All recipes were from this book, which has a lot of fun bowl meal ideas with creative flavor combinations. The night before last, I had a bowl with homemade seitan satay in a curry coconut peanut sauce, over rice, sauteed garlic/ginger kale, with a side of cucumber salad. Sadly, I didn't get a picture of that one. Another favorite recipe from this book is cabbage roll in a bowl with this amazing pecan/lentil meat. Oh and also the refried bean dip with walnut chorizo. And the white bean beer cheese fondue... omg. It's a good book!

Ranch Dressing: (makes almost 2 cups; salad had massaged kale, celery and shredded carrots)

1 cup raw cashews, soaked

2/3 cup unsweetened plant milk

1/4 cup water

2 tbsp apple cider vinegar

1 tbsp lemon juice

2 tsp onion powder

1 tsp salt

1 tsp garlic powder

1/4 tsp agave nectar

1 tsp dried parsley

1/4 tsp black pepper

1/8 tsp dried dill

Blend first 9 ingredients until smooth, then mix in dried herbs and pepper.

Cheddar Sauce: (used with 1/2 lb pasta, had some leftover sauce)

1 cup raw cashews, soaked

1 cup water

1/4 cup nooch

1 tbsp tapioca starch

1 tbsp tomato paste

1 tbsp apple cider vinegar

1 tbsp butter

2 tsp onion powder

1.5 tsp dijon mustard

1 tsp salt

pinch of turmeric

Blend everything until smooth. Add some neutral plant milk to thin, if needed.

Roasted Buffalo Chickpeas:

1 15-oz can chickpeas, rinsed and drained

1/4 cup buffalo sauce, plus 2 tbsp

Preheat oven to 375F. Toss chickpeas with 1/4 cup sauce, bake on parchment paper for 15 min. Stir, then bake for 10-15 min more. Add extra 2 tbsp buffalo sauce after removing from oven.

/r/slowcooking

This book has given me a few good ideas: https://www.amazon.com/Your-Mothers-Slow-Cooker-Recipes/dp/1558323414

Check out the Bravetart cookbook if you want to dig into cakes! She also has a lot of great recipes on Serious Eats. I've learned so much about why we do what we do when baking.

These are from the BraveTart cookbook. There’s a similar recipe on the website but it’s not precisely the same. They were delicious!

This book is so good. I don't think the recipe is on the serious eats.

My number one tip for baking is to measure ingredients by weight, not volume! It's more accurate, easier, and more convenient than using measuring cups. A cup of flour can weigh anywhere between 4.5 to 6 ounces depending on how it’s scooped, and that kind of variance can make a big difference to whether your baked goods turn out well vs. hard, dry, and tough due to having extra flour in them. So that could be a potential reason for past baking projects turning out to be hockey puck-esque.

A lot of American recipes only include volume measurements, but some good online sources that do include weights are the King Arthur Flour website and Serious Eats. Weights are also used in BraveTart by Stella Parks and everything by Rose Levy Beranbaum. I would recommend using those sources (or others that are trustworthy) as you're starting out, rather than finding recipes via Pinterest or random blogs.

Temperature is another factor that makes a big difference in baking. Ingredients that need to be at room temperature will not work the way they should if they’re cold. Trying to cream together cold butter and sugar will produce a dense cake instead of a light, fluffy one, and trying to make a frosting with cold cream cheese or butter will produce a clumpy frosting with chunks of unblended cream cheese/butter.

Likewise, ingredients that need to be cold will not perform the way they should if they’re warm or at room temperature. For instance, if pie dough gets too warm, the butter in the dough will melt and turn everything into a sticky mess. It’ll also obliterate the layers of butter and flour/water that produce a light, flaky texture for your crust.

So a change in seasons, which you might not ordinarily think about in this context, can really affect your baking and require adjustments. Serious Eats has a writeup on winter baking adjustments, and King Arthur Flour has a blog post on winter-to-summer adjustments for yeast baking.

For the most precision possible, you can use an instant-read thermometer to check the temperature of your ingredients, but you can do fine without one. Just make sure to plan ahead and warm up/cool down your ingredients as needed.

Oven temperature also makes a difference. Most ovens are not properly calibrated, so even if you think you’re baking at the right temperature, your oven may run hot or cold. Use an oven thermometer to check! Baking at too low a temperature will produce a gummy, pale cake, while using too high a temperature will produce a dried-out husk. If a lot of your baking efforts have turned out burned, that might indicate your oven runs hot.

Follow cues, not suggested times, when baking a recipe. Obviously, use the times as a guideline, but it’s the cues that really matter. So for instance, if a recipe says to bake a cake for “one hour, or till a toothpick comes out clean,” start checking before your hour is up. If a toothpick comes out with some crumbs attached at the one-hour mark, leave your cake in the oven till the toothpick comes out clean. (This is another reason your baking projects might have turned out burned - if your oven runs hot and you only start checking right at the time given in the recipe instead of beforehand, then naturally things will get burned.)

