easiest where you are and try and cultivate them yourself. That chicken? A sprig of fresh rosemary will make it awesome. But maybe bay or dill or rosemary or something will grow better near you. I guarantee you can grow mint where you are. Mint makes any savory dish better.

Finally, learn to appreciate the art of cooking and eating in and of itself. It's always cheaper to cook for four or six than it is for one or two if everybody chips in; inviting friends over to cook and eat makes for a cheaper meal as well as an evening of entertainment. Always seek out especially good produce, poultry, fish or meat and make it a focus of your cooking. Believe it or not, you can entertain a houseful of people for an evening over the simple fact that the raspberry harvest is in.

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(...and if that fails, you can do what my uncle did in college - he went down to the feed store and sampled. If it was palatable, he'd buy 50 lbs of it, pick the rocks out of it and chow down. If I recall correctly, there's a certain type of buffalo feed that's mostly rolled oats, molasses and vitamins. And rocks.)

(Be sure to pick out the rocks.)

Basically gonna echo most of the answers already posted, but just to pile on:

• 8" chef's knife. 10" is longer than may be comfortable and 12" is longer than necessary, but 7" may start to feel a little short if she's ever slicing large melon or squash. I'm a casual knife nerd and I have knives by Wusthof, Victorinox, Shun and Mac. My favorite.
  
  
• This Dutch oven. Enameled and cast iron just like the Le Creuset that a few other comments have mentioned, but much, much cheaper. I own two and they're both great. I also have the non-enameled version for baking bread, but I don't recommend it for general use unless you're a Boy Scout. Here's an entertaingly-written blog post comparing the Lodge vs. Le Creuset in a short rib cookoff.
  
  
• This cutting board and this cutting board conditioner. The importance of an easy and pleasant to use prep surface can't be overstated. I'm listing this third on purpose; this is one of the most important things your kitchen can have. A recipe that calls for a lot of chopping is no fun when you're fighting for counter space to do the chopping, or doing it on a shitty plastic board.
  
  
• A cheap scale and a cheap thermometer. Seriously, these are as important as the cutting board.
  
  
• Just gonna crib this one right off /u/Pobe420 and say cheapo 8–10" (I recommend 10–12" but that's my preference) nonstick skillet. One note I'd add is that pans with oven-safe handles are a bit more dual-purpose than pans with plastic or rubberized handles. You can't finish a pork chop in the oven in a skillet with a rubberized handle. But one could say you shouldn't be cooking a pork chop on a nonstick pan to begin with. The important thing is to keep this one cheap: you're going to be replacing it every couple of years, there's no getting around that. For my money $30 or less, and $30 is pretty expensive for these things.
  
  
  

• Cookbooks
  

  Nothing inspires cooking like a good cookbook collection. The great news about cookbooks is that they're often bought as gifts or souvenirs and they make their way onto the used market cheap and in great condition. Here are my suggestions for a great starter shelf:
  
  

1. The Food Lab by J. Kenji López-Alt. I kind of hate that this is my number one recommendation, but I don't know your wife and I do know J. Kenji López-Alt. This one is brand new so you're unlikely to find it used and cheap, but as a catch-all recommendation it has to take first place. Moving on to the cheap stuff:
   
   
2. Regional French Cooking by Paul Bocuse. This is possibly the friendliest authoritative book on French food out there, and a hell of a lot easier to just dive into than Julia Child (Julia is the expert, and her book is an encyclopedia). Bocuse is the undisputed king of nouvelle cuisine and people like Eric Ripert and Anthony Bourdain (so maybe a generation ahead of you and I) came from him. Paul Bocuse is French food as we know it, and yet this book—an approachable, coffee-table sized thing—still has a recipe for fucking mac and cheese. It's outstanding.
   
   
3. Theory & Practice / The New James Beard by James Beard. These will completely cover your entire library of American cooking. Nothing else needed until you get region-specific. When you do, go for something like this.
   
   
4. Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking by Marcella Hazan. When she died, the NYT ran a second obituary that was just her recipe for bolognese.
   
   
5. Christ, top five. Who gets 5th? I'm going with From Curries To Kebabs by Madhur Jaffrey. Don't get bamboozled into buying "Madhur Jaffrey's Curry Bible" which is the same book, repackaged and priced higher. You want the one with the hot pink dust jacket, it's unmistakeable. This is one of those end-all books that you could cook out of for the rest of your life. It covers almost every diet and almost every country that Beard and Bocuse don't.
   
   
6. Honorable mentions: Here come the downvotes. Pok Pok by Andy Ricker. If you're American and you want to cook Thai, this is the one. Ten Speed Press can go home now. The Book of Jewish Food by Claudia Rosen (so close to making the list). I shouldn't need to say much about this; it's the book of diasporic Jewish food, which means it covers a lot of time and almost every possible country. It's a no-brainer. Thai Food by David Thompson (a perfect oral history of Thai food for English speakers, only it doesn't include Pok Pok's precise measurements, which in practice I've found important). Flour Water Salt Yeast by Ken Forkish. Not for someone who just wants to become a baker, this book is for someone who wants to make Ken Forkish's bread. And for a casual bread baker I can't imagine a better introduction. Pleasures of the Vietnamese Table by Mai Pham. Andrea Nguyen is out there and Andrea Nguyen is awesome, but I really like Mai Pham's book. It's accessible, reliable and regional. You don't get the dissertation-level breakdown on the origins of chicken pho that you get from Andrea, but the recipe's there, among many others, and it's fucking outstanding. Veganomicon by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero. This vegan cookbook is dope as hell and will really expand your imagination when it comes to vegetables. This could actually have been number five.

Not a recipe, but I recommend Jamie's Italy if you like Italian food. Italian food has the advantage that a lot of it is relatively simple to make. Even though I now get recipes from Marcella Hazan and The Silver Spoon I still refer back to the Jamie Oliver book. It's one of the first cookery books my wife and I owned when we moved in together.

There are some of the recipes available onine, some highlights:

• Spaghetti with prawns and rocket
  
• Aubergine Parmigiana
  
• Spaghetti alla Norma
  
  You might also get some inspiration from the cooking shows on YouTube, some of my favourites:
  
  
• Binging with Babish (also /r/bingingwithbabish)
  
• You suck at cooking
  
• Chef John from Food wishes
  
• Bon Appétit
  
• Pro Home Cooks
  
• J. Kenji López-Alt
  
• Adam Liaw
  
• Not Another Cooking Show
  
  Not all of them are completely beginner friendly, Binging with Babish, Chef John, Bon Appétit and Not Another Cooking Show are probably the most beginner friendly, but they're all pretty good.
  
  A couple of unsolicited tips:
  
  
• Quality of ingredients matters. You will get a better pasta sauce out of a nicer tin of tomatoes than a cheaper one. Better meat tastes better. Buy the best you can within your budget.
  
• Buy tins of whole tomatoes and chop them yourself, not pre-chopped, the chopped ones are apparently not as good.
  
• Don't splurge on kitchen equipment. Rarely does equipment make stuff possible, mostly just easier. Buy stuff when you've worked out that you need it.
  
• Single use kitchen gadgets are mostly things you will regret.
  
• You probably don't need a knife bock with a selection of knifes, a good chefs knife, paring knife, and a cheap bread knife are all you really need to get started and your money is better spent there.
  
• Don't let looks or mistakes get you down. Everyone makes mistakes, even top chefs, and if it tastes good it is good. You will improve over time.

Ive never found any of the apps that give you premade lists great when trying to eat healthy and on a budget.

