Aight girl-

Foreign Cuisine-
How to Eataly - Oscar Farinetti - We made the most AMAZING brisket meatballs and a super simple yet completely delicious red sauce out of this book
Around My French Table - Dorie Greenspan - Where the Cornish hens and gougeres came from.
Real Korean Cooking - Maangchi - Korean Fried Chicken. We've made them twice now because they're so good and can't wait to do more.
Mexican Everyday - Rick Bayless - Learned how to make perfect guac from this book and so far we've made these v tasty chorizo/mushroom/potato tacos. The recipe is SO cheap and SO voluminous that we had it as a taco filling, a quesadilla filling, and we're making a hash with it for brunch this morning.
Every Grain of Rice - Fuchsia Dunlop - We haven't tried anything out of here yet but there are sooooo many good-looking recipes in here.
Entice with Spice - Shubhra Ramineni - Likewise, haven't made anything out of here yet but looking forward to trying it all out soon.
Jack's Wife Freda - Dean & Maya Jankelowitz - This is actually a book from a restaurant that my fiance and I LOVED when we last visited NYC. It's got a lot of fusion recipes. Mediterranean/Israeli/South African/etc. Really unique flavors and also v comfort-food based. We're making rosewater waffles out of this book tomorrow!


Baking-
Rose's Baking Basics - Rose Levy Barenbaum - This book is incredible. She has tons and tons of step-by-step photos which is SUPER helpful. We made the dark chocolate caramel tart out of this book, but pretty much everything in here looks amazing.
Modern Baking - Donna Hay - I mean... There is some INSANELY decadent looking stuff in here. We haven't tried any of these recipes yet but I can't wait to!


Misc-
Cook Like a Pro - Ina Garten - It was really hard to pick just one Ina book but I liked most of the recipes in this one. She has this ridic recipe for a dijon mustard chicken that is INCREDIBLE. Also, this bitch knows how to cook some veggies. Big fan of this one.
The Food Lab - /u/j_kenji_lopez-alt - I just love this guy, tbh. We've made a really fantastic beef tenderloin out of this book and an incredible red wine sauce to go with it and of course, his famous roasted potatoes which are now my holy grail recipe for roasted potatoes. This book is like a science textbook only instead of boring stuff it's FOOD science, which is my favorite kind.


Those were all the ones we purchased ourselves (though technically Eataly was a gift BUT we love it and plan to use it often.) We have other cookbooks in our stable that we've received as gifts, which is what resulted in my fiance and I deciding we wanted to embark on this journey. We kept being given cookbooks and never doing anything with them. But man, do people love it when you send them pics of stuff you cooked out of a book they gave you. If people give you cookbooks, use them!! It will make their day to see it's being used. Here's what else is on our cookbook shelf-


The Forest Feast Gatherings - Erin Gleeson - This is a vegetarian book my fiance's mom gave us a few years ago for Christmas. We have a bunch of veggie friends (and friends with a lot of different allergies) so we turn to this book to have a few things that are edible by all of them when we have them over, as we often do. This book has a really delicious salad that has pomegranate seeds, pear, and hazelnut that is out of this world good. I also got my HG salad dressing from this book.
The Salad Bowl - Nicola Graimes - Another gift from my fiance's mom. Is she trying to tell us something?? Honestly haven't looked much into this book yet but it sure is pretty.
The Unofficial Harry Potter Cookbook - Dinah Bucholz - This was a gift from the assistant in my office. Everyone in my office knows me as the Harry Potter girl because I have a lightning bolt tattoo, haha. We haven't made anything out of this yet, but we probably will have some sort of epic feast with recipes from this book when GoT starts back up later this year.
Talk About Good - Louisiana Lafayette Junior League - My boss gave this to my fiance and I as part of an engagement gift. My fiance went to school in New Orleans. It's primarily New Orleansian/Cajun food. Haven't made anything out of it yet, but we are looking forward to it.

