New Cookbook: 101 Classic Cookbooks

101 Classic Cookbooks: 501 Classic Recipes (2012) is a beautiful compendium of recipes from 101 great cookbooks that span time and encompass many types of cooking, cuisines and ways of eating. I was pleased to see many of my favorite cookbook writers included, such as Mark Bittman, Alice Waters, Patricia Wells and Marcella Hazan. The book opens with a summary of each selected cookbook and scans of interior pages, showcasing the cookbook’s unique style. Following are 501 recipes selected from the cookbooks to illustrate what makes each one special. If you like to cook broadly and try new cookbooks, you can’t go wrong with a compendium like this.

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• The Only Cookbooks You Need (simplycooking.wordpress.com)

The Only Cookbooks You Need

Cover via Amazon

This week, as I was developing my weekly menu, I got to thinking about the cookbooks I have versus the cookbooks I use. Like many home cooks, I have acquired more cookbooks than I can ever possibly use on a regular basis. I love to browse through cookbooks, especially those with beautiful photography, even if I don’t make very many recipes from them. I have noticed that I used to buy a lot more cookbooks than I do now, because I used to experiment a lot more. Now, I’ve settled on the kinds of dishes that I like to cook at home and that my family like to eat, which keeps me returning to the same cookbooks again and again.

If I had to ruthlessly pare down my cookbook library, I think I could easily make do with just eight cookbooks and spend a lifetime happily cooking from them. These are the four basic cookbooks I consider essential:

• The Art of Simple Food by Alice Waters
• How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman
• The Joy of Cooking
• The Foster’s Market Cookbook

The Waters book is essentially a home-cooking course for beginning cooks, and I return to its classic, simple recipes again and again. The other two contain pretty much every recipe I’d ever want to make, and they offer lots of variations so I don’t get bored. However, these all-purpose cookbooks tend to skimp on categories that I consider essential: breakfast, easy entertaining and cookies. Luckily, the Foster’s Market cookbook does a terrific job filling in those gaps (especially cookies).

Every now and then, I like to cook something more elaborate, from one of the four basic food groups: Italian, French, Mexican and Southern. I could buy hundreds of cookbooks in each of these categories, but I really only need one that’s definitive and comprehensive for each style of cooking I want to do. Over the years, I’ve settled on these four:

• Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking by Marcella Hazan
  
• Bistro Cooking by Patricia Wells
• Authentic Mexican by Rick Bayless
• Sara Foster’s Southern Cookbook

Of course, your favorite regions or types of dishes will be different than mine, so I would suggest researching the cookbook offerings and locating that one definitive cookbook in each category. It’s so much easier cooking out of just a few books and getting to know them very well than it is trying to find that one recipe you want to make from among hundreds of cookbooks.

The Easiest Tomato Sauce for Pasta

Cover of Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking

This next entry in my favorite recipes comes from Marcella Hazan‘s excellent cookbook, Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking. If you love Italian food, this is the only Italian cookbook you need, in my opinion. I have made many of the pasta sauces, and they were all great. Unfortunately, I’ve cut way back on the pasta I’m eating these days.

My husband declared this tomato sauce with onion and butter to be one of the best pasta sauces he’d ever tasted. It is superbly simple to make, even easier than my go-to tomato sauce. This sauce has a light, subtle flavor that tastes best on hearty but bland filled pastas, like potato gnocchi and cheese ravioli, but is also very good on spaghetti.

I suggest using pureed tomatoes, but you can also use canned whole tomatoes and crush them with the back of a spoon while the sauce is cooking. This will result in a “chunkier” tomato sauce, though. Bionaturae is my favorite brand of bottled strained tomatoes.

Tomato Sauce with Onion and Butter

• 1 bottle strained tomatoes(24 oz.) or 2 cups fresh tomatoes, pureed
• 5 tbsp. butter
• 1 med. onion, peeled and cut in half
• Salt
• 1½ pounds pasta
• Parmesan cheese

Put the tomato sauce, butter, onion and salt in a saucepan. Cook, uncovered, at a slow but steady simmer for 45 minutes, stirring from time to time. Discard the onion before tossing with the pasta. Leftover sauce may be frozen without the onion.

 

Panzanella, or Bread Salad

I’m sorry things have been so quiet around here. (Can you hear the crickets?) Life has left little time for blogging this summer, and I haven’t done a whole lot of creative cooking either. But I have completed a couple of challenges that I have yet to blog about. I’m hoping to get all caught up and then start a new round of challenges in the fall.