Finally, any beginner should follow recipes as written and not experiment with any modifications that aren’t suggested. For instance, if you think a cookie recipe looks too sweet and reduce the sugar, that won’t just make the cookies less sweet, it’ll also make them softer and puffier (sugar makes cookies browner, crisper, and increases spread). If you do a 1:1 substitute of whole wheat for all-purpose flour in a bread recipe, you’ll end up with bread that’s drier and denser (whole wheat absorbs liquid more than all-purpose and contains bran, which cuts through gluten and prevents it from rising as much). So until you have a solid understanding of how different ingredients work, just follow each and every instruction in a recipe as-is (which, as you might have noticed from my points on weight/temperature above, isn't always as simple as it might seem!).

To wrap up this extremely long comment - for information on "correct fail safe methods," the King Arthur Flour blog and Serious Eats both have good tutorials and tips, and Rose Levy Beranbaum's books have a huge amount of helpful details on, well, everything. Good luck!

Nothing particularly good in this bundle.

If you want take up cooking and treat yourself, I would give my highest personal recommendation to The Food Lab and Bravetart. They are great because they go over technique and fundamentals and provide a good base that you can build from once you get more comfortable in the kitchen. Once you hit that point The Flavor Bible is also a great resource for experimentation.

Ah! You're too kind. It's called BraveTart: Iconic American Desserts, you can find it at your favorite local bookstore via IndieBound, at Barnes & Nobel, or Amazon! Hope you enjoy!

Don't forget about Game of Scones!

Game of Scones: All Men Must Dine: A Parody https://www.amazon.ca/dp/0062445545/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_EmMYBbZ9WXBFB

It's Stella Parks' baking book: BraveTart. She's the SE baking guru.

You want this cookbook.

https://www.amazon.com/Southerners-Cookbook-Recipes-Wisdom-Stories/dp/0062242415

They have a recipe from one of the places in Nashville. It calls for like 1/2 cup of cayenne pepper. Also, the sauce you put on it contains fryer oil. It was so perverse I had to cook it. Don't tone down the cayenne.

Is it from this book?
https://www.amazon.com/BraveTart-American-Desserts-Stella-Parks/dp/0393239861

They're referring to this book: https://smile.amazon.com/BraveTart-American-Desserts-Stella-Parks/dp/0393239861/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=3MCXVKNSF59X7&keywords=bravetart+cookbook&qid=1554760772&s=gateway&sprefix=bravetar&sr=8-1

Do you have a library card? Check your city library for cookbooks or you can buy the Ebook version of this excellent cookbook [Not Your Mother's Slowcooker Recipes for Two](Not Your Mother's Slow Cooker Recipes for Two https://www.amazon.com/dp/1558323414/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_noVzzbGETGK6V)

It's great

Absolutely! Garden & Gun is such a great magazine and the latest issue is a special edition dedicated to food and recipes.

They actually published a very legit cookbook themselves - here's a link if you're interested:

The Southerner's Cookbook: Recipes, Wisdom, and Stories

The key is salads of all types I think. For breakfast I have brown rice or potato salad or sometimes mashed potatoes if I’m not having reheated oatmeal I make the night before. For lunch I build a sandwhich on Quaker rice cakes or Mission or some other white corn tortillas that are labled gluten-free. “Gluten-Free wraps” are all super expensive and terrible. They crack when rolled or folded as opposed to the cheap corn tortillas sold as a regular product... you want the mainstream corn tortillas that are gluten free... and those are terrible too if you don’t heat them in a dry pan or at least in the microwave for thirty seconds before using them. For dinner, soup and salad usually with some cheese or meat in the salad. Homemeade salad dressing tastes better then bottled though. Also find some wheat flour free corn bread recipes. Cornbread is easy and the crumbs can be used as bread crumbs for meatloaf or breading chicken etc.

This book helped me a lot. It is recipes for singe/double serving gluten-free bread, muffins, pancakes, wraps, etc cooked in the microwave. https://www.amazon.com/Gluten-Free-Five-Minutes-Recipes-Muffins/dp/0738214620/ I have it in both softcover and kindle on my phone. I use 1/4 cup egg whites from carton since they keep well in the fridge but when I was vegan for several years I used a blend of ground flax, chia and psyllium as a replacement for the egg or tapioca gel which you make with irc a teaspoon of tapioca starch mixed in three tablespoons of water and microwaved for 15 seconds to make an egg-like gel. I buy apple sauce in snack-pack size to use in these recipes. And I have played with the recipes by swapping some or all of the rice flour with combinations of teff, buckwheat, potato flakes, ground walnuts, etc.

Also a big help are the thin and wide rice noodles from the Asian food aisle at the supermarket. Also glass noodles. Asian food like Vietnamese, Thai, and some Korean often features no gluten and uses little meat.You can adapt the recipes by using gluten-free Worcestershire sauce in place of fish sauce and HP sauce or lime juice and brown sugar in place of tamarind. You must buy tamari sauce or gluten-free soy sauce since high quality traditional soy sauce contains wheat. If you can’t get rice vinegar then cider vinegar will do. Vietnamese spring rolls (check on YouTube) are a cheap convenient alternative to sandwhiches. As is gimbap which is a Korean sushi roll... I bought a wood sushi mold on Amazon that presses a rectangular log of rice and filling that is easier to wrap in nori sheets (see on YouTube). I make the sushi rolls ahead of time and wrap the log in cling wrap and refrigerate (sushi rice doesn’t get weird when cold like other rice) and slice it when ready to eat. My fillings are vegetables and roast beef slices or canned tuna or salmon made with spicy mayo. I sometimes use a spicy peanut butter dipping sauce instead of tamari.

