Best international cooking, food & wine books according to redditors

That's my monthly budget, too! (and as a 200 lb guy I do not have a dainty appetite so you can get plenty of food with that much)

Basically, this limits you from nice steaks and fresh seafood. Everything else is fair game.

My wife and I keep a list of what we've made so if we have trouble thinking of what to cook we can look through a bunch of options. (Note: the $200 monthly budget covers only me, not both me and my wife.)

In a given month, we'll eat:

• Pasta dishes (puttanesca, sauce+meat, sauce+eggplant, aglio e olio, butter/garlic/sage, etc)
  
• Stir fries, either following a recipe or using whatever veggies I have around
  
• Other Asian dishes - bibimbap, mabo dofu, jjajangmyeon (Korean noodles with a thick black bean sauce), kimchi stew, "sushi bowls" (sushi ingredients but usually no fish, and in a bowl of rice instead of wrapped), pad thai, etc
  
• Rice and beans with lots of cumin and garlic, plus celery and carrots and maybe heavy greens to add veggies
  
• Ham and navy bean soup
  
• Pizza (working my way through a recipes from a few different sources, slowly getting closer to actually good pizza, not just "good for homemade" pizza)
  
• Roast chicken! A 4# roast chicken is like $6 at Aldi and seriouseats.com has tasty seasonings
  
• Eggs - mixed with rice and scrambled, fried, poached, in burritos... however. Super cheap, super quick, super easy
  
• Tacos or burritos
  
• Chicken tagine (Moroccan braised chicken that is super flavorful)
  
• Doro wat (Ethiopian onion stew)
  
• "Green soup" served over ravioli (cheese-filled freezer ravioli) - throw a bunch of chopped veggies into chicken stock and boil until cooked, add a bag of spinach to turn it green, and then blend it with an immersion blender when it's done. Top with a drizzle of EVOO and parmesan
  
  A couple caveats: I buy very few prepared foods, very rarely have sandwiches so no lunch meat (it's spendy), and I don't eat breakfast. I do most of my shopping at Aldi and only go elsewhere for things they don't carry like specialty Asian ingredients. We have a couple big Asian groceries nearby that are good for that - we count a few basic sauces as staples that we find it's not too expensive to keep on hand that really open up our options for Asian recipes (soy sauce, sesame oil, rice vinegar, and fish sauce).
  
  Edit: because this has gotten a good bit of attention I'll mention that we do have a good selection of cookbooks to work from. Not a huge number, but a well curated set that is mostly based on recommendations from friends and the internet, were gifts, or ones we knew were good because former housemates had them.
  
  But if you don't have many and don't want to spend the cash don't worry! Your local library should have a bunch, and many resources (that are less hit-or-miss than e.g. allrecipes.com) are available online. Good and Cheap, budgetbytes, and seriouseats (The Food Lab) are in my top 3 (I do have a paper copy from all 3, because I want to support what they do). Other cookbooks that I like, also listed in the "Source" column of the linked google doc:
  
  
• Chinese Takeout Cookbook. Meant to reproduce good American-style Chinese takeout, but often less grease-laden.
  
• Cook's Illustrated Best International Recipes (I think it's this one but I'm not sure - it was a gift and I got rid of the hardcover's sheath). I'm a little ideologically against recipes that use 15+ ingredients of which I only have half on hand, but the moussaka, pad thai, and chicken tagine recipes alone nearly make this book worth it (especially with some judicious substitutions)
  
• Everyday Harumi - I've had great luck with several recipes in here, but I also know that I'm not taking the recipes to their full potential because when my old roommate would cook from his copy it always turned out better.
  
• Maangchi's Kitchen - plenty of tasty, authentic Korean recipes. Like budgetbytes, her cookbook started on the web so all her recipes are available for free via her youtube channel, which is great fun to watch. Korean cooking can be involved so I rarely go beyond the simpler recipes (Korea is the only Asian country I've visited so it's the only one in this list I can speak to the authenticity of)
  
• the bread bible has some very tasty flavored breads (mushroom bread made with duxelle, or a cheddar mustard bread) and decent pizza
  
• Bread Baker's Apprentice has yielded some tasty baguettes and quite good pizza
  
• And I only recently got The Pizza Bible and have only managed to try one recipe from it but it turned out great

Oh my gosh, yes! I cook almost every day, and I have many family recipes, too many to list or give you the recipes here. BUT (and excuse me for being a little bit pluggy) my last book, Tangy, Tart, Hot and Sweet has over 150 recipes of just the sort that you are asking about. I generally each much differently at home than I do on Top Chef. We eat mostly a plant-based diet at home. That is very Indian of course, with lots of lentils, beans, veggies and rice.