And that's what's on our cookbook shelf for now.

edit also omg thanks for the gold!! <3

I'm a bit of a cookbook junkie, so I have a bunch to recommend. I'm interpreting this as "good cookbooks from cuisines in Asia" so there are some that are native and others that are from specific restaurants in the US, but I would consider these legit both in terms of the food and the recipes/techniques. Here are a few of my favorites:


Pan-Asian

• Asian Dumplings - the masterpiece on all things dumpling
  
• Asian American - Dale Talde's (Top Chef) book with lots of Asian cultures' food in the US
  
• Asian Pickles - pickles and fermented foods from throughout Asia
  
• Lucky Rice - recipes from the Asian festival of the same name
  
• The Asian Grandmother's Cookbook - traditional cooking passed down to American cooks
  
  Burmese
  
  
• Burma:Rivers of Flavor - good focus on difference in Burmese cuisine from other regional
  
  Cambodian
  
  
• Num Pang - Cambodian sandwich restaurant in NYC
  
• Cambodian Cooking - GREAT book on Cambodian cuisine, supporting refugees
  
  Chinese
  
  
• Ken Hom Complete Chinese Cookbook - great primer for cooking Chinese food using ingredients commonly available in US
  
• China Moon - classic SF Chinese restaurant food
  
• Feeding the Dragon - modern culinary journey through all of China
  
• Mastering the Art of Chinese Cooking - omnibus focused on the home chef
  
• Breath of a Wok - focus on wok technique at home
  
• Every Grain of Rice - wonderful Sichuan food for home cooks
  
  Indian
  
  
• Madhur Jaffrey Indian Cooking - actually, any of her cookbooks are wonderful for Indian cooking
  
• Savour Mumbai - looks at Indian cuisine as a melting pot in Mumbai
  
• The Indian Family Cookbook - modern South Indian food
  
• Indian Harvest - Vikas Khanna's family cookbook
  
• Made in India - classic Indian food, from street to home
  
  Indonesia
  
  
• The Food of Indonesia - everything you need for a rijstaffel!
  
  Japanese
  
  
• Japanese Farm Food - authentic rural Japanese cooking
  
• Preserving the Japanese Way - how to make awesome Japanese pickled vegetables
  
• Sushi Chef - not strictly speaking a cookbook, but "Jiro Dreams of Sushi" book in English
  
• The Japanese Grill - authentic hibachi and Japanese grill recipes
  
• Japanese Comfort Food - lots of traditional Japanese recipes
  
• Nanban - Japanese "soul food"
  
• Tokyo Cult Recipes - hip modern urban food from Tokyo
  
• Yum Yum Bento Boxes - updated modern take on bento boxes
  
• Ivan Ramen - traditional ramen for a Western audience
  
• Izakaya - traditional Japanese pub food & small plates
  
• Nikkei - emigrant Japanese food culture in South America
  
• Donabe - traditional Japanese hot pot recipes
  
• Kyotofu - very unique Japanese dessert cookbook
  
  Korean
  
  
• K Food - modern take on Korean street food
  
• Maangchi's Real Korean Cooking - great resource for Korean cooking in a non-pro kitchen
  
• Traditional Food - omnibus of four regions of Korean food
  
• Koreatown - authentic, approachable guide to Korean food in a US context
  
• Smoke & Pickles - Edward Lee's fusion of his Korean heritage and southern barbeque
  
• The Kimchi Cookbook - many, many recipes for kimchi...
  