One recent challenge was seasonally appropriate: to make a cold dinner that was also satisfying. For this challenge, I wanted to use something from our garden, which means tomatoes. Naturally, I thought of one of my favorite salads: panzanella, or bread salad. Not only is this a great dish for enjoying dead ripe tomatoes, but it’s also handy for using up stale bread. The juices from the tomatoes soak into the bread and give it new life.

To make this dish an entree, I added leftover grilled chicken and cannellini beans, along with an assortment of vegetables. They combined to create a satisfying, hearty dish for a hot summer night. The inspiration for the basic recipe comes from Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking by Marcella Hazan.

Main-Course Panzanella

Yields: 4 servings

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Trim the bread of its crust and cut into smallish squares to make approximately 2 cups bread cubes. Toast the cubes in the oven until browned and dried out, about 10 minutes. Put the cubes in a large bowl. Puree 1 ripe tomato in a food mill over the bowl. Toss the tomato puree with the bread, add some salt, and let it sit for 15 minutes or more.

In a food processor, combine 1 peeled garlic clove, 1 teaspoon anchovy paste* and 1 tablespoon capers,drained. Puree. Combine thoroughly with ¼ cup olive oil, 2 tablespoons red wine vinegar and salt to taste. Set aside.

Meanwhile, prepare the salad ingredients:

• Dice 2 ripe tomatoes.
• Dice 1 yellow or red bell pepper.
• Peel and dice 1 cucumber.
• Thinly slice ½ red or sweet onion.
• Thinly slice 1 breast leftover cooked chicken (preferably roasted or grilled).
• Drain and rinse 1 cup cooked cannellini beans.

Combine everything in the serving bowl with plenty of freshly ground pepper, and toss thoroughly.

*I prefer anchovy paste (it comes in a little tube) to actual anchovies because I don’t cook with anchovies often, and then I only use a little at a time. A tube of anchovy paste seems to last me a good long while. You may substitute 2-3 anchovy fillets, if you like.

Happy Anniversary! A Simple Italian Meal

This past Sunday was our wedding anniversary (six great years!). We held our wedding at a charming Italian restaurant in downtown Raleigh, NC, called Caffe Luna. The main reason we chose Caffe Luna was because we love their food. They feature simple but delicious Italian cuisine that changes according to the seasons. I’ve always had a great meal there.

For my challenge last weekend, my husband wanted me to make some food we might have had at our wedding. You see, we didn’t actually get to eat much of the lavish buffet Caffe Luna put on for us. We were too busy being bride and groom that we barely sat down. But we heard from everyone else how great the food was, and it certainly looked good.

The problem with this challenge was that I couldn’t recall any specific dishes that were on the buffet. I remembered vaguely a few things — mixed vegetables, smoked salmon, poached salmon — but nothing more specific came to mind. Unfortunately, Caffe Luna’s website is not a big help. While they do have a catering menu online, it’s pretty bare bones: cheese and crackers; marinated chicken; marinated flank steak. That’s as much description as you get. To tell you the truth, I don’t think the menu is set in stone, but is rather based on what’s in season and available, which is how it should be. I remember that the buffet table was groaning with food. There certainly was a lot more than seems to be listed on the website menu.

So I turned to my mainstay for Italian cooking, Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking by Marcella Hazan. If you like Italian food and you don’t have this cookbook, you are not cooking the best Italian dishes you could be. Every recipe I have made out of this book has been molto squisito. These recipes are very simple, as good Italian cooking should be. They let the ingredients shine and highlight the flavors with restrained additions, such as olive oil, fresh herbs, wine, salt and pepper.

Unfortunately, because these dishes are so simple, my husband thought I cheated in last weekend’s challenge when I presented him chicken in white wine and lemon and a platter of baked vegetables. But even though the dishes weren’t a challenge to cook, they are a model of restraint, and the results were mouth-watering. They also reflected what I remember of Caffe Luna’s food at our wedding: good food and lots of it, simply prepared, wonderful to eat.

First up, the vegetables. Nothing could be easier. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Select an assortment of seasonal vegetables. I chose Yukon gold potatoes, red peppers, tomatoes and onions, but almost any vegetables will work. Peel the potatoes, peppers and onion. Cut everything into wedges (discarding the seeds and ribs from the peppers). Arrange on a large, oven-proof platter. Drizzle all over with very good olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Toss gently to make sure everything is well coated. Roast for 25-30 minutes, until the potatoes are browned on the edges and tender. The oil and juices from the vegetables combine in the bottom of the platter to make a delicious sauce, so don’t forget to drizzle the juices over the vegetables before serving.

