Books about Kitchen from Amazon.com

A classic tome of gastronomic science and lore, On Food and Cooking delivers an erudite discussion of table ingredients and their interactions with our bodies. Following the historical, literary, scientific and practical treatment of foodstuffs from dairy to meat to vegetables, McGee explains the nature of digestion and hunger before tackling basic ingredient components, cooking methods and utensils. He explains what happens when food spoils, why eggs are so nutritious and how alcohol makes us drunk. As fascinating as it is comprehensive, this is as practical, interesting and necessary for the cook as for the scholar..
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She’s adored by fans as one of country music’s top stars, but among family and friends, Trisha Yearwood is best known for another talent: cooking

Throughout her life–from her humble roots in Georgia to her triumphant recording years in Nashville and a fulfilling married life with husand Garth Brooks in Oklahoma–Trisha has always enjoyed feeding those she loves. Now she dishes up a collection of more than 120 of her go-to recipes in a tribute to both home-grown cooking and family traditions.

Trisha believes a recipe always tastes better when it has a memory attached to it. Here, she teams up with her mother and sister to share their family’s best-loved recipes. This is the kind of classic comfort food you’ll want at the heart of your own family’s mealtime memories. Inside is a full menu of Southern fare with a contemporary twist. But you don’t have to be a Southerner to enjoy Yearwood family favorites such as:

Trisha’s Chicken Tortilla Soup
Gwen’s Fried Chicken with Milk Gravy
Stuffed Pork Chops
Breakfast Sausage Casserole
Blackberry Cobbler
Banana Pudding

Along with the recipes for inviting soups, textural salads, home-style family entrées, colorful side dishes, and irresistible desserts, Trisha shares everything from charming personal anecdotes to practical advice, time-saving tips, and creative ingredient substitutions to accommodate all tastes.

With full-color photographs taken in and around Trisha’s homes and a foreword by Garth Brooks, this soul-warming slice of Southern life will delight country music fans and home cooks alike. Best of all, this is un-pretentious food that is easy to put together, satisfies even big country appetites, and tastes like home. Trisha’s warm evocations of pre-paring food for loved ones will transport you back to your own childhood. These are recipes you’ll enjoy with your family for years to come..
Price: $17.29 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The much anticipated 75th anniversary edition of Irma Rombauer's kitchen classic Joy of Cooking promises to be as indispensable as past editions of this generational favorite. In addition to hundreds of brand-new recipes, this Joy is filled with many recipes from all previous editions, retested and reinvented for today's tastes.

Take the new Joy for a test-run in the kitchen with these featured recipes for Roast Brined Turkey and Apple Pie, and watch a video demonstration for their recipe for 10-in-One Cookies. And read on for celebrity chef "Odes to Joy," Joy timeline, and Joy trivia.

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Odes to Joy

"Great cookbooks are not just collections of interesting recipes. They are, first and foremost, books that tell a story, the story of how people lived and cooked at a particular point in time. They reveal, to borrow an expression from James Beard, their delights and prejudices, their view of the social order, their appetite for serving others food that meets the expectations of their social class. Food can be anything and everything from fuel to an object of intellectual curiosity to full-bore hedonism that transports the mind and body far from the dinner table with just one overwhelming bite.

I started cooking out of an early edition of Joy when I was only 7 years old. I remember making a basic chocolate cake with 7-minute frosting. The cake turned out fine, but the frosting resembled gruel and was my introduction to the importance of following a recipe to the letter. Evidently my lack of patience and precision had led me astray. But after that first brush with culinary failure, Joy led me to many, many successes over the years; more to the point, I became enamored of Ms. Rombauer's voice, the matter-of-fact charm that led her to suggest "stand facing the stove" as a sensible first step in any recipe.

The amateur but highly evolved enthusiasm that Irma Rombauer brought to the world of home cooking was a breath of fresh air after the slightly earlier era of culinary dowagers Fannie Farmer, Mrs. Beaton, and Marion Harland. To those pillars of culinary wisdom, recipes were shorthand for cooks who had spent a lifetime in the kitchen. A pie pastry recipe might be written as "make a paste." But Ms. Rombauer was there to hold our hands, to put food in a social context and give it attitude, energy, and meaning in a world where food was leaping past the narrow formality of the Victorian age.