I live in Ireland but im back and forth to the USA as my husband who is a type 2 diabetic lives there and here is what Ive learned so far.
Always check the supermarkets weekly deal flyer before you go shopping, if something you use regularly is on sale and you can work it into your budget stock up.
Frozen veggies are your friends, Kroger often has bags of frozen veg down to a dollar each.
Whole foods are better for you and its easier to a) control your portion size and b) keep an eye on the amount of sugar that is in things, as an aside lowfat stuff is usually full of sugar to improve the taste.
Pintrest is great for ideas for meals that are quick an easy
Try and have some form of protein with every meal it will keep you fuller for longer.
Eggs are great for using up leftovers to make a full meal, I introduced my husband to frittas this trip and he loves them, he even brings the leftovers to work the next day for lunch.
If your interested in learning to cook, Delia smith has a great book called the complete cookery course that starts at the basics and moves on from there, here it is on amazon but you might pick it up second hand even cheaper https://www.amazon.com/Delias-Complete-Cookery-Course-Vol/dp/0563362499/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1503177499&sr=8-2&keywords=delia+smith

Investing in culinary texts rather than cookbooks really helped me. These books provide very basic recipes along with relevant techniques/information. Once you get these down, it's a heck of a lot easier to be creative with your dishes (e.g. knowing the 5 mother sauces of French cuisine leads to literally thousands of other recipes).


Suggested reading material:

Sauces: Classical and Contemporary Sauce Making
One of my absolute favorites, I refer to this book pretty much every time I'm in the mood for something new. The author does a great job at keeping things simple while providing great information on traditional applications (along with how to flavor things to your own tastes) for dishes ranging from Mornay sauce to Ganache.


On Cooking: A Textbook of Culinary Fundamentals
This was my required text for intro culinary classes, which makes it expensive. I'm sure finding older/used versions will be much cheaper and just as useful. This is a great resource for techniques such as deboning poultry, ideal use for various potato species, the different cuts of beef and pork, the best cooking methods for said cuts, culinary terms, etc.


The Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking
My god do I love Marcella Hazan. She's the Italian Julia Child, and does a fantastic job at making intimidating dishes much more approachable. While this is more of a classic cookbook than the previous two, Hazan provides info on produce selection, basic kitchen techniques, ideal tools to have, and, of course, hundreds of traditional Italian recipes with notes on altering flavor profiles.


YMMV, depending on how deep into the cooking world you'd like to get. Sometimes it's just easier for me to look through google results of a specific dish for inspiration. Good luck!

Silver spoon. I've been taking a lot of recipes from it lately. It's considered "Italian" but it's the furthest thing from Olive Garden you'll ever see in respects to Italian. A lot of things are simply prepared but have immense flavor. I made the green risotto for our seven fishes night and it was great! I made the bucatini with red pepper sauce and that was amazing. I've made a few fish and beef recipes too, their lasagna is amazing. It has a lot of things most people haven't heard of but the book makes them extremely approachable if you collect all the ingredients. I used to be not very big on using cookbooks but I've had this book for a year and recently it's become a favorite of mine.

The one thing I do have to say is that you need to treat the recipes in a true Italian manner where spaghetti isn't the only dish but a filler before your protein. Almost none of the pasta dishes have protein (except one of my favorites anchovy and breadcrumbs) so you serve almost all of them as a small side dish. My edition has a section in the back where about a dozen chefs designed a menu with recipes not in the book but that you can only find in there. I've really wanted to pick a menu and do it one night for some friends.

https://www.amazon.com/Silver-Spoon-New-Kitchen/dp/0714862568

I like to cook French and Asian/Indian foods the most. Here's my base list for any type of cooking: kosher salt, fresh cracked pepper, olive oil, canola oil, eggs, flour, potatoes, onions and shallots, cream, butter, bacon, cheese, rice, canned diced tomatoes, garlic bulbs, red and white wine, vinegar (rice wine or balsamic). Root vegetables can be added too, but I prefer to get them specific to the meal.
A few extras I tend to use a lot are ginger root, oyster sauce, and red cabbage. Not exactly stock-worthy to some people though.

But actually, I think this is the wrong approach. I suggest finding a good cook book, perhaps Ad Hoc at Home, and just start reading it. I did this with Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles book and it revolutionized how I think about cooking. I wish I had done it from the start to develop the thought process first, which then leads to better food preparation. When you cook a specific meal you can go to the store and look at each food separately for the meal you're preparing. When I'm at the market looking for specific ingredients and not "grocery shopping" I'm able to think about the food in a different way. Gradually, you can build up foods and spices over time, but in doing so you'll build good habits, good recipes, and a more mature approach to food in general. My approach before was very much like a shotgun blast of spices, whereas now I'm able to more precisely pinpoint the flavor profile I'm going for.

A word on spices: Buying in bulk will save you lots of money. People suggest dating them, so as to know when they're going bad, but this might be out of your scope right now. I know Central Market here in Texas has a pretty nice bulk spice section, and I imagine other whole foods places do as well.

Herbs: Fresh herbs are key. You want something to have at the ready? Fresh herbs you can get from the store. But really you should invest in a $.25 pack of basil seeds, rosemary seeds, and thyme seeds. These plants are hardy and tough to kill (maybe not so much with basil) and will make everything taste more expensive.

My mom passed away in 2004. When cleaning out her house I found the original version of this book.

Treasured Polish Recipes For Americans

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1626549494/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_zhxPCb1658PVR

In the orig book from like the 1950s/1960s, I saw a recipie called Beggars Cake. It's a cake made from a ton of cake batter that is ladelled on a cone-shaped spit roasting over a fire and built up in layers.

When a beggar comes by, you would give them a healthy slice to eat while you talk with them a while so they rest while they eat and another to take with them for the road when you wish them well.

The recipie starts out with something like "150 eggs. But for a lighter version use only 100 eggs..." Doing it from memory. Made me laugh through my surprise at the recipe. But it did sound like an awesome recipe.

Might want to find a modern version to try on a smaller scale of course. Even bake a few or even a few dozen of your fav baked goods like cookies, cupcakes, etc., individually wrap them, and drop them off at your nearest homeless shelter or domestic violence shelter/home. I'm sure they'd be very appreciative to get some sweet treats like that.

Either that or lots of creme brulee!

Good luck!

I am a professional chef and while watching people prepare food is entertaining and sometimes also educating I actually recommend you to buy books and learn the basics first.

You can then use youtube pretty well in order to watch how to do specific things, like i.e. deboning a whole chicken for a gallantine, or how to trim certain pieces of meat.

Start with french cuisine. Once you have understood how things are connected you'll actually understand everything else.

If you want something simple and entertaining for the start I'd choose Anthony Bourdaine's Les Halles Cookbook. It's amusingly written and the recipes are fairly easy and they are all legit.

Then there is Paul Bocus. Living legend with three long-term girlfriends.

And of course you want to have Escoffier at your home. Doesn't get much more classic than that.

If you want to get a sense of what drives a top notch chef, watch In Search of Perfection by Heston Blumethal. Very very good stuff.

And finally, if you want to learn something about culinary history I highly highly recommend Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany and to learn about our lifes as a chef you need to read the (admittedly exaggerated) autobiographicly Kitchen Confidential by Bourdain.

All this provided, you won't learn cooking without actually doing it.

Edit: Depending on your budget, I also heavily recommend Alain Ducasse's Grand Livre de Cuisine.

You don't write where you are from or price range so it is a bit difficult to answer your question.

