My basic sauce is Marcella Hazan's recipe:

Ingredients:

2 pounds fresh plum tomatoes, peeled, chopped (Ok I cheat and I just buy a 28oz can of whole peeled San Marzano tomatoes and throw them in a blender)

5 tablespoons unsalted butter

1 medium onion, peeled and cut in half

salt, to taste

(I also add black pepper and crushed red pepper to taste




Directions:
Dump all of it in your pot/saucepan, simmer over low-medium heat for about 45 minutes, stirring occasionally until the butter is completely melted and the fat floats to the surface, salt, pepper, red pepper to taste.

Discard the onion. (Or dice it and keep it in the sauce, personal preference)

Enjoy

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)

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.

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.

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.

Marcella Hazan
Marcella Hazan
Marcella Hazan

Also, Marcella Hazan.

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

>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.)

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!

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!

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.

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 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

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

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

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

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.

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.)

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

Marcella Hazan, "Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking"
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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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