Did you have any kind of recipe you wanted in particular?

Falafel pitas. In fact, anything pita is a sure-fire hit. Hummus is a classic, but nearly as certain a thing.
My kids are incredibly of veggie platters with fresh vegetables and fruit, but YMMV greatly.

Scandinavian-style open sandwiches with ultra-wholegrain rye is what kids eat more or less every day here in Denmark, and there are many many options for meals tucked away in there - tomato/cucumber sandwiches, cream cheese, the list goes on. Hell, my son eats salad sandwiches - as in, leaves of salad as the main ingredient.
SOUP! A great winter favourite here is potato and Jerusalem artechoke, sprinkled with a bit of thyme and roasted sunflower seeds. Drool.
Samosas and other filo-pastry constructions are awesome. Tempura'd veggies can also have that junk-appeal while being really quite healthy.
Different kinds of veggie patés can be made in bulk and used as a spread with tons of umami.

For further inspiration:
http://www.amazon.com/Vegan-Lunch-Box-Animal-Free-Grown-Ups/dp/1600940722/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1322338465&sr=8-1

http://www.amazon.com/Vegan-Lunch-Around-World-International/dp/0738213578/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_b

http://www.amazon.com/Better-Than-Peanut-Butter-Jelly/dp/1590131223/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_c

- all worthy investments - hell, they show up as "frequently bought together" as a big lovely set.

BUT I will say that the best best best way to approach this, and the one that will really make things cool is to engage the parents of these children in a dialogue about their children's diet.

https://imgur.com/ZPapkwj - this is basically the method. This comes from a cookbook called the Book of New Israeli Food.
I use Pereg Shwarma Spice mix which comes from Israel
https://www.pereg-gourmet.com/products/mixed-spices-shawarma but you can make it yourself

Michael Solomonov has a new book coming out in October which contains a recipe for Shwarma. The cookbook is aimed at home cooks who want to reproduce the flavours at home without a spit so it might be worthwhile checking it out when it's released.

The ACF in the US seems to be the best route to get involved with competitions. I worked with someone who had an interest in them, he was involved with the NJ ACF. He also lent me this book Knives at Dawn . The story about Thomas Keller and Daniel Boulud's work in creating an American team for the Bocuse d'Or. Good luck with it! The people I was reading about show an insane level of skill and detail.

My favorites are Afro-Vegan, Vegan Soul Kitchen, Alternative Vegan, and The Inspired Vegan.

Well, that's a "tough" question. A couple of years ago there was a similar thread, but 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.

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.

Lastly, 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.

Make your own seitan. It's easy and cheap and very versatile. Just buy a bag of Bob's Red Mill wheat gluten; the recipe is right on the bag. You can play with the recipe to get different flavors, and experiment with steaming and baking vs. boiling for different textures. I have a lot of vegan cookbooks but my favorite for easy, well-balanced meals is probably this one.

For Thai food this one is my favorite:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Big-Book-Thai-Curries/dp/185626808X

For Indian I'd go for this:
http://www.amazon.com/New-Curry-Secret-Mouthwatering-Restaurant/dp/1554075610

Both packed with fantastic recipes!

This looks really great and I look forward to trying many of these recipes!
I'll be sure to leave a review as soon as I have!
Thank you!


This is the link that was removed:
Slow Cooker Wanderlust: 101 Adventurous and Delicious Slow Cooker Recipes from Around the World

http://www.amazon.com/Slow-Cooker-Wanderlust-Adventurous-Delicious-ebook/dp/B00J534K40/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&sr=8-1&qid=1418614408

Probably one of the best things I ate this week was my dinner yesterday and leftover lunch today. Nothing fancy, but I have a really great recipe for Tortilla Soup from the Dona Tomas cookbook. It's full of shredded chicken, avocado, fresh greens, and a super tasty broth. A nice big bowl, even with the tortilla chips (which I made sure to not go overboard with), comes in at around 400 calories, a perfect sized meal for me.