Juhls in Bergen is an internationally acclaimed and excellent jeweller and designer. This is where I got my wife something for our 10yrs anniversary a while back. See http://www.juhls.no

For something more tasty but not as lasting... good quality smoked trout or salmon, or dried cod for bacalao (klippfisk). Specialties like cheeses ("brunost", "gamalost"), or meats like smoked cured lamb (fenalår) or reindeer are also an option. Artisan quality jams, flours etc are an option too. Meny, Mega, Ultra are three of the higher end grocery chains that typically have a broader selection of foods.

Cheese slicer, for hard cheese? We like to think it is unique... http://www.bjorklund-1925.no/index.php/en/

Waffle iron? Just kidding. But do try waffles with sour cream and jam. Or Svele with butter and sugar. Or flatbreads. And fårikål, lapskaus, grandiosa (uh, no, skip that last one), well prepared fresh fish at a high end restaurant, traditional rice porridge, Skillingsbolle (mandatory in Bergen, it is a spiral bun with cinnamon).

We have a couple of michelin star restaurants that are worth a visit. And some that are close. See the slightly more inclusive http://www.whiteguide-nordic.com/ Look up the place you are going to before eating, Norway has just too many crappy restaurants.

Not sure about what to recommend regarding bread, as too many bakeries in Norway are crap, but if you get to Lom, there is some really nice eating to be done...

The Nordic Cook Book, or something by Andreas Viestad, Ingrid Espelid Hovig or Eyvind Hellstrøm om Norwegian or Nordic cuisine should be available in English.

High quality woolen mittens, caps, sweaters. Wool underwear/longs are probably the best you can get anywhere, but get them where the locals go (sporting stores). Dale, Oleana, Devold, Aclima are some brands of various quality and purpose.. ("Pierre Robert" on the other hand is supermarket imported stuff.)

All weather and rain gear ... in Loen, Olden and Stryn and a couple of other places you have factory outlets of major Norwegian brands for outdoor apparel. Skogstad for example have outlets that have some good deals (e.g. minor defects major discounts). Look up factory outlets (fabrikkutsalg) on google.

There are a few Norwegian artists of international acclaim, like painters, illustrators and such.

Most of all do try to get the experiences, the nature and sights are our best "goods" to offer.

• Taste of Home Best Loved - A great down-to-earth cookbook with homestyle meals that mom and grandma used to make.
  
• The Silver Spoon - Originally in Italian, hundreds of awesome, authentic Italian dishes using a massive array of ingredients.
  
• Gourmet Magazine Cookbook - I got my copy at a brick and mortar bookstore many years ago, and it may be out of print now. But it is full of elevated dishes that are easily obtainable at home.
  
• Dinner for Two - For years it was just my wife and I. This was the perfect little cookbook for us. Additionally, ATK has a similar cookbook. This isn't the one we have, but one like it. It's basically their recipes scaled down for two people.
  
• Bocuse Gastronomique - It's like an awesome cooking class on paper from the master himself.
  
• Bocuse - An awesome collection of recipes from Paul Bocuse.
  
• ATK Cookbook. I probably cook more from here than any other. I used to buy the new version every year with the newest recipes, but now I have the online subscription.
  
• The Flavor Bible that someone else linked.
  
  
  I could keep going but I should stop. So many great ones out there.

The Silver Spoon is like the Italian version of Joy of Cooking. It might be a good one for you to consider for your next project. There are a lot of editions so you can find copies that are pretty cheap.

"The quintessential cookbook." – USA Today

The Silver Spoon, the most influential and bestselling Italian cookbook of the last 50 years, is now available in a new updated and revised edition. This bible of authentic Italian home cooking features over 2,000 revised recipes and is illustrated with 400 brand new, full‐color photographs. A comprehensive and lively book, its uniquely stylish and user‐friendly format makes it accessible and a pleasure to read. The new updated edition features new introductory material covering such topics as how to compose a traditional Italian meal, typical food traditions of the different regions, and how to set an Italian table. It also contains a new section of menus by celebrity chefs cooking traditional Italian food including Mario Batali, Lidia Bastianich, Tony Mantuano, and Rich Torrisi and Mario Carbone.

Il Cucchiaio d’Argento was originally published in Italy in 1950 by the famous Italian design and architectural magazine Domus, and became an instant classic. A select group of cooking experts were commissioned to collect hundreds of traditional Italian home cooking recipes and make them available for the first time to a wider modern audience. In the process, they updated ingredients, quantities and methods to suit contemporary tastes and customs, at the same time preserving the memory of ancient recipes for future generations.

Divided into eleven color‐coded chapters by course, The Silver Spoon is a feat of design as well as content. Chapters include: Sauces, Marinades and Flavored Butters, Antipasti, Appetizers and Pizzas, First Courses, Eggs, Vegetles, Fish and Shellfish, Meat, Poultry, Game, Cheese, and Desserts. It covers everything from coveted authentic sauces and marinades to irresistible dishes such as Penne Rigate with Artichokes, Ricotta and Spinach Gnocchi, Tuscan Minestrone, Meatballs in Brandy, Bresaola with Corn Salad, Pizza Napoletana, Fried Mozzarella Sandwiches and Carpaccio Cipriani.

There are loads of dishes that you can cook a pile of that will last several days, but keep it interesting by varying them. Just pick a country at random and google some of the dishes. You won't always have the ingredients at hand (you'll struggle to create an authentic Burmese dish, for example) but Spain, Italy and France all have cheap regional dishes that are easy to make and tasty.

Sounds obvious? Maybe it is, but there are a lot of dishes that are under the radar. So don't do spag bol, knock up Tagliatelle Amatriciana - tomato, bacon, onions and a bit of garlic. Bing bong.

This is also a great source of easy meals: http://www.amazon.com/French-Cooking-Ten-Minutes-Adapting/dp/086547480X

And don't overlook less obvious countries! Finland, for example, has a ton of nutritious and awesome food: http://thedomesticman.com/2014/09/16/nakkikastike-finnish-hot-dogs-in-sauce/

These were cookbooks I found continually helpful while working at a fine-dining Italian place:

La Cucina: The Regional Cooking of Italy - 900 pages with a background on each recipe. Very helpful for research and creating dishes.

Encyclopedia of Pasta - Invaluable if you're doing fresh pasta. Provides a thorough explanation of each shape.

The Silver Spoon - a monster with 2000 recipes, but a great reference book. I think it claims to be Italy's oldest cookbook(?)...

I think these are a great starting point if you're in a serious kitchen - best of luck!

Silver Spoon is the best for basics/reference. I've got a copy in both English and the original Italian. It's the modern bible while larousse gastronomique is outdated imo.

Cooking by Hand was a big inspiration early in my career

Recently I like cookbooks that are entertaining beyond just pretty pictures of food.

The Dirt Candy cookbook. The graphic novel style is awesome and the recipes are good.

Also, A Super Upsetting Book about Sandwiches

And of course Thug Kitchen

If you are looking for basic cooking information the Joy of Cooking is obligatory.

A couple things I've learned along the way is first to start slow and work through cookbooks. It's easy to keep buying book after book but they are just decoration if you don't know them well. Secondly, be wary of books with lots of pretty pictures! In my experience they are full of single-purpose recipes that don't teach you the true nature or source as you spoke of above.

As far as source recipes I'd second everything mentioned so far but if you are looking to blow people away with Italian and Mexican dishes (my particular favorite styles)... look no further than:

The Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking - Marcella Hazan - Possibly my favorite author of cookbooks of all time. This is definitely the one to start with in my opinion.

The Art of Mexican Cooking - Diana Kennedy - If you are looking for real mexican food this book is a great place to start.