I also use spiralized vegetables in place of pasta. My favorite is golden beet but that is rarely available at my supermarket so I mainly use carrot. Potato will stay crispy if boiled with vinegar in the water... I soak them a bit then boil and store. These are good with tomato sauce or buttered and sprinkled with parm. The carrots are better with Asian sauces. I bought a cheap Oxo hand spiralizer and a discounted Joyce Chen spiralizer that does angle hair cut rather than a big tabletop spiralizer. Spiralized red beet salads are terrific. My favorite is angle hair of red beats with balsamic, dijon mustard and honey with walnut pieces.

But rice and potatoes are my base. Short grain brown rice is a good base for topping with stew or gravy and brown basamtti is good for stir fry cooking. I cook both in the microwave. Actually I cook everything in the microwave since I live in a house where everyone else eats wheat. I also have a toaster oven I use to crisp up the stuff I make in the microwave. A standard for me is a fake stirfried rice I make by adding sauce and vegetables to the rice and cooking them together as a one pot meal. An other quick meal I make is a microwave pot pie with mashed potatoes instead of gluten free pastry crust usually though you can make a quick pastry using rice flour and margarine that cooks in the microwave. Also I make microwave scalloped potatoes and a lasagna/tomale in the microwave made with gluten-free tortilla chips or cooked slices of potato. You can make a “white gravy” and use crumbled tofu in place of cheese but you will want seasoning like season salt or Italian spices. This is good with gluten-free breakfast sausage in it. I cook mainly in a StoneWave microwave cooker pot or a bigger wide onion soup cup with a vented lid. I also make a poutine with potatoes cooked 4 minutes in the microwave, sliced into thick sticks and then cooked 30 minutes in the toaster oven.

When I was vegan I made oat/rice milk spiked with a little non-dairy creamer. Now I use powdered coconut milk from the Carribian aisle at the super market if I’m not using cow’s milk. If you miss cheese you can make a nacho cheeze by boiling 2 parts potato and one part carrot then draining and blending with a bullet blender or immersion wand but it gets so sticky you will burn out the motor if you don’t add some water... to this you add nutritional yeast for the cheezy flavor. I have also added dijon mustard, miso paste, lemon juice, mirin, etc to give a bit of tang to it. Adding sriracha makes a nice spicy cheeze sauce. Vegan sour cream and cream cheeze can be made with ground unsalted cashews but they are not cheap. Cashews make the richest nut milk too, more like cream. I had to cut mine with oats or rice. For cheap meat substitute you can use canned chickpeas or look up on YouTube how to make vegan chicken from tofu... you can press extra firm tofu then bake it and then marinate it in chicken broth or vegan broth and then cook it as you would chicken. For me this is cheaper than real chicken. I used to make tofu ‘ham’ and tofu ‘beef’ using broth and tofu “cheese slices” by marinating tofu slices in nutritional yeast and miso etc. Look up vegan feta cheese made of tofu. That is the easiest fake cheese.

One last thing... for rice flour, nutritional yeast, tapioca etc. look for a Bob’s Red Mill display at the grocery store or health food store or check on Amazon. Red Mill also makes gluten-free mixes for hot cereal, pizza dough, pancakes, brownies etc. but I just buy the plain gluten-free flours to use in microwave “baking”. It's a cool company, when Bob turned 80 he said he had enough money and gave the company to the workers irc.

For the layer cake week, I made a small devil’s food cake. This cake was fantastic, but I did struggle a bit this week. The cake portion was incredibly easy to make even after scaling it down, and it was also quite delicious. After being unsuccessful with the original frosting paired with the cake recipe as well as a second, I eventually settled on this super basic chocolate frosting from King Arthur Flour to get it frosted. The frosting is a bit sweeter than I prefer, but it was super easy to throw together after my earlier fails.

----

One-Bowl Devil’s Food Layer Cake

Recipe from BraveTart: Iconic American Desserts by Stella Parks
Makes one 8-by-4-inch three-layer cake; 16 servings

Ingredients

• 3 sticks | 12 ounces unsalted butter
  
• 1½ cups | 12 ounces black coffee, or black tea such as Assam
  
• 1 cup | 3 ounces Dutch-process cocoa powder, such as Cacao Barry Extra Brute
  
• 1¼ cups | 6 ounces finely chopped dark chocolate, about 72%
  
• 2 cups gently packed | 16 ounces light brown sugar
  
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
  
• 1 teaspoon Diamond Crystal kosher salt (half as much if iodized)
  
• 6 large eggs, straight from the fridge
  
• 3 tablespoons | 1½ ounces egg yolks (from about 3 large eggs)
  
• 2 cups | 9 ounces all-purpose flour, such as Gold Medal
  
• 1 tablespoon baking soda
  
  

  Directions
  

1. Adjust oven rack to lower-middle position and preheat to 350°F. Line three 8-by-3-inch anodized aluminum cake pans with parchment and grease with pan spray; if you don’t have three pans, the remaining batter can be held at room temperature for up to 90 minutes. (The cakes won’t rise quite as high in 2-inch pans.)
   