What made it extra special, is that I only get to make this a couple times a year. I live in China where I can't always get a hold of the dried anejo and guajillo chiles to make the soup at it's best version. However, this summer we vacuumed packed some bags of chiles and brought them with us. I finally decided it was time yesterday to crack into them.

So glad I did.

I was fortunate to receive some awesome stuff on my wishlist: a mandoline, Thermapen, and a 7 1/4 quart enameled Dutch oven.

I also got some cookbooks:
Persiana,
Food of Life, and
Ceviche: Peruvian Kitchen

Edit: formatting

I used the recipe from here for "Mexican Rice" on page 14.

The Essential Cuisines of Mexico by Diana Kennedy is the best book that I've found on Mexican food. No pictures in the book at all but all of the recipes that I've made from it have been awesome.

This is an awesome contest idea! I think this describes me the best. I love any kind of food. My dad introduced me to a ton of different cuisines (Indian, Vietnamese, Thai, German, etc.) and I love to travel. So the cookbook blends my love of food with my love of travel. Plus street food is some of my favorite food because a lot of it is regional and gives great insight into the native's creativity. And I love my cat =)

I saw a book called "Around the World in 80 Dishes" at the library recently; I haven't read it personally so can't vouch, but if you can find it locally it might worth a shot!

My wife and I absolutely love the Best International Recipe book from america's test kitchen.

Even though it doesn't have anywhere near as thorough or broad scope as a lot of the other cookbooks, what it does have is reliable recipes that are incredibly delicious. It'll give you a great appreciation for other countries' cuisine and how American cuisine is descendant from them.

I recently picked up this brilliant book: Gluten free vegan world eats

and the other one in the series is great too. Some good tips in there.

Gluten free pasta is pretty cheap now, you can get rice noodles too. Vegan gluten free bread can be tricky, in the UK there's a few I've found but they are a bit expensive so I buy corn crackers and potato waffles and stuff like that a lot and have them instead of bread.

edit: ugh messed the links up, don't know why I keep doing that, hold on.

edit: fixed links.

Diabetic book. Just type in diabetic book in Spanish they have many

Allyson Kramer's Great Gluten-Free Vegan Eats From Around The World is great, too!

also, Holy Cow has a ton of Indian-themed vegan eats. i absolutely love her site.

Allyson Kramer, who writes the Manifest Vegan blog that dbh04 mentioned, also wrote some of my favorite vegan gluten free cookbooks. I know there are plenty of resources online, but it makes it so easy to just have an actual cookbook, not having to sift through anything to make sure it is dairy and gluten free. She also has pictures with almost every recipe, and I find that gives me more inspiration to cook! Check em out: Great Gluten Free Vegan Eats and Great Gluten Free Vegan Eats From Around the World. A lot of our virtual recipe meetups are from recipes in her cookbook-so you can scroll through this reddit and see pics of a lot of the stuff we made. My husband also likes The Complete Idiot's Guide to Gluten-Free Vegan Cooking. The stuff he makes from it always seems to turn out great.

For online resources, I like to just go to pinterest and type in 'gluten free vegan.' So many beautiful, inspirational pictures of great food that maybe you could get your husband to look at with you so he could help pick out some dishes he thinks looks good. Yummly is pretty cool too. You can type in something you want to make and then click on your dietary type, or allergies, etc.

For blogs I like manifest vegan, forks and beans, gluten free goddess, and a host of others.

For fake meat, Beyond Meat might pass for meat. It is incredibly chicken like in my opinion (but I haven't eaten meat in over 30 years, so who am I to say!). But it did fool famous foodie Mark Bittman and Bill Gates in blind taste tests. Doesn't fool everyone though, so use it in a stir fry or burrito or something, I'd suggest. You can get it a Whole Foods.

One of my favorites is garlic, onion sauteed in olive oil then a big handful of clean chopped up kale and lots of salt and pepper. its good with sundried tomatoes and a spash of white wine in it. and Parmesan cheese. I also eat it with scrambled eggs fairly often, the flavors are nice together.

Also really love indian veggie dishes, check out Madhur Jaffrey's Veggie Cookbook or any of her other cookbooks for that matter. if you like spicy or bold flavors at all you can make some kickass veggies her way.

Hi, I'm quite new here myself but I've been diagnosed Coeliac for over 10 years.