Bonus Book... not a cookbook but a great way to learn about cooking

1. I read Eating Animals, by Jonathan Saffron Foer and could not find a rational argument against veganism as the ethical choice given my access to alternatives to animal products. I was reading a whole lot of books on all sort of food-related topics, had no intention of going vegan or even vegetarian, but that was that. Went vegan the following day (July 4, 2011)
   
2. My spouse is working on decreasing animal product use. He kind of tapered - he was avoiding red meat, then lacto-ovo-veg, now he's closer to 80% vegan with occasional LOV meals. He also found meat substitutes he likes so he can do burgers, tacos, and other foods that are comfort food to him. I don't really have much practical advice, I guess, except that meat substitutes / analogues are a perfectly reasonable option if those flavors/textures are significant to you.
   
3. I'm boring. On a typical day I have oatmeal and coffee with soy milk for breakfast, some kind of grain plus frozen veggies and either beans of chopped up baked tofu for lunch (I make a big batch, portion it out, and freeze it ahead of time for the week), and tofu and some veggies for dinner. All boring, all easy, all tasty and inexpensive. For good recipes, I recommend checking out the post punk kitchen. Two of my favorite cookbooks are [http://smile.amazon.com/Mediterranean-Vegan-Kitchen-Donna-Klein/dp/1557883599/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1415407055&sr=8-1&keywords=mediterranean+vegan](The Mediterranean Vegan Kitchen) and The Oh She Glows Cookbook.

Jose Andres is one of the best chefs in the world. He hosted a PBS show called Made in Spain, that is a great basics of Spanish cooking show, which goes from region to region with history and easy to follow recipes. There's also a cookbook to use after watching.

I've eaten at a few of his restaurants. He's my absolute favorite chef. This is a great opportunity to learn from a master.

The Silver Spoon is like the Italian food bible - it is more like an encyclopedia than a cookbook.

But the one that I think you must have on your shelf is Giorgio Locatelli's Made In Italy. It's as much for the recipes as it is for the stories - you get such a sense of what food means to Italians and what a massive part of its culture food is. It's a cookbook you can happily read in bed. I love it.

I also picked up this on a recent trip to Bocca di Lupo and it's pretty special as well.

https://www.amazon.com/Vefas-Kitchen-Vefa-Alexiadou/dp/0714849294

Vefa Alexiadou is a TV food personality and all round Ina Garten-esque figure in Greece. Her book is pretty comprehensive and a good resource for classic Greek dishes from all around the country (not the typical Asia-minor inflected cooking of expat Greek places).

Argyro's Cooking https://www.amazon.com/dp/9607952820/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_MgNFAbRE311EV

Argyro Barbarigou is one of the more innovative chefs in Greece right now - her book is available in Greek but sold out in English atm I think. Well worth it as an update on classics that captures fairly mainstream trends in Greece.

PM me for more info if you’re curious. Happy to help!

Source: greedy Greek.

So, when you heat food up- meat especially- it has a tendency to dry out. This is very true if you're cooking past medium temps.

A reduction is a sauce made by simmering or boiling down a liquid into a strong, thick concentration, yielding an intense taste. Because there are different components in liquids, when you apply heat they can evaporate or clump together.

Reductions (and other sauces) add another layer of flavor to the dish. If a meat or veggie is bland, not well seasoned enough, or too gamey, the sauce will tend to help liven it up.

I'm a huge fan of red wine and shallots, and bourbon-honey-butter reductions. Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles Cookbook is a wonderful reference to have in the kitchen and living room.

Tons of cooking videos on yourtube! Here's one with sprouts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LhZpTqWCMc

You should also check out mother sauces. Your taste buds will thank you.

The Silver Spoon is a massive Italian cookbook with pretty easy to read instructions and big fancy pictures. I got one as a gift its has some pretty good recipes in it that range from easier to harder recipes. Its about 30 bucks on amazon

http://www.amazon.com/Silver-Spoon-New-Kitchen/dp/0714862568/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1450126627&sr=8-1&keywords=the+silver+spoon+cookbook

Get a nice bottle of Barolo and do a gift basket for her. If she liked Rome include all the ingredients to make a Spaghetti alla Carbonara. Since she liked Sicily get her some aged pecorino to grate on top. Also, toss in a copy of the Silver Spoon so she can whip up her favorite dishes whenever she likes.

Hi op, this was one of Anthony Bourdain's favourite cookbooks by one of his favourite cooks-if you've not read it I'd suggest that it's right up your alley.
Nose to Tail Eating: A Kind of British Cooking https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0747572577/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_tai_k0.xCbC4CVBKA

I love his 'trotter gear' It's a rich & flavourful stock-type substance, highly versatile & hugely delicious.
http://wellhungfood.com/home/recipes/trotter-gear-recipe/

Marcella Hazan has a great recipe. It's probably my favorite thing to eat ever. Her recipes can be a bit fussy, but the instructions are thorough and straightforward. I'd recommend cooking anything in her book the prescribed way first, and then making any changes the next time around (though I usually find I don't want to change a thing). I usually do her bolognese on the stove through all the reduction steps, then put it in my crock pot on "low" or "warm" for the rest of the day.

Added bonus: that book contains my other favorite pasta sauce; it's called something like "tomato sauce with butter and onion." It's a quicker sauce to make and it's quite addictive. (Edit: and it doesn't taste super oniony. You cook it with the onions and then take them out before serving.)

One of the most interesting and classic Italian cookbooks is "Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well", written by Pellegrino Artusi in 1891. It's huge, a fascinating read, incredibly comprehensive, and literally laugh-out-loud funny. EDIT: another good one is "Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking" by Marcella Hazan.

>Now that boychild is old enough we have family passes to all the big Chicago museums.

Mr. Abrams' maternal grandfather designed the hoist that takes you into the coal mine at Science & Industry. YOUR WELCOME

I don't have "hobbies," per se; I don't knit or anything. But I have pastimes!

• Trail running, around 120 miles/month, although I don't think I'm on track to do that this month. :-(
  
  
• Cooking and culinary history. I have hundreds of cookbooks and have read them all cover-to-cover. I taught myself to cook with this book, and then I had to teach myself how to cook Indian food, because I love it and Mr. Abrams refused to go to Indian restaurants when we were first married due to bad experiences in college. He is perfectly willing now, but I still cook it quite a bit.
  
  
• Also museums. I can't wait to get back to DC. This exhibition was showing when we started dating, and we hit it every weekend until it closed. No ragrats.
  
  
• Military history. It has been my job for many years, but I would also read about it even if it were not my job.
  
  
• DIY. I grew up working class, with my parents doing everything around the house, and I have not outgrown that habit. When the GFCI outlets or the garbage disposal need replacing, or when walls need to be painted, or when faucets or light fixtures need to be switched out, I am the one who does it.
  
  
• Sketching. Not as much as I would like, but it is what it is.
  
  
• Baseball. I played with my friends in high school (pickup games; I wasn't allowed to play Legion with them and didn't really want to) and I used to be up-to-the-minute on every stat you can think of. I have fallen off on that somewhat, but I will still shout you down about who is the best pitcher of all time. (Hint: Walter Johnson.)

The Essentials of Italian Cooking by Marcella Hazan is an excellent book on Italian cooking.

​

What's Eating Dan has some great videos on food science and why if you cook in certain ways the food is more delicious

Get Fergus Henderson's Nose to Tail Eating, it's a cookbook that will blow your flippin' mind (a personal favorite is marrow and parsley salad), another good cookbooks about offal is Odd Bits by Jennifer McLagan.