  Malaysian
  
  
• Malaysian Cooking - good overview of Malay cooking
  
  Middle Eastern
  
  
• The New Persian Kitchen - modern Iranian food
  
• Ottolenghi - Israeli-Palestinian collaboration
  
• Persiana - dynamic modern recipes from throughout the Middle East
  
• Zahav - modern Israeli food
  
• Sweet Middle East - traditional and modern desserts
  
  Philippine
  
  
• Filipino Homestyle Dishes - good intro to classic Filipino dishes
  
  Russian
  
  
• Mamushka - focus on Ukraine
  
  Sri Lankan
  
  
• Hidden Kitchens of Sri Lanka - beautiful photo-cookbook on Sri Lankan cuisine
  
  Taiwanese
  
  
• The Food of Taiwan - um... food... from Taiwan
  
  Thailand
  
  
• Nong's Thai Kitchen - she beat Bobby Flay in pad thai
  
• Pok Pok - Portland's most AWESOME Asian restaurant
  
  Turkish
  
  
• Istanbul:Recipes from the Heart of Turkey - lovely focus on urban Turkish food
  
• Anatolia - wonderful approachable approach to Turkish cuisine
  
• Essential Turkish Cuisine - focus on history and evolution of Turkish food
  
  Vietnamese
  
  
• The Slanted Door - great Vietnamese restaurant cookbook
  
• Vietnamese Market Cookbook - focus on simple Vietnamese from fresh ingredients
  
• Into the Vietnamese Kitchen - traditional Vietnamese home cooking
  
• The Banh Mi Cookbook - the greatest sandwich in the world!
  
• Vietnamese Home Cooking - another great overview
  
  (edit: screwed up a couple links)

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.

Well, that's a "tough" question. A couple of years ago there was a similar thread, but that I can't find it.

I would say that you can start with "Y la comida se hizo". It's a series that was published by the government decades ago, but it's still published by a commercial press. Each book focuses on different types of food. Most of the recipes are Mexican. They are really simple and easy to follow (sometimes too simple; I noticed that in a handful of recipes, they leave steps out that are obvious to an experience cook, but that a beginner might need instructions for). Overall these books are a pretty good starting point if your criteria is Mexican food and learning Spanish.

CONACULTA, through Editorial Océano, published a series of family cookbooks by state, so there are essentially 32 different volumes in the series. These are really a great resource, as they contain a massive amount of recipes. There are no images, just text. The series is called "La concina familiar en el estado de XXXX". If you click that link, and then click on the author, you can find all the books in the series.

Recently, Margarita Carrillo published a new book. There is a version in English. This is a more sophisticated book, and it has recipes from different parts/regions of the country. It's by no means difficult to follow, but many of the recipes are more time consuming and require more knowledge of cooking techniques.

Diana Kennedy also has several books, most of them in English, but also in Spanish. They are mostly ok, although some of the recipes don't quite match what you see in everyday Mexico, or at least not in my experience. Lastly, there are books by Enrique Olvera and by Patricia Quintana. I haven't read those books, but the authors have good reputations.

As far as regional cuisines, you fill find that there really many different parts of the country, perhaps more than there are states. Even within states you can find differences or culinary microregions. In most of the country you will find plenty of vegetable/vegetarian dishes. The north, however, is a bit more meat-centric, for geographical and historical reasons. In Central and Southern Mexico there are literally hundreds of vegetarian dishes.

Lastly, I only used Amazon links. However, if you are in Mexico or don't mind waiting for your order, check out Librería Gandhi. You can find many different cookbooks there, all in Spanish. They ship to most parts of the world.

Edit: I forgot to add that there are a lot of good vloggers that have clear instructions and good recipes. A good starting point for traditional, Mexican homecooking is Jauja Cocina Mexicana. She does a great job of explaining the steps, and the pacing of the videos is ideal. There is nothing new, she is not a chef, but rather a home cook, but she does a darn good job. There are others that are easy to find, with different approaches to cooking/food, like Marisol Pink, who is very prolific, but she is a fast talker, and often uses Mexican idioms, so her videos might be more challenging to follow if you are just learning Spanish.

I'm in a similar boat actually, my girlfriend is halfway through a degree but it's on hold while she works to save up some cash to pay for the rest of it. She works a really tough job and most days is completely wrecked when she gets home. I'm in grad school so not exactly rolling in dough either.

Anyway, I try to look for cheap ways we can have fun and spend time together (especially things that have us being active). I introduced her to backcountry skiing (a weekend costs us about $20 in gas since there's no lift tickets or other expenses). But we also go for bike rides, and hikes. This gets us out, doing something fun together while also getting some exercise which makes us both feel way better.