2. Combine butter and coffee in a 5-quart stainless steel saucier and set over low heat. Once the butter is melted, remove from heat and whisk in the cocoa and chocolate, followed by the brown sugar, vanilla, and salt. Mix in the eggs and yolks. Sift in the flour (if using a cup measure, spoon into the cup and level with a knife before sifting) and baking soda. Whisk thoroughly to combine, then divide among the prepared cake pans (about 23 ounces each).
   
3. Bake until the cakes are firm, though your finger will leave an impression in the puffy crust, about 30 minutes (or 210°F). A toothpick inserted into the center will emerge with a few crumbs still attached. Cool until no trace of warmth remains, about 90 minutes.
   
4. Loosen the cakes from their pans with a knife, invert onto a wire rack, peel off the parchment, and reinvert. Trim the top crusts from the cakes with a serrated knife (this helps the cakes better absorb moisture from the frosting). Place one layer cut side up on a serving plate. Cover with a cup of the frosting, spreading it into an even layer with the back of a spoon. Repeat with the second and third layers, cut side down. Finish the top and sides of the cake with the remaining frosting, and coat with cookie crumbs, if you like.
   
5. Under a cake dome or an inverted pot, the frosted cake will keep for up to 24 hours at room temperature. After cutting, wrap leftover slices individually and store at room temperature for up to 4 days more.
   
   

   Chocolate Frosting
   

   
   Recipe from King Arthur Flour
   Makes enough for one 8” or 9” two-layer cake
   
   

   Ingredients
   

   
   

• 1¼ cups | 106g natural cocoa powder (sifted if lumpy)
  
• 1 cup + 3 cups | 113g + 340g confectioners' sugar (sifted if lumpy)
  
• ¼ teaspoon salt
  
• ⅓ cup | 74g hot water
  
• 1 tablespoon | 14g vanilla extract
  
• 16 tablespoons (1 cup) | 227g butter, softened
  
  

  Directions
  

1. In a large mixing bowl or the bowl of your stand mixer, stir together - by hand or mixer - the cocoa powder, 1 cup (113g) of the confectioners’ sugar, and the salt. Stir in the water and vanilla, scraping the bowl if necessary.
   
2. Add the butter and remaining confectioners’ sugar, stirring to combine. Using an electric hand mixer or a stand mixer with paddle attachment, beat the frosting at medium-high speed for 1 to 2 minutes, until lightened in color and fluffy, stopping halfway through to scrape the bottom and sides of the bowl. When the frosting is ready, scoop out a bit on your spatula; does it seem nicely spreadable? If it's too stiff, beat in water (1 teaspoon at a time) until it's the consistency you want.

It's from Stella Parks' cookbook, Bravetart: Iconic American desserts

I made Stellas chocolate chip cookies - the brown butter version and used toasted sugar. These might be the best cookies I've ever eaten. 😳

My fam loves these cookies and they were devoured the day that I baked them.

Recipe I used was from her book! I will keep recommending friends to buy this book because I've seen a lot of success with it.

buy her book!

Edit: added link to purchase book (and only just figured out how to hyperlink on mobile 😯)

I agree that "How To Cook Everything" is a good reference guide for complete beginners and those with gaps in cooking knowledge.

It might be a bit over your head at this point, but if you truly want to understand cooking and what's happening when you do it try "On Food And Cooking" by Harold McGee.

For Asian you might like...

"Every Grain Of Rice" by Fuchsia Dunlop (or any of her books)

"Japanese Soul Cooking" by Tadashi Ono

"Ivan Ramen..." by Ivan Orkin (Good for ramen and other japanese-ish food.)

"Momofuku" by David Chang (Really good mix of general Asian flavors)

Other books that might interest you:

"Irish Pantry" by Noel McMeel

"The Lee Bros. Simple Fresh Southern" - Matt Lee and Ted Lee

"Real Cajun" by Donald Link

"Authentic Mexican" by Rick Bayless

"Fabio's Italian Kitchen" by Fabio Viviani

For Vegetarian try anything by Alice Waters or David Tanis.

I moved to a new apartment a couple of weeks ago and still haven't finished unpacking the kitchen. Nevertheless, the hazelnut (gluten-free) variation* of Glossy Fudge Brownies from Stella Parks' BraveTart was a wonderful way to christen the oven.

I've made the original version in the past. Both are the best brownies I've ever had.

My coworkers could not stop raving about how moist and decadent they are.