Once you start eating offal, you'll never go back, a quickly fried up liver or kidney is a precious treat and while a lot of offal is increasingly hard to get, once you have a good supplier, you'll never go back.

In addition to the above books...

English translation of Fernand Point's, Ma Gastronomie was rereleased a few years back.

Great book.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1585679615/ref=redir_mdp_mobile/184-4633697-1538367

Keep meticulous notes: writing everything down you learn and things yet to learn. When watching vids or reading and you encounter something that is unfamiliar make note of it in a journal and reference it for later.

Edit: sorry, you were more so requesting resources as to what to cook. I would suggest finding a chef that interests you who has published a cook book buy it and start with the recipes in there. If you have no idea what chefs interest you choose a cuisine or region and find a book by a chef that is outstanding in that particular area of interest.

A good cookbook isn't just about the recipes, or even primarily about the recipes. It's about the photos, the techniques, the flavor pairings, the curation. A good cookbook should be like looking into the head of a great chef.

We almost never cook from recipes, but my roommate and I own ~20 cookbooks between us.

To understand what a good cookbook can be, I recommend getting the NOMA cookbook and Fernand Point's Ma Gastronomie

I adore The Mediterranean Vegan Kitchen by Donna Klein--I've never had any of the recipes turn out less than excellent. It really increased my vegetable and whole grain intake, as well as provide some healthy fat (e.g., olive oil). http://www.amazon.com/Mediterranean-Vegan-Kitchen-Donna-Klein/dp/1557883599

I started a modified Paleo diet a year ago and I've seen a dramatic improvement. I'd say 95% improvement. There are days and weeks where I forget I even have HS. The diet change is difficult--I would get depressed at the thought of food--but I adapted to it after 6 months.

Castaway Kitchen (Cristina Curp) and Curious Coconut (Amanda Torres) have very good AIP/Paleo recipes. They both have HS and have put it into remission using diet.I've tried their recipes and they taste very good. I've made the chicken more times that I can count.

https://thecastawaykitchen.com/2018/01/crispy-ginger-lime-baked-wings-whole30-keto-aip/

https://thecuriouscoconut.com/blog/paleo-plantain-flour-pancakes

Also, this is a great book - Mickey Trescott's Autoimmune Paleo Cookbook
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0578135213/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0
I use the winter squash soup recipe quite often.

Cristina Curp's book 'Made Whole' is excellent.
https://www.amazon.com/Made-Whole-Anti-lnflammatory-Keto-Paleo-Recipes/dp/1628602945

Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking is easily the best book to learn French cooking. It has very thorough instructions for techniques, authentic recipes, adapted for the American kitchen.

I also recommend Larousse Gastronomique,
Escoffier and
Jacques Pepin's Complete Techniques.

You mentioned that you prefer recipes that are simple and not too time consuming. The problem with that is, most authentic French cooking is time-consuming and laborious. This is why it is so delicious and intricate. However, I do have one cookbook that I don't use too much anymore, but it features great recipes that are fairly quick and accessible.

love reading good cook books too!
It's a little older, but when I moved of my parents house I took the Anna Thomas cook books.
The other one I like to page thru is the Silver Spoon
do you have a favorite?

3 spørgsmål:

• Hvor kendt er du i et køkken.
  
  
• Har du nogle preferencer til hvilket køkken (hvilke lande) du vil have kogebøger om?
  
  
• Er der noget loft for hvad du vil give?
  
  For mig, der er den vigtigste bog at have, når vi snakker kogebøger, det er Kokkebogen. Det er en bog med alle de gode gamle klassiske retter i dansk køkken samt klassisker fra rundt omkring i Europa. Dertil får du alt den viden, som du har brug for, omkring alle dyr, udskæringer, køkkengrej og værktøj osv osv. Min gamle kokkelære på hotel og restaurations skolen sagde, at man med denne ene bog, kunne åbne en restaurant.
  
  God mad, let at lave er også en rigtig god bog. Den er fyldt med masser af fantastiske opskrifter, som er skide god, hvis man ikke gider lange og besværlige processer.
  
  Sølv Skeen Er den italienske udgave af vores kokkebog, bare uden alle de tekniske begreber. Jeg tror der er også 1000 opskrifter i denne bog (den er kæmpe. Min udgave har ødelagt et tørrestativ.)
  
  Frøken Jensens kogebog er en gammel klassisker, og en hver kok med respekt for sig selv, har sådan en i sit køkken.
  
  Jorden rundt på 80 retter er en lidt ukendt en til samlingen. Jeg synes personligt at den er skide god, fordi der er retter og inspiration at hente, som man normalt ikke ville falde over.
  
  Men igen, så handler det jo meget om, hvad du gerne vil have. Du kan også hente inspiration på youtube, hvor Gordon Ramsay har sine Ultimate cooking course, som er en rigtig god madserie ( men det er fyldt med foodporn dog).

Wow. Dude, that is not a deep argument. Spare your keyboard, you don't have to repeat yourself over and over.

Look, the fact is, when we die, we all go to the great pasta bowl in the sky. I don't know how to prove that to you, you'll have to take my word for it. There is a god, and he's made of spaghetti.

There's no way I can prove it to you in such a shallow forum. But perhaps this book will enlighten you. I could take you to a restaurant and introduce you to some of the best chefs in the world... but that's a lot of work.

I'm not being irreverent for the hell of it, I'm trying to make a point. You are incredibly tone deaf. Who do you think you're talking to? You just came to a debate forum, and told someone who has never seen any evidence of your god, "Don't worry, it's all true. Trust me. Some old people in a monastery are really nice. You'll die one day and then you'll realize that the dude you chatted with on reddit once was right all along."

The stuff you're saying is so vapid. If you learn nothing else on here, please learn this: If you want to convince a skeptical person who values evidence, a hollow and wordy emotional argument is actually counterproductive. When I decided I no longer believed, I was desperate for any counter evidence. I really wanted to keep my faith, but it just didn't make any sense. And arguments like yours (many of them, from several people) are what sealed my decision.

I lived as a vegan in a small town with limited grocery options for 3.5 years and it can definitely be done. As far as meat substitutes go: they're mostly over-processed, over-priced, and (in my opinion) they're often not particularly tasty. Rather than trying to substitute other things for meat, start getting adventurous with cooking vegetables. Use beans and grains for protein (they form the backbones of most of my meals). When you find spices in the store (or online) that you've never heard of, buy a small quantity and learn how to cook with them. If you're flipping through a vegetarian cookbook and it seems like the recipes are constantly trying to recreate meat dishes, it is (again, in my opinion) probably not going to be a particularly satisfying cookbook. One of my favorites is The Mediterranean Vegan Kitchen Amazon link which has recipes that just happen to be vegan, not recipes that are adapted to be so.

Yes yes yes yes. This bad boy has all kinds of great bechamel - and other sauce - recipes.

I own this cook book. Haven't done any recipes in it but I've looked through it a good number of times and I can vouch for it. If I didn't have access online anything would turn out good and work just fine.

Melissa Joulwan's Well Fed and Michelle Tam's Nom Nom Paleo are where my brain immediately goes. They're paleo and (mostly Whole30), but have a heavy focus on eating real food and not a whole lot of desserts. They do, however, feature sweet potatoes and such on occasion.

Personally, I'm waiting anxiously for this book to come out, but I think that would probably be above the price range you're looking for.

You might do better to just find a collection of recipes you can keep printouts of, or even something like the one week meal plan.