Another 'cheer up the girlfriend' thing you can do is make her a nice dinner (on a regular basis). My girlfriend's mood is pretty much directly related to how recently she's eaten so a nice meal really cheers her up. This also has the advantage that it's spurred me to cook more which has us eating way better than we have in the past, while also spending less on food because we don't eat out or eat prepared foods nearly as much. There's a cookbook by Ken Kostic called the $10 Gourmet which is full of cheap, easy to make meals for 2 under $10 which if you watch the portion sizes (his portions are silly large for some of the recipes) are nice and healthy.

Also, regular hugs do wonders.

Fuschia Dunlop is a good source for Chinese food. Her published recipe for Kung Pao Chicken is pretty killer. Eileen Yin-Fi Lo is also a well respected Chinese recipe author, check out My Grandmother's Chinese Kitchen.

For Thai Food, Andy Ricker's Pok Pok is pretty interesting (and the restaurants are pretty awesome). There's also a tome, simply called Thai Food from David Thompson, as an outsider, looks complete and exhaustive (it's also daunting to me, but nice to have).

Hot Sour Salty Sweet also features Thai (as well as other SE Asian flavors). And I really like Asian Flavors of Jean-Georges as a more upscale cookbook.

Also, I find this little, unsung book to be a great resource. It has fairly simple recipes that can yield some nice flavors, great for weeknight dishes.

And, Momofuku is a fun contemporary twist with some good basics, but it's not a beginner book by any stretch!

Finally, The Slanted Door is on my wishlist. Looks divine.

35 grams of salt :)

In baking one should ALWAYS weigh ingredients, the most important tool in a bakeshop is a scale. Your final product will taste the EXACT same every time if everything is weighed. For home use you just need a little scale, I use this little guy at home.

Most home bakers hate weighing eggs and find it ridiculous so just keep this simple rule in mind. 1 large egg = 50g. So 2 large eggs for every 100g needed.

The reason for weighing literally everything over using cups, teaspoons and other volumetric amounts is definitely well worth reading into as well. Pretty much every book worth its weight will be done in with weights instead of volume and will have a section explaining why. But essentially with baking its chemistry, everything is done to cause a specific reaction and that reaction is done to a certain degree in the end product.


EDIT: If you want some cookbooks I made a post previously about what I recommend for people depending on what they are into making, so I'll post that up in here

Bibles

• Baking Bible
  
• Cake Bible
  
• The Pie and Pastry Bible
  
  Bread
  
  
• Beard on Bread
  
• Bread
  
• Bread Baker's Apprentice
  
• Flour Water Salt Yeast
  
• Josey Baker Bread (I just genuinely like this guy tho lol)
  
• All of the Tartine books (just get all of them, Chad is the man when it comes to bread)
  
  Caramels/Candys/Ice Cream
  
  
• Ample hills creamery
  
• Artisan caramels
  
• Chocolates & Confections
  
• The Sweet Book of Candy Making
  
• Sweet Cream And Sugar Cones
  
  Jack of all trades
  
  
• Baked Occasions
  
• Baker's four seasons
  
• Flour
  
• Flour Too
  
• Model Bakery Cookbook
  
• Momofuku Milk Bar
  
• Ovenly
  
  Pastry/Pies
  
  
• The Art of French Pastry (this is one of my all time favorites)
  
• Creative Eclairs (whole set is great for beginners to intermediates)
  
• First Prize Pies
  
  Textbooks
  
  
• Baking and pastry
  
• On Baking
  
  
  I'm sure I am leaving out a bunch of great ones but if I had to suggest just 1 to anyone it would DEFINITELY be The Art of French Pastry. Best for somebody who has done basics already and looking to try a little more. Even as a professional baker I find myself coming back and just reading the little spots like how he burned himself on his caramel. Great, great book!

One of the best vegan cook books I've come across: https://www.amazon.com/Gourmet-Vegetarian-Slow-Cooker-Sophisticated/dp/158008074X

Tips: you don't need to make all of your spices from scratch. Yes, the author recommends it and it might help with SOME dishes, but I think it's a huge waste of time. Some vegan-slow cooker recipies come out a tad bland. Salt, pepper, salsa, other sauces, and really any spice can be your friend here. Really take the time to learn what spices give a certain "feel" to your dish (i.e. you want "warm," use cinnamon or corriander. You want "fresh," red pepper flakes or ground ginger. Etc.), as well as the best way to compliment the other parts of your dishes. Final tip, learn your substitutes or at least get a favorite website to search for your substitutions. Good luck!