​

*"Replace the all-purpose flour with 7 ounces (1 3/4 cups) hazelnut flour or an equal weight of toasted, skinned hazelnuts pulsed with the cocoa in a food processor until powdery and fine, about 1 minute."

Apparently I'm not as original as I thought.

https://www.amazon.com/Game-Scones-Must-Dine-Parody/dp/0062445545

Apple sauce used sparingly can help. I find the addition of a little instant mashed potato flakes can make GF bread much fluffier. A small amount of instant GF oats can make a softer crumb. I have found Earth’s Own oat milk has Gellan Gum in it which was unfamiliar to me but is adding a good rise and light texture to my bread. Rye is a bit heavy, I would add some sorghum or brown rice or teff flour. You probably want a gel of some sort for a yeast bread though I usually don’t bother now. You make a “flax egg” or “chia egg” or “psyllium husk egg”.

Not healthy necessarily but very convienient are the GF bread recipes in https://www.amazon.com/Gluten-Free-Five-Minutes-Recipes-Muffins/dp/0738214620

My everyday sandwich solution is Venezuelan arepas.
https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/238510/homemade-arepas/

I'm really enjoying Not Your Mother's Slow Cooker Cookbook and Not Your Mother's Slow Cooker Recipes for Two (which I'm in fact looking at right now). They have some good information at the beginning about how to use a slow cooker, and what sort of food you should have on hand (building your pantry).


My best advice is to build a pantry of common food items (herbs & spices, sauces, etc), and then start practicing cooking based on simple recipes. If she's encountering terms that she's unfamiliar with, encourage her to Google them. Most people don't start out being good cooks; they just keep practicing and experimenting they're making tastier and more sophisticated meals.


Also, encourage her to watch as you cook, and as you're cooking, explain what you're doing and why you're doing it.

How Baking Works by Paula Figoni really helps break how individual ingredients react to heat and to other ingredients in baking.

Bread: A Baker's Book of Techniques and Formulas by Jeffrey Hamelman is the bible of bread baking. There are other bread books out there, and many of them are good, but if you only buy one this one should be it.

The Pie and Pastry Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum is a great home baker's guide to traditional baking, but almost every bakery I've worked in had a copy of this laying around. It's a great reference, and the fact that every recipe is broken down into weights makes it possible to convert many of her recipes into professional production, with tweaks.

Bouchon Bakery by Thomas Keller is a great supplemental baking book and worth checking out.

No prob! And here's the book: https://www.amazon.com/BabyCakes-Gluten-Free-Sugar-Free-Recipes-Talked-About/dp/0307408833

Not all of the recipes are gluten free but the ones that are, are insanely delicious. The minimalist baker blog is also really good when it comes to gluten free recipes :)

>But I want to delve a little deeper to learn more and maybe even be able to "freestyle" in the future.

I'd say the very first thing you need to learn is to grasp & adopt the concept of how you really, truly learn cooking. There's a quote attributed to Benjamin Franklin that goes, "The most powerful force in the universe is compounding interest." That means that as you do little bits of work on a consistent basis, it adds up to create fluency & accomplishment. Same idea as high school...you show up every day for 4 years & suddenly you have a diploma! If you can buy into that idea, then that will serve as the 'guiding light' for how you approach cooking, i.e. as steady, consistent progress against individual recipes, techniques, and flavor combinations, rather than random shotgun blasts scattered here & there.

In cooking, you can't do all of the processes & understand all of the flavor combinations unless you've studied them & actually done them, hands-on, in-person, and that is a long-term process. Until then, you're just window shopping, you know? I have a few posts here on kind of the basics of cooking that is worth reading through:

https://www.reddit.com/r/cookingforbeginners/comments/ajrsio/what_basicgeneral_cooking_tips_and_advice_do_you_think_everybody_should_kno/eeyhpua/?context=3

And in order to do learn those processes & understand the flavor combinations & build up a personal recipe database, you need to cook - a lot! If you're really serious about it, then I would recommend cooking every single day. Not necessarily every single meal, but cook at least one thing a day. In order to do that, you need to do some meal planning, which involves picking out what to cook, going shopping, and planning out what to make & when. I have a few posts on that here as well:

https://www.reddit.com/r/mealprep/comments/afdqju/meal_prep_ideas/edyhgbu/

Here is what I would recommend:

1. Commit to a plan. I'd suggest cooking just one thing a day. It can be separate from your actual meals, if you'd like, which is how I do it - I cook one meal a day for freezer storage when I get home from work every day. And because my kitchen is organized, I've made a meal-plan for the week, I've gone shopping, I've picked what day I'm going to cook each recipe, I've created a reminder alarm on my phone, and I have the recipe...I mean, it pretty much just boils down to actually doing the work, you know? Which is pretty dang easy, because at this point of preparation, it's like shooting fish in a barrel...I know what to make, how to make it, I have all the ingredients, and I'm only doing just one single solitary little recipe at a time, just one per day.
   
2. "Cook the book" - buy one cookbook & work your way through it. Personally, I'd recommend starting off with Kenji's Food Lab book. He has great pre-vetted recipes & explains them thoroughly. If you prefer baking, then check out Stella's Bravetart book, which takes a similar approach.
   