My favorite cooking related book to give as a gift, just because it's so joyful and a lot of younger cooks don't know about it: Ma Gastronomie by Ferdinand Point. So many great musings and quotes.
https://smile.amazon.com/Ma-Gastronomie-Fernand-Point/dp/1585679615/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1481405420&sr=1-1

Cook books are a great idea. I did just pick up the new English translation of 'I Know How To Cook!', the most comprehensive and, quite frankly, incredible cookbook I've found.

It'll do me well for a long time - highly recommended!

yes, how true, but Joy is like the annotated reference manual for every other cookbook. Personally, the most influential cookbook for me has been the classic French Cooking in Ten Minutes for its attitude and severe lack of detail.

Wow! I actually own this one already. Good to know that's the real deal.

Here's a link for those interested:

Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking https://www.amazon.com/dp/039458404X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_5puYzb43Z2KMK

I have mixed feelings about celebrity cookbooks, but nevertheless I'm a big fan of Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles Cookbook. It's fairly unpretentious French bistro fare, but a lot of the recipes require a decent amount of prep, a lot of trial and error, and sometimes recipes stages that span multiple days. Not all of the recipes are tough, but as an intermediate cook myself I really think that some of these will be a pleasant challenge. Plus it's a very aesthetically pleasing book imo.

There are more than enough resources out there to teach you how to cook. The better question might be - what do you want to learn how to cook?

If you're a big Italian food fan like I am, I did the following:

Step 1. Purchase copy of Marcella Hazan's ["Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking"] (http://www.amazon.ca/Essentials-Classic-Italian-Cooking-Marcella/dp/039458404X)
Step 2. Figure out the fundamental recipes - for me it was plain tomato sauce, bolognese sauce, minestrone soup, hand made pasta, roast chicken, ossobuco, and a few others
Step 3. Practice practice practice - I have probably made my own pasta 20 times in the past year and I am still not close to mastery (but I'm getting there!)

I'd also suggest that you work on basic knife skills, including sharpening your own knife. These are essential no matter what route you decide to take.

I love this cookbook: Arabesque by Claudia Rodin. It contains really excellent recipes from Lebanese, Turkish, and Moroccan cuisine.

Claudia Roden has a great recipe for Moroccan tagine in here. A great book that's been around for some time- if you don't want to buy it, I'd bet your local library has a copy.

Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking by Marcella Hazan.

I've enjoyed this book immensely, it has great reviews on Amazon, and Alton Brown considers this one of the 'best' cook books to own.

I recently donated away about 100 cookbooks I had collected over the years (I organize virtually everything digitally now) but I kept these 5:

Child et al, Mastering the Art of French Cooking (well-used, next to the stove)

Hazan, Essentials of Italian Cooking (carried to Italy and used there twice)

Lewis, The Taste of Country Cooking (such a good read)

Rombauer. An older than I am edition (with how-to-skin-a-squirrel recipes) of the Joy of Cooking (falling apart, kept for sentimental reasons)

Fox, On Vegetables: Modern Recipes for the Home Kitchen (for the porn)

A lot of famous restaurants and chefs have cookbooks that feature recipes from their restaurants.

It can be pretty hard to replicate a restaurant dish at home. I cook for a living and you have a lot of advantages in a professional kitchen. Hotter ovens and burners and all kinds of other toys.

So the recipes in restaurant cookbooks aren't always the most reliable when you do them at home. And the cookbooks are pricey. But they have pretty pictures.

If you want to get really crazy try one of these,


Mugaritz: A Natural Science of Cooking

or

Alinea

or

Noma: Time and Place in Nordic Cuisine

Here are all the local Amazon links I could find.


amazon.co.uk

amazon.ca

amazon.com.au

amazon.in

amazon.com.mx

Beep bloop. I'm a bot to convert Amazon ebook links to local Amazon sites.
I currently look here: amazon.com, amazon.co.uk, amazon.ca, amazon.com.au, amazon.in, amazon.com.mx, if you would like your local version of Amazon adding please contact my creator.

Bistro Cooking by Patricia Wells is a good one for Provençal food, which tends to be more down-to-earth and simpler. It's basically country food and I believe has some food from Nice and Lyons in there. Speaking of which, Nice is the big French coastal city, so if you're looking for French dishes incorporating fish, try cookbooks about Niçoise cuisine.

Yay! It would be SOOOOO exciting if this cookbook showed up at my door!

This one is more just baked goods, but Magnus does have a Nordic Cookbook that's also worth a look through.

If you're a gamer at all, the book that brought me to this sub to learn more about mead was The Elder Scrolls Cookbook. Fun recipes, even if you're not trying to recreate something from the game world.

My most used and well loved cookbook is Marcella Hazan’s Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking. My Italian grandmother recommended it to me when I first started cooking as a teenager and it seems to be a staple for a lot of home cooks I know.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/039458404X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_ESCPAbCSJBRWR

http://www.amazon.com/Silver-Spoon-New-Phaidon-Press/dp/0714862568
The most amazing Italian cook book, the author went to little villages and talked to real Italian cooks and got the truest traditional methods and recipes

I also recommend a Delia book. I started learning to cook from my dad's old copy of Delia's Complete Cookery Course which I think was from the 70s or early 80s (had a picture of her holding an egg on the front lol). The book itself is still in print and will have had certain stuff updated, so honestly I really recommend it. Only book you need. https://smile.amazon.co.uk/Delias-Complete-Cookery-Course-Classic/dp/0563362499/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=delia%27s+complete+cookery+course&qid=1559307699&s=gateway&sr=8-1

Also, start with simple things. I still mainly cook simple things - my current staple is homemade curry. Main things you need is a carton of passata and curry powder. Start off with a bit of chopped onion, chuck it in the pan with some oil and cook it for a bit. Then just add a 2-3 tablespoons of curry powder (i usually also add a little extra tumeric, ginger and cumin too) and mix it in with the onion for a minute or so, then pour in the passata. After that, chuck in whatever you want - usually for me it's some diced chicken and some frozen spinach. And that's it.

Spanakorizo
http://mydinnertoday.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/spanakorizo.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanakorizo

fasolakia
http://www.mygreekdish.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Traditional-Greek-green-beans-recipe-Fasolakia-giaxni-prep1.jpg?ad92dc

Araka (Green peas with Tomato sauce)
http://cdn-1.kopiaste.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/pizeli-giahni-small.jpg

Fakes (Greek Lentil Soup)

http://allrecipes.com/recipe/greek-lentil-soup-fakes/


Yemistes (stuffed peppers/tomatos)

http://www.mygreekdish.com/recipe/gemista-stuffed-tomatoes-peppers-and-onions/

Those are some of the traditional stuff I remember from my childhood.

This cookbook has LOADS of greek veggie recipes, and I recommend it, it's where i learned my kickass youverlakia recipe.

http://www.amazon.ca/Vefas-Kitchen-Vefa-Alexiadou/dp/0714849294

All her recipes are pretty good but they stray from traditional* stuff. Granted every household will have their ways of cooking their food.

A few from different regions:

Yucatán: Recipes from a Culinary Expedition for Yucatecan / Mayan food. It is the best one for this, period.

Sicilian Food

The Nordic Cookbook for Scandinavian food.

Cuisine of Hungary.

Churrasco: Grilling the Brazilian Way

Ahhhh, my condolences, how tragic!

I'm something of a cookbook minimalist, and keep my personal collection pretty concise; I'm quick to give away books if they've been on my shelf too long without much use. I used to be a cookbook hoarder, but I don't have the space for it anymore, lol.