While the vegetables are cooking, prepare the chicken. You can use bone-in, skin-on chicken pieces or boneless chicken breasts for this recipe, although bone-in chicken will take longer to cook. In a large pan, heat some olive oil and butter over medium-high. Brown the chicken pieces on both sides, about 2-3 minutes per side. Reduce the heat to medium-low. Add to the pan 3 peeled garlic cloves, the minced leaves from one rosemary stalk, salt and pepper. Pour in about ½ cup dry white wine. Partially cover and let cook, turning the chicken pieces once or twice, until the chicken is cooked through. Remove the chicken to a serving pan. The juices remaining in the bottom of the pan should be thickened and browned. Add the juice and zest of 1 lemon. Stir and scrape up any browned bits. Spoon this sauce over the chicken to serve.

Nothing could be simpler. But serve with good, crusty Italian bread, and you’ll have a meal fit for an anniversary celebration.

Pasta with Spinach and Tomatoes

Just as there are five basic plots in literature*, I believe there are five basic pasta sauces. They are garlic and oil, butter, white sauce, vegetable sauce and tomato sauce. But for each of these sauces, there are endless variations. Once you know how to make these five recipes — and they are all very simple — you can pretty much have a different pasta dish every night.

Last night’s pasta was a tomato sauce variation with fresh spinach. It was hearty but not too heavy, and very colorful — definitely a crowd pleaser (if my husband and I count as the crowd). I adapted the recipe from Marcella Cucina, which is a treasure trove of pasta sauce variations.

By the way, whenever I take the trouble to boil a big pot of water for pasta, I always make two batches. The second batch goes into the fridge to have on hand for baby snacks, pasta salads or to reheat gently with some butter, lemon and herbs.

Pasta with Spinach and Tomatoes

Serves: 2-3 depending on appetite
Time to make: ~30 minutes

• 2 tbsp. olive oil
• ½ sm. onion, diced small
• 2 slices bacon, minced
• 2 sm. carrots, peeled and diced small
• 5 oz. (more or less) fresh spinach, washed and chopped
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1 14-oz. can diced tomatoes with the liquid
• ½ lb. fettuccine or similar pasta
• grated Parmesan for garnish

Start the water heating for the pasta. Heat the oil in a 12-inch skillet over medium high. Add the onion and cook about 5 minutes, until golden. Add the bacon and cook, stirring frequently, until crisped. Add the carrots and cook another couple of minutes.

Reduce the heat to medium. Add the spinach and turn to coat all the leaves, letting the leaves wilt somewhat. Season to taste.

Pour in the tomatoes. Let simmer while the pasta cooks, reducing the heat as necessary. Boil the pasta to the desired doneness. Drain and toss the pasta with the sauce in the warm pan. Serve and garnish with grated Parmesan.

*The five plots are man vs. man, man vs. woman, man vs. nature, man vs. the unknown and man vs. himself. For extra credit, discuss how each of these plots corresponds to one of the five basic pasta sauces.

Pasta Shells with Cabbage and Sausage

This was one of those recipes that didn’t sound so good on paper — I was dubious about the use of cream — but turned out to be absolutely delicious. Yes, it is hearty and wintry and probably not a good dish for July. But it is also quick and easy to make with ingredients that are more than likely already in the larder. The recipe is adapted from Marcella Cucina by Marcella Hazan, a wonderful cookbook for discovering quick, easy, authentically Italian dishes.

I did modify the recipe a bit. Rather than boil the cabbage for 25 minutes, I merely blanched it and finished cooking it with the sausage, so it retained some crunch and freshness. I also used half-and-half instead of heavy cream without any discernible loss of flavor but probably a tad fewer calories. A nicely spiced chicken sausage worked well, too.

Pasta Shells with Cabbage and Sausage

Yields: 4 servings
Time to make: ~30 minutes

What you need:

• 1 sm. head Savoy cabbage
• 2 tbsp. olive oil
• ½ onion, chopped
• 1 garlic clove, minced
• 2 Italian sausage links, skin removed and crumbled
• ¼ cup half-and-half
• grated Parmesan to taste
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1 lb. pasta shells or other chunky pasta shapes

1. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil.
2. Core the cabbage and cut into quarters, discarding any discolored outer leaves.
3. Blanch the cabbage quarters for 1-2 minutes, remove and drain.
4. Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium.
5. Add the onion and cook, stirring, until it becomes translucent.
6. Add the garlic and sausage, and brown the meat, stirring.
7. Chop the cabbage coarsely and add to the skillet.
8. Stir to mix well.
9. Reduce the heat to low, cover and cook for about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.
10. Meanwhile, boil the pasta in the same water in which you blanched the cabbage.
11. Drain the pasta and add it to the skillet.
12. Stir in the cream and season well.
13. Cook just long enough for the cream to bind everything together and garnish with Parmesan.

This is my entry for Presto Pasta Nights this week.