I have a few great books and this is one specifically about eating foreign cuisine:

https://smile.amazon.co.uk/Lets-Passport-Living-Gluten-Allergy/dp/0976484501/ref=sr_1_5?keywords=gluten+free+passport&qid=1565373370&s=gateway&sr=8-5

Where are you from? We may be able to point you towards some places in your country or city...

Jana Gur's cookbook has a good section on shawarma and a way to do it yourself at home with chicken, actually. Her spice choices might be of use in your quest!

I am actually at work right now. It's a half day, so I am aiming to be out of here around noon. Once I'm free, my girlfriend and I, along with one of our best friends, are headed up to Pittsburgh to have a super fun Saturday.

Our primary reason for the excursion is that we are going to see Belle & Sebastian and Yo La Tengo tonight. Of course, we are headed up early to have food and drink. My friend wants to hit the art supply store, and I plan of perusing the local record shop.

Tomorrow I plan on relaxing. Depending on whether or not I am up for the hour + drive, I may go visit my parents.

This is an awesome contest. On a scale of 0-2, it ranks at 1.21 Gigawatts.

I feel bad linking to a certain item, because it is your contest and you should buy what you want. But, I can never say no to a good [Israeli cookbook.] (http://www.amazon.com/The-Book-New-Israeli-Food/dp/0805212248/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_S_nC?ie=UTF8&colid=3KW9QDR98DER9&coliid=I2MGOGM4ZJGVE)

I'd like to recommend a couple useful books:

http://www.amazon.com/Raising-Vegetarian-Children-Health-Harmony/dp/0658021559/ - my favorite

http://www.amazon.com/Better-Than-Peanut-Butter-Jelly/dp/1590131223/ - kid-friendly recipes

http://www.amazon.com/Vegan-Lunch-Box-Animal-Free-Grown-Ups/dp/1600940722/ - great lunch ideas

http://www.amazon.com/Vegan-Lunch-Around-World-International/dp/0738213578/ - ditto

http://www.amazon.com/Raising-Vegan-Children-Non-Vegan-World/dp/0972510206/ - may also be helpful, but personally I found it quite preachy and medically inaccurate at times

Quesadillas? Thinking filled with refried beans, not just cheese.
Those, or empanadas; I actually just got The Essential Cuisines of Mexico and there's a chicken empanada recipe that looks pretty simple and tasty, the only thing that really takes time is making the dough.

Would you have time to throw together a sandwich? Tons of easy variations and pretty damn cheap as well.

Please avoid requests for recipes for specific ingredients or dishes (unless it's obscure and Google has failed you) and prompts for general discussion or advice. As a general rule, if you are looking for a variety of good answers, go to /r/Cooking. For the one right answer, come to /r/AskCulinary.

This being said, generally speaking taco's and nacho's are both made from Masa flatbread which are called tortillas. Burritos and quesadillas are going to be made from a wheat flour based flat bread.

Though you will find Taco's south of the border, it looks like the cuisine you are actually interested in would be Tex-Mex or Southwestern US cuisine. Nacho's, Quesadillas, and Burrito culture is largely Americanized even though some of them still have roots in Northern mexico.

Additionally, Mexican cuisine is both diverse and very regional. The essential cuisines of Mexico is supposed to be a very good cookbook if English is your first language. It is by Diana Kennedy. I would not expect that it is really going to show you the kind of cuisine you are actually looking for though. Oaxaca Al Gusto was also highly recommended by Kenji of serious eats as well.

https://www.amazon.com/Essential-Cuisines-Mexico-throughout-recipes/dp/0609603558/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

Rick Bayless is another go to. Mexican Every day is another very highly rated cookbook for mexican cuisine.

https://www.amazon.com/Mexican-Everyday-Recipes-Featured-Season/dp/039306154X/?tag=serieats-20

I believe something like this though will be closer to what you are actually wanting.

https://www.amazon.com/Tex-Mex-Cookbook-History-Recipes-Photos/dp/0767914880/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1299551913&sr=8-1

Either Diana Kennedy - The Essential Cuisines of Mexico or Rick Bayless - Authentic Mexican. Really any book by either of those authors is going to be good.

http://eatdrinkbetter.com/

http://allrecipes.com/Default.aspx

http://www.opensourcefood.com/

Sorry, I'm in between meetings and don't have time for a full post. Try these sites out. Also, try any cookbook by Deborah Madison or Madhur Jaffrey