The cookbooks I have on the shelf rn are Season, The Palestinian Table, Arabesque, Afro-Vegan, Donabe, and several Japanese-language cookbooks.

For dessert-related things, I have Baking and Pastry: Mastering the Art and Craft, Chocolates and Confections: Formula, Theory, and Technique, SUQAR, and the Flavor Thesaurus.

it's not turkish only, but claudia roden's arabesque is excellent.

Some cookbooks that I use or are on my wishlist:

• The Fat Duck
  
  
• The French Laundry
  
  
• Alinea
  
  
• Eleven Madison Park
  
  
• Quay: food inspired by nature
  
  
• Room for Dessert
  
  
• Murgaritz: A Natural Science of Cooking
  
  
• Saison
  
  
• Rasoi: New Indian Kitchen
  
  
• Le Cinq
  
  
• Coi: Stories and Recipes
  
  
• Massimo Bottura: Never Trust a Skinny Italian Chef
  
  
• Atelier Crenn: Metamorphosis of Taste
  
  
• El Celler De Can Roca
  
  Great British Chefs also has some recipes from Michelin starred restaurants.

First recommendation is don't work as a chef if you value a social/family life.

Good books to read are;
Larousse Gastronomique which is the absolute Bible/Koran/Bhagavad Gita

The Silver Spoon which is a great Italian cook book.

And another tip is old, outdated looking cook books are sometimes the best. I've got one I got from an ex girlfriend's mum which looks terrible but if you're into Cypriot/Greek/Turkish food is incredible, it's here

These are all great starts -

http://www.amazon.com/Essentials-Classic-Italian-Cooking-Marcella/dp/039458404X


http://www.amazon.com/Lidias-Italy-Simple-Delicious-Recipes/dp/1400040361/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1413903918&sr=1-6&keywords=lidia+bastianich+cookbooks

http://www.amazon.com/Mario-Batali-Simple-Italian-Food/dp/0609603000/ref=sr_1_9?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1413903950&sr=1-9&keywords=mario+batali

Glad to hear you got this figured out! I actually just bought a Polish cookbook that I think is the closest thing I'll get to my grandma's (famously lost, of course) pierogi recipe. If you want to try an authentic paczki recipe, one of these might be a good place to start... My coworkers have been asking if it's paczki season yet, so I'll probably try one myself. http://i.imgur.com/1ZMQzqo.jpg

Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking is a great Italian cookbook, although maybe more recipe-centric than what you are looking for.

IIRC, this is the book M. F. K. Fisher thinks is the end-all-be-all of cooking... Tangentially related, I believe this is the "Joy of Cooking" for the French:

http://www.amazon.com/Know-How-Cook-Ginette-Mathiot/dp/071485736X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1293757218&sr=8-1

The Silver Spoon is a mammoth of a book. around 2000 pages if I remember right. I had it recommended to me countless times but didn't realise just how amazing of a deal it was until it landed on my doorstep and I found out you could believably beat someone to death with it.

Huge book, categories for EVERYTHING. My only criticism is that sometimes it uses terminology that might not be the best for beginners and there's not many guide pictures. But that's nothing a bit of googling around can't sort out. I'd definitely recommend getting it for your collection.

"The Nordic Cookbook" by esteemed Swedish chef Magnus Nilsson seems pretty definitive. It's a massive tome with 700 recipes from all over the Nordic countries. I haven't read it myself so I can't vouch for it personally, but it's the first book that comes to my mind when I think of Swedish and/or Nordic cooking. I've seen a few documentaries about Nilsson and he's...let's call it devoted to his craft. Opened a Michelin 2-star restaurant in northern Sweden, far away from the bigger cities that normally house our Michelin star restaurants, just to be close to the produce he uses in his cooking. He's a bit of an odd duck, but one who does seem to know what he's doing in the kitchen.

For me it was French Cooking in Ten Minutes. Before it, I was fumbling through recipes. It is so brief, lacking detail and had such attitude that it gave me the confidence to just try.

This list is interesting but very much outside my experience of the 1980s, being from the UK. Nearly all those foods are very American.

Delia Smith's Complete Cookery Course came out in 1978 and that had a significant influence on the 1980s.

For UK suggestions:

1. Findus Crispy Pancakes
   
2. Chicken Kiev
   
3. Deep Pan Pizzas
   
4. Boil-in-the-bag
   
5. Slush Puppies/Sodastream
   
6. Ryvita
   
7. Viennetta
   
8. Nescafé Gold Blend
   
9. Frosties
   
10. Ferrero Rocher
    
    If this list looks 1970s or earlier to US redditors, it's because trends took longer to reach Europe in those days. Today, due to the internet and perhaps more international travel, we access stuff much faster. I remember in the 80s how all our mothers avidly tried out this amazing recipe for chewy "Toll House Cookies" from the single American family in our town.

Je Sais Cuisiner English version

It is pretty much the bible of french cooking. Massive book and covers everything you would ever need to know about french cooking, basics to the complex.

‘Nose to tail eating’ has become more popular recently and there are several cook books on the subject. It’s about using the whole animal when you do cook meat so you’ll get some recipes with typical meat ingredients and some with the offal and bits you might not expect. Here is Fergus’ book of the same title.

Nå folkens, der er snart gået et år siden Skodbil sidst mæskede sig i fødselsdagskage, og det betyder at successen skal gentages. Fødselsdagsgaver er for lang tid siden gået fra at være Lego og våben, til at være sokker og bøger.

Derfor skal der nu nogle gode kogebøger på listen. Jeg er ikke så meget på udkig efter opskriftsbøger, men mere ude i at ville have kogebøger som jeg rent faktisk kan lære noget af. Jeg har allerede følgende på listen, men hvis DU kender en helt vildt god bog jeg bør læse, så sig til.

Sølvskeen

The Food Lab, Kenji Lopez

Chocolate at Home

Paul Bocuse Institut Gastronomique

The Professional Chef

The Flavour Bible

Mastering Cheese

Der er med vilje ingen vinbøger på listen, for det gør jeg mig ikke specielt meget i - endnu.

https://www.amazon.com/Nordic-Cookbook-Magnus-Nilsson/dp/0714868728/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1492508514&sr=8-1&keywords=the+nordic+cookbook

The Nordic cookbook by Magnus Nilsson was the cookbook that got me into cooking, and I can highly recommend it.

I recommend this cookbook: The Silver Spoon New Edition https://www.amazon.com/dp/0714862568/ref=cm_sw_r_api_Uoo4yb5HMXSBF

Translated from Italian, 1000's of recipes. Get a reference copy for you kitchen, spend some time getting to know Italian seasonal non-tomato based cuisine in depth so you don't have to think on your feet when in order comes in.

Delih Smith's cookery course takes you from boiling an egg to Christmas dinner. She is like royalty among UK chefs.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/0563362499?cache=03c8641b604c6aaa6e40eb9a4b2b346f&pi=SY200_QL40&qid=1412539261&sr=8-1#ref=mp_s_a_1_1

I am not sure of what you already have or what you would need, I am listing a few things on top of my head:

• Crock pot
  
• Cast iron skillet
  
• Dutch oven
  
• Victorinox chef knife
  
• Microplane zester
  
• Bread maker machine
  
• Mandoline
  
• Mortar and pestle
  
• Flour Water Salt Yeast: The Fundamentals of Artisan Bread and Pizza
  
• Tartine bread
  
• Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking
  
• Espresso maker
  
• Cookie Sheet and cooling racks
  
• Meat Thermometer

I like Magnus Nilsson, The Nordic Cookbook, Phaidon, 2015: https://www.amazon.com/Nordic-Cookbook-Magnus-Nilsson/dp/0714868728/

It isn't a picture book, it isn't New Nordic, it isn't art food. It is of substantial thickness and weight. It's traditional cooking, and largely home cooking. The "traditional" ranges from ultra-traditional through to dishes that entered home cooking in the 1970s (like pork with bananas and curry sauce).