It's quite good. Chez Panisse sort of pioneered the revival of local farm to table thing in the 70's in the US.

This particular recipe takes maybe an hour to make from start to finish. Over the years I sub the massive amount of butter for some virgin olive oil, and I first fire roast the red bell pepper until blackened on the outside. That's just my personal taste.

Best cookbook ever. It can get a bit involved with some of the items, but this soup in particular I like for its simplicity, oddity, and deliciousness.

The carrot part of the first soup is a different density than the red bell pepper soup, so you lay the carrot on as the majority and first layer of the soup. Then you carefully ladle in the bell pepper soup portion in to one area of the soup bowl sort of stacking it on top of itself in the same place.

You end up with this rich ruddy orange colored soup with an island of baked red in the middle. They're both delicious on their own, but the fun comes from taking varying amounts of either in to each spoonful and varying the ratios, each of which make their own fun tasty combination.

I came here to suggest this. This is a very good book for learning technique, without being all culinary school erudite about it and I believe he has just released a new addition. I like that he shows how to make multiple versions of each dish, for omnivores,, vegetarians, and vegans.

His philosophy is people will cook more often and cook better food if the process is made simple and easy. You won't find any complex recipes in any of his books. His Minimalist Cookbooks are amazing in their ability to enable non-cooks to turn out delicious meals.

McGee on food and cooking is the best for the science if cookery


I used these books as references while working pastry and larder when I was well enough to be a chef.


Desserts: Ten Recipes https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0297843664?ref=yo_pop_ma_swf

Dessert: Dessert Recipes from Le... https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1906650039?ref=yo_pop_ma_swf

Dessert Fourplay: Sweet Quartets... https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0307351378?ref=yo_pop_ma_swf

Best books for starting a business in pastry are your local writers as every country/state/county will have different requirements. Scotland needs HACCP, separate areas/work times for dietary requirements to prevent cross contamination etc we have to heat things higher for longer than England for instance.

DO NOT under sell yourself it is far too easy to think I can increase my prices later - personal experience no you can't as word of mouth is how cheap you are not that you pay for what you get.

IDK, I think those starter kits are way overpriced, as is all of Molecular-r's packets of chemicals. Their whipping syphon is awesome and very cheap (not quite as good quality as the ISI but for home use it's perfectly adequate).

I would probably start by buying a whipping syphon and then something like Modernist Cooking - Whipping Syphons is a good start. Lots you can do with just a whipping syphon.

what are his resources like? if he's in a dorm room like setting, this book was really good to me for a long time

https://www.amazon.com/Moghul-Microwave-Cooking-Indian-Modern/dp/068808334X

a step above that, especially if he's a beginner is https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0688031188/ref=pd_aw_sim_14_1?ie=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=RHVN332F52RYNQ3K9TE0&dpPl=1&dpID=21J6CKX9M7L

if you're just starting out, you're gonna fuck up, and that's ok. But you shouldn't have to blow your budget just learning the basics. Learning to make use of simple ingredients with limited tools helps you out alot when you tackle bigger badder recipes later on. Get good at all the little steps and you can just string them together for more complicated recipes.

Just like any other skill, it really takes applied and attentive practice, and it will go faster with a good teacher. I recommend taking your 90$ and getting a couples class at a teaching kitchen or something local if you can.

If he doesn't already have the Bouchon/French Laundry collection, I bet he'd love them. I got them as a gift for Xmas and, not only are they beautiful, they have tons of practical recipes/techniques, as well as sourcing info for some more of the out-there ingredients.

I thought the name looked familiar.
Apparently she writes a LOT of cookbooks, and a LOT of her cookbooks get posted on this subreddit.