3. Create a recipe storage locker & a notes locker. I'd recommend Evernote or OneNote. They let you search, tag, and create individual notes, so you can organize things by ingredient, cooking style, and so on. All of the raw ingredients in the world already exist. All of the known recipes that are documented are already written down. There's a tremendous amount of knowledge & resources out there in terms of flavor combinations, tools, and ingredients available at your disposable...but your database is pretty empty right now. The rest of the world doesn't matter...what matters is filling up your personal database so that you can cook & bake & create delicious things for yourself, your family, and your friends. Your job is to build up that knowledge recipe by recipe, technique by technique, ingredient by ingredient. You've tried paprika, but have you tried smoked paprika? You've tried cinnamon, but have you tried roasted cinnamon? Have you used a microplane on a cinnamon stick or a whole nutmeg? You may have used garlic powder or chopped up a clove of garlic before, but have to roasted it to the point where it spreads like butter? Have you fermented black garlic in a rice cooker? That's not stuff you learn all at once, instantly, overnight, and become a pro at...you have to learn the flavors, and the process, and experiment, and see what works & what doesn't, and equally importantly, you need to write that down, because you WILL forget, but having your notes allows you to get inspired & think up great combinations & try new things & fall back on old ones.
   
   I mean, basically that's it - create a plan that involves doing a little bit of work on a regular basis, commit to it, and create some processes & reminders that enable you to easily slip into cooking mode when you want to. It's nothing more than a simple checklist, and you can be all over the map with it - learn how to cook marshmallows, and chicken tikka masala, and how to make your own jello, and what crystals are in chocolateering & how to temper your own chocolate using sous-vide, and how to cook using an electric pressure cooker, and what a good basic kitchen toolset looks like. Imagine if you only learn one thing a day or cook one thing a day...in a year, you'll have 365 new tidbits of knowledge under your belt; in five years, you'll have nearly two thousand bits of information under your belt.
   
   Please feel free to ask questions! To me, cooking isn't about going hardcore every day by cooking lots of stuff for hours & hours, it's about specifically focusing on one individual thing at a time & mastering it so that you "own" that knowledge, you know?
   
   For example, I went through a marshmallow phase. I went to a dessert shop a few winters ago & they had this amazing ultra-premium hot chocolate that was just out of this world, then they topped it off with a giant 2" hand-made marshmallow that they skewered & finished with a torch. It was sooooo good that I HAD to learn how to make it! As it turns out, like with anything else, you can deep-dive into just those two topics alone - hot chocolate & marshmallows. Here's some good introductory reading from one of my favorite hot chocolate shops in NYC, "City Bakery": (I'm pretty sure they just melt a chocolate bar into a cup, haha!)
   
   https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/food/article-4172562/Make-best-hot-chocolate-City-Bakery.html
   
   Four of my favorite NY chefs (Dominque Ansel, Jacques Torres, Maury Rubin, and Michael Klug) have some very different opinions on it:
   
   https://food52.com/blog/15460-how-to-make-the-best-hot-chocolate-according-to-the-experts
   
   part 1/2

not the amazing price your little dipper was, but this is a full fledged mini slow cooker i often use for making small dishes:
 
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008GS8R3K
 
and here is a cookbook specifically for small slow cooker recipes:
 
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1558323414

I wanted to see the book on Amazon, but it didn’t look like anyone else posted the link. Here it is, if anyone else is interested.

I always fall over myself to recommend Bravetart by Stella Parks to people who haven't baked much. The recipes are as close to foolproof as possible. The ingredients and directions are very specific so, provided you follow them, you'll get a good result. Like, a really good result. I can't think of anything in that book that won't knock your socks off, and there are tons of variations - including gluten free versions of basically everything.

Some of the stuff is easier, and some of it's harder - the latter mostly by dint of taking longer or having more steps rather than needing learned technique.

I'm a good cook, though not a talented baker by any stretch. Before that book, most of my tries at baking ended up with me swearing at dough, but that book has let me make all sorts of totally delicious stuff for work bake sales, friends' birthdays and just for my own face on a rainy day.

This is an excellent collection of recipes:
http://www.nolacuisine.com/creole-cajun-recipe-page/

I'm also a big fan of Donald Link's "Real Cajun":
http://www.amazon.com/Real-Cajun-Rustic-Cooking-Louisiana/dp/0307395812/

Hobbit cookbook for kindle in my Tolkien Obsession list!

I've been purchasing keto cookbooks for my library system and have been reading through them as they come in. Here's a little list:

Sweet & Savory Fat Bombs by Martina Slajerova
https://www.amazon.ca/Sweet-Savory-Fat-Bombs-Delicious/dp/1592337287/ref=tmm_other_meta_binding_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1480350212&sr=1-1
Haven't made anything from it yet, but I have this one checked out right now. I am going to try the recipe for their Toasted Coconut Cups today. The ingredient lists seems semi reasonable and it's great for squares, chocolate, spreads, and little treats if you're into that kind of thing.

