June 27, 2008
Four Foods on Friday #35
Four Foods on Friday this week is all about inspitation. Val wants to know where we get our cooking ideas. You’ve got some kitchen stories you want to share, don’t you? Post the answers to the questions below on your blog, then get on over to Val’s place and let her know you played. She’ll talk nice about her participants later and give us all a little linky-love, too.
#1. Name one cookbook, cooking website or food blog that you frequently use.
When I was a kid our grocery store carried little paperback cookbooks on a variety of topics. I think I remember that they sold for 25¢ apiece. Mom would buy one whenever she had a little grocery money left over. I remember the one that had 101 recipes for ground meat, and one that was all cakes - that’s where she first found the recipe for the 1-2-3-4 Cake that I still love. Years later she found a decades-old bound copy of the whole collection of cookbooks in a used-book store. It was in bad shape even then, but served her well even after she duct-taped it to keep it together. It’s still my favorite cookbook. It’s got all of the basics - the mother sauces, how to handle and cook each type of meat and to know when your produce is just right for consumption - plus spectacular entrees for holiday dinners and showy desserts and snacks for when you’re entertaining. It’s the Culinary Arts Institue Encyclopedic Cookbook and it’s still available today, much revised since my 1948 edition was published. I really should buy a new one and retire Old Faithful, don’t you think?
#2. Do you watch any cooking shows on tv? Which ones?
I love-love-love all of the cooking competition shows. Top Chef and Iron Chef America are my favorites, closey followed by America’s Next Food Network Star. Oh, and Bobby Flay’s Throw-Downs and the cake guy and the national cookoff championships for everything from cake decorating to chili.
#3. Are you in a cooking rut? Name a food or dish that you’d like to find a recipe for.
My mother’s old-fashioned chess pie! It doesn’t have fruit and nuts like some recipes I’ve seen. It’s more like a creme brulee in a pie shell.
#4. Share a recipe created by somebody else that you haven’t tried but would like to.
Unfair question! There are so many recipes I want to try. I’ve copied a couple of dozen from FFoF participants and bookmarked some favorites on the Top Chef and Iron Chef sites. Since I’m supposed to pick one I did so, arbitrarily. It’s Richard’s Coffee Braised Pork from Top Chef, Season 4. The link will take you to a video of Lee Ann Wong preparing the dish. I don’t want to post someone’s copyrighted recipe, so go there to check it out please!
[tags]cookbooks, food, meme, recipes[/tags]
Posted by skeet @ 12:04 am • Food and beverage, Meme
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June 27th, 2008 at 1:19 am, Anele Says:
What a treasure you have in that cookbook! I’d only “retire” it to a special place where you can look at it and not risk damaging it. Despite being a little worse for wear, it’s a special heirloom!
June 27th, 2008 at 12:17 pm, valmg Says:
Good for you for hanging on to that cookbook all these years.
Thanks for playing FFOF!
Stumbled.
June 27th, 2008 at 4:55 pm, Lynne Says:
I tried to buy an updated version of a cookbook once and I hated the new version! Yuck! Give me the old one any day!
June 29th, 2008 at 6:36 am, corrin Says:
I’d say you got your money’s worth out of that cookbook!
July 6th, 2008 at 8:49 pm, kj Says:
Thats a brilliant old cookbook! I dug out an old cookbook that belonged to my Nana not long ago… sadly it was handwritten and a lot of the recipes had faded! Theres still one or two old classics in there that can be made out tho
I will make sure they stay in the family for a bit longer yet.
Look after that old book, Skeet!