Not Iceland-focussed, but has Icelandic recipes.

His cookbook is written in a similar manner as well.

Marcella Hazan is to Italian food as Julia Child is to French food. Start with Hazan's Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking; you can't go wrong!

How is "I Know How To Cook" not on there? It's solid gold: http://www.amazon.com/Know-How-Cook-Ginette-Mathiot/dp/071485736X

Once you have some basics down, you might look around for a copy of this cookbook. It's sort of the bible of Italian cooking in Italy, and while it has some complicated recipes, there are also plenty of simple but classic dishes, especially in the appetizers. soups and salad sections.

A few British classics Delia's Complete Cookery Course, Mary Berry Cooks and Madhur Jaffrey's Ultimate Curry Bible.

Start with this cookbook

Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles Cookbook: Strategies, Recipes, and Techniques of Classic Bistro Cooking https://www.amazon.com/dp/158234180X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_pyWeAbK4J2TDM

Maybe this ebook?

https://www.amazon.com/Mediterranean-Cookbook-Healthy-Lifestyle-Recipes-ebook/dp/B0779DHK72

Buy this and start learning to cook some real Italian stuff:

http://www.amazon.com/Essentials-Classic-Italian-Cooking-Marcella/dp/039458404X/

Marcella Hazan
Marcella Hazan
Marcella Hazan

Also, Marcella Hazan.

http://www.amazon.com/Essentials-Classic-Italian-Cooking-Marcella/dp/039458404X

For Italian, start here: https://www.amazon.com/Essentials-Classic-Italian-Cooking-Marcella/dp/039458404X

The silver spoon is largely considered the go-to italian homestyle cookbook.

http://www.amazon.com/Silver-Spoon-New-Phaidon-Press/dp/0714862568/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1419952727&sr=1-1&keywords=silver+spoon

Bourdain's Les Halles

Essentials of Classic Italian... https://www.amazon.com/dp/039458404X?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share

The Silver Spoon
https://www.amazon.com/Silver-Spoon-New-Kitchen/dp/0714862568

Marcella Hazan, "Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking"
http://www.amazon.com/Essentials-Classic-Italian-Cooking-Marcella/dp/039458404X

I have three books that I carry with from job to job.

1. Prudhomme Family Cookbook
   
   
2. The Silver Spoon
   
   
3. Modern French Culinary Art
   
   

Marcella Hazan has a parallel story to Julia Child, only for Italian cooking.

Use this one. It is the classic in italian cooking, written for Americans.

I Know How To Cook was just published in the US. I got it a few months ago and use it all the time. It's the book Julia Childs ripped off when she wrote hers.

Noma book

Get Marcella Hazan's Essentials of Italian Cooking. Start with the basic pastas and sauces and move on from there.

http://www.amazon.com/Essentials-Classic-Italian-Cooking-Marcella/dp/039458404X

That's the basic definition of how you 'finish' a dish, in standard Italian cooking. https://www.amazon.ca/Essentials-Classic-Italian-Cooking-Marcella/dp/039458404X , like Italy-italian, not "North America's bizarro world version as promulgated by Olive Garden"

Surprisingly, authentic italian cooking can be very keto without sacrificing any flavour, and enhancing the satiation, and one of the big methods to do so is basically extra parmesan as a finishing touch.

Look for Marcella's recipe for minestrone. Leave out the pasta and potatoes, and it's full on keto. My version of the recipe is 12 g net carbs per serving, and only 8 if I leave out the cannellini beans. You lose zero flavour to having it be low carb. In the recipe you use parmesan heels (the part leftover when you grate all the cheese you can from a round) to start the broth thickening.

The classic italian meal treats pasta as an occasional, middle of the meal thing, and the portions are tiny by american standards- usually 30g or less carbs in the portion sizes I encountered. On my infrequent days off from keto, one of our go-to meals is Lasagne, northern italy style, and it's 40g carbs per serving.

Last night I made farfalle Alfredo, which is Thing 2's absolute favorite. Thing 1 can take it or leave it. Thing 3 ate four bowlsful and immediately lapsed into a carb coma.

Marcella Hazan's pork loin in red wine vinegar tonight. You salt and pepper a pork loin roast, brown it on both sides in a snugly-fitting saucepan with a little butter and olive oil and then, while it's still hot, pour in red wine vinegar to come up about halfway. (Stand back, the steam will make your eyes sting.) Throw a bay leaf in, clamp the lid on, and turn the heat down to low. Simmer until the pork reaches an internal temperature of 150 or so. DO NOT OVERCOOK OR IT WILL BE DRY LIKE SAWDUST.

This was one of the first recipes I cooked out of this book, way back when I was first learning to cook, in the late 1990s. I had just started dating Mr. Arthur and didn't know a thing about cooking because my mother never cared much about food and my dad only wanted to eat the same five dinners in a rotation. Mr. Arthur's family cares about food A LOT and I knew I had to raise my game. This is the single best cookbook I own, and I own hundreds, and opened my eyes to so many concepts: technique, simplicity of ingredients, et al et al.

This recipe is only three ingredients, not counting the oil and butter and salt and pepper, but it's one of the best things I have ever eaten.

Edit: A lot of recipes tell you to cook your pork to 160 or 170 degrees, lest you poison yourself with trichinosis, which is rubbish. At least in the US, there hasn't been a trich outbreak in decades, and you can actually see trich with the naked eye. If your pork is covered in swarming creepy-crawlies, throw it out and don't cook it at all. Trich is also killed at 137F. So if you're cooking pork loin or tenderloin, which does not benefit from long cooking the way that shoulder or belly does, cook it to 150 degrees and call it a day.

Essential's of Italian Classic Cooking by Marcella Hazan--the late dean of Italian cooking in the US. She helped revolutionize Italian cuisine in the 1970's and 80's by prodding eaters to look beyond garlic & red marinara, which she felt were bastardizations of real cucina italiana.

Pasta with anchovies, cannellini beans, jalapenos and tomatoes http://deadspin.com/how-to-make-a-pasta-with-anchovies-and-other-stuff-a-5983040

The recipe format requires a lot of reading since it's written as a blog post, but it's a fairly straightforward dish. You can substitute crushed red pepper flakes for the jalapenos if you want less heat.

Don't buy jarred sauce, make your own. I like 1 can of whole peeled tomatoes (use a blender to chop them) mixed with 1 can of crushed tomatoes. Saute some garlic in a pot with some oil, salt, black pepper, crushed red pepper, drop in a whole peeled onion, I also add some tomato paste (I buy the kind that comes in a squeeze tube type thing). Let that cook for at least 45 minutes, more if you want a thicker sauce. 10 or so minutes nbefore you feel it's done drop in a handful of fresh basil, maybe a bay leaf or 2 if you have them. Freeze the excess in a bunch of serving sized containers. I usually freeze 2-3 servings in each container.

Alternatively here's an even simpler recipe: http://www.thekitchn.com/marcella-hazans-amazing-4ingre-144538

Warning, 5 tablespoons is A LOT of butter, you can use 3-4.

Edit: This is a great italian cook book http://www.amazon.com/Essentials-Classic-Italian-Cooking-Marcella/dp/039458404X