The KetoDiet Cookbook by Martina Slajerova
https://www.amazon.ca/KetoDiet-Cookbook-Grain-Free-Sugar-Free-Starch-Free/dp/1592337015/ref=sr_1_1_twi_pap_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1480350335&sr=1-1&keywords=ketodiet+cookbook
Of all the books I've looked at so far this one seems the most reasonable and helpful. It's actual recipes instead of just a "wrap bacon around asparagus, cook" kind of thing. Plus, there's pretty pictures of the food and I like pictures in my cookbooks. I have it checked out right now and was going to give their recipe for zuch lasagna a try as a first recipe.

Quick & Easy Ketogenic Cooking by Maria Emmerich
https://www.amazon.ca/Quick-Easy-Ketogenic-Cooking-Recipes/dp/1628601000/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1480350438&sr=1-2
I had high hopes for this one, but I didn't like the look of it at all, save for a few recipes on slow cooker pulled-pork / pulled-chicken kind of thing. It was lots of "wrap bacon around asparagus, cook" that I mentioned above--the sort of food that folks on keto maybe already know. I did snap a few pictures of recipes I'd like to try, but it wasn't one I am considering purchasing, like the two above.

It can be hard to wade through the crap on pinterest and two sites I've found helpful for bang-on recipes are these:
http://www.ibreatheimhungry.com/
http://www.ditchthecarbs.com/

Hope this is helpful. Happy shopping <3

Donald Link's Real Cajun is fantastic. John Besh's My New Orleans is also excellent albeit a bit more involved. I find myself going to Link's more often, but for really sexy recipes, Besh has some real winners.

a while back, yes. Current, rekindled interest is due to Victuals.

Jerusalem

Cooking with Loula: Greek recipes from my family to yours

Ideas in food: great recipes and why they work (ma anche Maximum Flavor, degli stessi autori)

Meathead: the science of barbecue and grilling

BraveTart: iconic american desserts (in uscita 15 agosto)

If she's into desserts, another option is BraveTart by Stella Parks, which has a page or two of history for every single recipe! Got it for christmas and love it

Hobby baker here.

Although his reading level is low, a great cookbook is a must.
My favourite is BraveTart Iconic American Desserts

https://www.amazon.com/BraveTart-American-Desserts-Stella-Parks/dp/0393239861

Ketogenic Bread: 35 Low-Carb Keto Bread, Buns, Bagels, Muffins, Waffles, Pizza Crusts, Crackers & Breadsticks for Weight Loss and Healthy Living https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0746MK3JR/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_Nz.0AbXGM8NHQ

1. Churn time and temp ranges are wide because different bases freeze at different rates, different machine have different mechanisms, etc. The best advice I can give is to start checking at 15 minutes with a new recipe, expect the next round is be roughly the same total churn time. Depending on your machine and freezer, consider putting the entire machine inside your freezer. You get lower, more consistent temperature and less noise.
   
2. Ratios are very important. The basic ratios have to do with water, fat, and sugar. Without rabbit-holing too far, think of a basic base recipe that you like (say, vanilla) and think of the variations from there. As in, if you're making caramel, the sugar in the caramel you make counts towards the total sugar in the base. It gets a bit more complicated with things that change freezing temperature, like alcohol, but that's the strategy.
   
3. Water is your problem there. Most fruit is too watery and will freeze solid. Smaller pieces will just give you icy bits. Apples do well dried or cooked, so consider adjusting your recipe. Common solutions for adding fruit flavor are:
   
   1. cooking some/most of the water out of a fruit (changes the flavor)
      
   2. Steeping fruit in the cream or custard base (hot or cold, 1 - 24 hours depending)
      
   3. making a flavored fruit and sugar syrup for the base or swirl (adjusting the water and sugar accordingly)
      
   4. using freeze-dried fruits (powdered first, then added to the base - my favorite
      
4. A few things. Are you making sundaes or ice cream? That is, are the other flavors options or integral? You can certainly make wild syrups for topping more easily than integrated ripples. For ripple effects, the best results are from layering fully churned base and jam-consistency swirl repeatedly. If you add to the churning base, it will incorporate and you will not see ripples. The exception, for me, is stracciatella, which I use in place of chocolate chips for things like "mint chip" (fresh mint, good dark chocolate stracciatella works great). For that I add for the last few turns of churning.
   
   Lebovitz's book is wonderful and you should start there.
   
   
   I also like Stella Parks' BraveTart, which includes, but is not limited to, ice cream.

> new Bravetart Cookbook

> #new

ANOTHER ONE?!!#@! I MUST HAVE IT. You're not talking about this one, right?

I have a cookbook obsession, I have roughly 500 that are somewhat organized so I feel like I can be of great use here. I will break it down by type to make it easier.

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!

Here are all the local Amazon links I could find:


amazon.com

amazon.co.uk

amazon.ca

amazon.com.au

amazon.in

amazon.com.mx

amazon.de

amazon.it

amazon.es

amazon.com.br

amazon.nl

amazon.co.jp

amazon.fr

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, amazon.de, amazon.it, amazon.es, amazon.com.br, amazon.nl, amazon.co.jp, amazon.fr, if you would like your local version of Amazon adding please contact my creator.

