Cookbooks for a desert island

Name up to three cookbooks that you can't live without.

I'll start:
The New York Times Cookbook (Craig Claiborne)
Chinese Regional Cooking (Deh-Ta Hsiung)
Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home (Child and Pepin)


I'd really have trouble giving up about a half dozen others, including Joy of Cooking and the original Moosewood cookbook, but I think the above three would get me through many lonely months on a deserted island provided that I had a full pantry.

Real Thai (Nancy McDermott)
Authentic Mexican (Rick Bayless)
The Vegetarian Epicure (the original edition, Anna Thomas)-- and I'm not a vegetarian!

I doubt that any of these would be appropriate for life on a desert island, but these are the three cookbooks I probably mine for ideas most frequently.

It doesn't have its red covers now. She and dad married in '38 so she probably got it then. I remember it all my life and I'm 59. So, it would keep me grounded and happy just to run my fingers over the stained pages.

Then, there's An Encyclopedia of Chinese Food and Cooking. It has 1000 recipes. The ingredients are always listed like this:
A. 1/2 lb medium shrimp
B. 1 cup green onion
C. yadda-yadda
Then the preparation under the ingredients just instructs to add ingredients A, B, D whichever and what to with them. They pack those 1000 recipes in the book using the "no narrative" method and it made it very easy for me to follow. Here's the cover


Lastly, it would be my Popular Lithuanian Recipes cookbook. The one my family always referred to and where we added our own variations in pencil. The author was born in 1904.

I have a friend whose Lithuanian mother makes the most amazing food and zeppelinas are her speciality.

The ingredients are not always easy to find these days. Traditionally, they call for using lungs. I haven't made them myself. They can be a heart attack on a plate. But I did grow up eating them and loved them. They were a very special treat since it took a while to preprare.

Ground beef can be used instead of the organ meats. I've mostly had them with ground beef and should break down and at least make them once. Btw, does she serve them with the crumbled bacon and dollop of sour cream on top? Just thinking about that gives me chest pains!

She served them with the bacon and sour cream and chided her sons for being wimps because they didn't eat as many as the average manly man Lithuanian would have. :D

They still depend on the root vegetables a lot. Not much variety so it's very tough on vegetarians to find balance. As for the "manly Lithuanians" diet - they used to work pretty hard in their agrarian society. But that was when you could burn up the calories walking behind a horse and plow!

I found it in the remainder bin at a bookstore and paid a ridiculously low price for it. That was 25 or so years ago, so I don't remember how much.

We did good. :hi:

:P

I wouldn't want any of the foodies here to suffer. ;)

I have no favorite cookbook. I buy at least one a month, and often two or three. I have so many that I can't even recall the names of all of them. I don't even have them all anymore, having given many away over time. To me, cookbooks are to be perused and serve as inspiration, not literal tomes. And if I get just one useful idea from a cookbook I'm happy as a clam.

Passionate Vegetarian - Crescent Dragonwagon (good reading!)

Sundays at Moosewood Restaurant - The Moosewood Collective (used so often it is falling apart)

Still Life with Menu - Mollie Katzen (wonderful art work and recipes)

the Joy of Cooking (1976)
the Household Seachlight cookbook (1936)
my file folder of recipes from my Grammy, my Mother in law, my stepmother and from the wonderful cooks in this forum :yourock:

is the best all around cookbook I've ever found, complete with estimated calorie counts plus guides to time saving or inexpensive recipes. I've cooked out of this one for 30+ years and haven't found a single clinker of a recipe.

"The Vegetarian Epicure" by Anna Thomas, fondly known as the cholesterol cookbook for its reliance on dairy items, is the best party cookbook I have. A few of the recipes have needed adjustment, but overall, it's a winner.

"King Arthur Flour's 200th Anniversary" is a collection of all their recipes from their four sacks and bags over the years. Again, there hasn't been a single clinker of a recipe and it's a great all-around baking book.

Honorable mentions are many, "Crust and Crumb" for the nuts and bolts of bread baking, "The Gourmet Chinese Regional Cookbook," one I've worn out 2 copies of and am on my third, "The Modern Art of Chinese Cooking," a massive volume that is heavy on proper technique and should be the bible for anyone who wants to do homestyle Chinese cooking, and "Vegan Planet," lovely stuff that escapes the heavy dairy problem of my other favorite vegetarian cookbooks.

Of course, this desert island has a well stocked KITCHEN, or the boat just ran out of gas and there's a well stocked GALLEY, right? Otherwise, it's grilled fish and coconuts.

We were traveling up I-89 from NH to Burlington and I insisted that we stop at the new retail store in White River Junction. It was a quiet day and the staff were watching us very closely, but not with obvious suspicion. It felt a bit weird but we figured they were bored. We wandered around for about 10 minutes, slowly adding items to our basket. When we checked out, the staff broke out in applause and Brinna Sands came in from the back of the store, introduced herself and explained that we were the 1000th retail customers and the store was celebrating because it had met this goal ahead of schedule.
She inscribed a copy of the KA cookbook and gave it to us as a gift.

I agree with you on the recipes too: no clinkers.

on edit: and yes, this is Fantasy Island. Everything a cook wants is available. ;)

:yourock: :applause:

since I'd been a loyal KA mail order customer for years.

...I bought, back in 1972. I still use it frequently when I can't remember a proportion or I'm looking for something to inspire me. "The Cholesterol Cookbook"-- that's great. My copy is all yellowed and old-paper smelling now-- the publisher used pretty cheap paper, I guess.

I'm like H2S with cookbooks-- mostly I read them like novels, or skim them I suppose-- for ideas rather than as instruction manuals. But there are a few that I keep going back to over and over, sometimes to find something new, other times just to be reminded about things I'd tried in the past. Anna Thomas's cookbook is one of those.

I read a great interview with her a few years ago, I think it was around the time when Mi Familia was released. Oh, her The New Vegetarian Epicure was published about that time too, so maybe that was the impetus for the feature article. It sounds like she's had a marvelous time since the early seventies film school days.

I don't use any cookbooks, just the internet. Can I have the net on a desert island? Then I'll be just fine.

I have just ordered the Harold McGee book (On Food and Cooking) about food science, I'm thinking I'd rather have that sort of book on a desert island if I had to have a food book.

dates me, eh?
And I hate to say it, but my own black book of recipes--the Wellesley Fudge Cake and the Moroccan Carrots and all the other things I like.

One is Joy of Cooking and the other is Betty Crocker. I would miss the rest, but I'd be lost without these two.

On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen by Harold McGee. Not a single recipe in here, but I could read this 20 or so times before I retained everything I wanted to know.

Could we also have a dessert island?