I noticed she had several others up for free right now as well, so I gathered them up for you guys:

50 Vegetarian Salad Recipes
34 Cut out cookie recipes
50 Kale recipes
50 Cheap Healthy Meals
34 Gourmet Food Recipes For Weeknights
33 Amazing Recipes For Homemade Brownies
51 Christmas Drop Cookie Recipes
Summer Desserts Value Pack II

Here are a few books which, I think, can give you a good idea of what "traditional" French cuisine is:

Daniel Galmiche's French Brasserie Cookbook

Françoise Bernard's Everyday French Home Cooking (Françoise Bernard's books were an absolute staple in French traditional home cooking something like 30 years ago)

Joel Robuchon & Lionel Bienassis's French Regional Food : a book not only about cooking, but also about French regional specialties

La Mère Brazier, The Mother of Modern French Cooking: a total must-have. Eugénie Brazier is one of the pillars of what is now known as French Modern Cuisine. Staples after staples after staples of traditional French cuisine, from the most modest pasta bake to the most delicate and sophisticated recipes. If you must buy only one cookbook, have a go at this one.

Hope this helps. :)

As far as food pairings look into a copy of the Flavor Bible. There’s also a similar book by them called What To Drink With What You Eat if you want to get into pairing basics as well.
As for plating, just look at nice cookbooks from restaurants and chefs, like The French Laundry,
Sean Brock,
Bluestem,
or basically any other example of food you want to produce. Follow the restaurants, go eat there if you can.

Also examine your platings from the perspective of the diner. Where is your eye drawn first? Is it the focal point or is your plating distracting from that?

The James Beard Cookbook

> This is a basic cookbook. It is intended to help two sorts of people: first, those who are just beginning to cook and say they don't even know how to boil water, and second, those who have been trying to cook for a while and wonder why their meals don't taste like mother's cooking or the food in good restaurants.

Cookbooks? I find celebrity cookbooks to be sort of dumb but there are plenty of great American food cookbooks out there and that might be right up her alley.

http://www.amazon.com/James-Beard-Cookbook/dp/1569245347/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1292871063&sr=8-1 for starters.

Jacques Pepin wrot a pair of classics: La Methode, and La Technique, which have been reisued as a single volume called Jacques Pépin New Complete Techniques. The Kindle edition goes on sale every few months for less than $10, and is a great resource.

Join ussss. Now all you need is a copy of The Gourmet Slow Cooker Volumes I and II and you will have unlimited deliciousness.

In all seriousness, I made some great bbq pork spare ribs, and some beef short ribs this weekend. Last week I made bbq chicken thighs, a spinach stuffed pork loin, a goat leg, and some stuffed green peppers.

Beef ribs were made with white cooking wine, a cube of bullion, and 1/2 onion. We reduced the broth down with some corn starch for a gravy.

You can also pick up a copy of this book:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1580084893?pc_redir=1406926129&robot_redir=1

This is my favorite restaurant in Kansas City. Their cookbook is great too!

On a side note, the Garrelts (chef-owners of Bluestem) are opening a new restaurant soon called Rye. An employee at Trezo Vino, a restaurant that the Garrelts took over in May 2011 but closed in March this year, said that Rye would focus on being a slow food restaurant. This may have something to do with the rumors that Trezo Vino closed due to soaring food costs.

I don't know if this translates to german, but there is a popular saying in english - "He wrote the book on (x)" which translates to "he is a master at (x)". In Jackie Peeps' case, he LITERALLY wrote the book on technique - https://www.amazon.com/Jacques-P%C3%A9pin-New-Complete-Techniques-ebook/dp/B009XNXSJA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1485136823&sr=8-1&keywords=pepin+technique

He is a very famous chef, both for his work on the line and on TV. He was the chef de cuisine and executive chef for some world class restaurants before he became famous on American TV for his cooking shows and for his books. He is an absolute master and belongs in the conversation with Careme and Escoffier.

I was eying this one recently: The Gourmet Slow Cooker

There is also a part II with more recipes.

You should buy this cookbook, it will teach you so much about cooking http://www.amazon.com/James-Beard-Cookbook/dp/1569245347

The updated one combines the two. This one is the most up to date one. Here is the Kindle version.