Check out vegan cook books. I really enjoy bowls on bowls. I got the book for my girlfriend and she has tried out some recipes with success. She didn't cook much (besides eggs) until she had the book. It provides sound guidelines.

You could always add meat or sub other ingredients, but it's cheaper to not buy meat. Also, the learning the correct amount to season is essential for delicious cooking in my mind.

Best of luck!

I just recently bought these 3 cookbooks on amazon.com and so far i've gotten some good ideas. The 3rd one isn't necessarily keto, but many of the recipes are low in carbs and lots of the ones that aren't can be modified. They're all written by keto and paleo food bloggers I follow.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1624141196?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1592337015?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s01

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1624141404?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00

This is my favorite Cajun cookbook. I'm from south Louisiana and I highly recommend it.

I've actually never had an appetizer with gumbo, so I'm not really of any use there. For me, a cup of gumbo is either the appetizer or a stand alone entree. Plus any appetizer recommendation I would think give you would be fried haha. (Fried catfish, crab cakes) Although, you could do spinach and artichoke dip - although I'm not entirely sure that's Cajun.

Don't forget the filé for your gumbo!

Martha Stewart, Dorie Greenspan, and Rose Levy Berenbaum are my go-to's for classic recipes with none of the low fat/no sugar/no gluten stuff.

Any classic French basic pastry recipes like for pastry cream, choux, croissants, etc, are always going to be chock-full of butter and sugar and the good stuff, too. Check out Eugenie Kitchen on YouTube for some very easy, classic French recipes (by a very sweet Korean woman).

Here are my favorite baking cookbooks:

Rose Levy Berenbaum - The Baking Bible

Rose Levy Berenbaum - The Cake Bible

Dorie Greenspan - Baking: From My Home To Yours

Martha Stewart - Martha Stewart's Baking Handbook

Martha Stewart - Martha Stewart's Cookies: The Very Best Treats to Bake and to Share

Smitten Kitchen is also great for desserts that are a bit fancier, but still classically rich/traditional ingredients.


I LOVE BAKING.

http://www.amazon.com/KetoDiet-Cookbook-Delicious-Grain-Free-Sugar-Free/dp/1592337015

I bought this cookbook a few months ago and really like it. All of the recipes have measurements in Metric and Imperial.

http://www.amazon.com/KetoDiet-Cookbook-Delicious-Grain-Free-Sugar-Free/dp/1592337015?ie=UTF8&keywords=the%20ketodiet%20cookbook&qid=1465320102&ref_=sr_1_1&sr=8-1

Do yourself a favor and get "[The Pie and Pastry Bible]"(http://www.amazon.com/Pastry-Bible-Rose-Levy-Beranbaum/dp/0684813483). I learned how to bake when I was 8 (great grandparents, grand parents, parents all had bakeries) and I didn't get pie crust down until I was 24. This book is fucking awesome. I still have the copy that my ex-husband got me 15 years ago.

Check out the babycakes cookbook for ideas. Their "sugar free" recipes, btw, usually call for agave nectar. They have substitutions for using regular sugar and water to replace it.

I've got a "trio" style set of slow cookers that are about the same size. When I wanted to learn how to use them for meals, I found two books that I really like: Slow Cooking Just For Yourself and Not Your Mother's Slow Cooker Recipes for Two. They both offer a wide variety of recipes, both vegetarian and not, and they helped me get used to thinking about ingredient amounts at the right scale for the smaller cookers. Good luck!

With me and my fiance, I cook the meals but she likes to make/bake the sweets. It's a pretty good system for having fun cooking in the kitchen together, especially on the weekends when you have more time to make more extravagant things and can really treat yourselves to something special. If your fiance has a sweet tooth and would maybe get into that, I'd check out Bravetart. Got a lot of basic things but also has a lot of interesting things in there that are fun to make.

Stella Parks new book for pastry. I haven't read it but if it anything like her serious eats articles it will be what you are looking for. For that matter, Kenji's "The Food Lab" is an excellent resource for savory food. It puts the why and how right out front.

The FAQ on the side bar has a ton of suggestions. Some may be from older posts but worth checking out.

I believe that's been used before already so they could get sued if they did that :P

After a quick Google search, it's a book: https://www.amazon.com/Game-Scones-Must-Dine-Parody/dp/0062445545

You might have already read this, but if you enjoy Gullah/Geechee cooking, this is a terrific book:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008Q5H6KI/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?ie=UTF8&btkr=1

I am not from SC, I'm from up on the Chesapeake Bay near DC, but I tend to incorporate a lot of Gullah methodology and flavors in with my MD/VA style of seafood cookery.

The Pie and Pastry Bible is good. "Pie" is good as well and has less complex (but still great) recipes.

BraveTart: Iconic American Desserts

BraveTart: Iconic American Desserts available here, for those interested.

I don't know much about savory cooking, but for gluten free baking this book is great: Babycakes