For all of our worldly knowledge about ingredients and culinary custom, few cookbook authors have managed to perfectly capture, without artifice or self-conscious chatter, the vernacular of an age. Irma Rombauer introduced us to a room in our home--the kitchen--that was to become a place of enjoyment, not just one of backbreaking labor. She represented the essence of the new American experience, which suggested that everything in life could be transformed into pleasure with nothing more than the proper attitude. And what better way to celebrate this new age than to have a smashing cocktail party with the perfect hors d'oeuvres?

The original Joy of Cooking was mind over matter, the perfect mix of attitude and function. Even as times have changed, the Joy stands out as a watershed volume, a book that speaks to the very heart of who we want to be in the kitchen: producers of our own story, directors of the good American life.

And, according to Ms. Rombauer, all we have to do is take that first easy step and "stand facing the stove." --Christopher Kimball, founder and editor of Cook's Illustrated

"I'm often asked to pick my favorite cookbook. Considering that there are over 3,000 cookbooks published each year, it's a daunting task to try to narrow them down. Speaking as a chef who never went to cooking school, I've been enthralled by certain cookbooks, immersing myself from cover to cover and learning about exotic cuisines from all over the world. But for just plain basic information, both the original and revised Joy of Cooking are still my bibles. I can't tell you how many times my wife Jackie and I have thumbed through the stained and broken-backed copy of Joy in our home kitchen, looking for our favorite angel food cake recipe, our favorite skillet corn bread, our favorite fluffy biscuits, and crisp waffles, and on and on. It's tough to picture my family table--or, in fact, the American table--without a well-worn copy of Joy of Cooking in the background." " --Tom Douglas, author of I Love Crab Cakes!

"I highly recommend this book as a must-have in your kitchen. Chock full of great information, this book takes all of the guess work out and leaves no stone unturned." --Paula Deen, author of Paula Deen Celebrates!






"In our kitchen, Joy of Cooking is a tool as indispensable as the chef's knife, the scale, the whisk. We actually own two copies--a shelf-copy for reading, and one whose sauce-splattered, dog-eared pages bear witness to just how much joy we get from Joy." " --Matt Lee and Ted Lee, authors of The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook





"Joy of Cooking is the ultimate reference guide that I have been using for years. It's timeless and packed with perfect recipes for the home cook that stands up to the test of time." --Tyler Florence, author of Tyler's Ultimate






"Joy of Cooking is a book I turn to whenever I have a question about food or cooking. The new edition is the combined effort of some of the best cooks writing today; I know I can trust its information. And trust is, to my mind, the essential quality of all great cookbooks." --Sally Schneider, author of The Improvisational Cook






"When Andrew first contemplated becoming a chef in the 1980s, he asked two Boston chefs of his acquaintance what books he should read. Each independently recommended Joy of Cooking as THE classic with reliable recipes for just about everything. (The second chef urged him to look for an early copy for the sheer entertainment value of reading how to cook a possum.) A decade later, when we interviewed 60 of America's leading chefs for our first book Becoming a Chef, we asked them the same question--and again Joy was one of their five most recommended books. In fact, we recommend buying two copies, like we did: we keep our chocolate-smudged copy of Joy in our kitchen, and a reading copy on our bookshelves." --Andrew Dorenburg and Karen Page, authors of What to Drink with What You Eat


"Our Joy of Cooking is dog-eared, flour dusted, chocolate smudged, oil spattered, and easily the most used cookbook on the shelf. The staggering amount of information in the book taught us the basics when we were in our teens and has informed our cooking for the decades since. We wish we had written it!" --Johanne Killeen and George Germon, authors of On Top of Spaghetti




"I received a copy of Joy of Cooking in my late teens. I have treasured the cookbook ever since and still use it frequently as a reference. In the late 80's I was asked to represent American Cooking in Italy. I cooked all over the country for 2 months. The only book I took was Joy of Cooking. When ingredients that I had ordered did not show up and I had to totally wing it, I used this book to get me out of a few jams--like what the proportions are to make your own baking powder! If I could have only one cookbook--other than my own of course!--it would be Joy of Cooking--as it is the bible of American cooking" --Kathy Casey, author of Kathy Casey's Northwest Table


"I have purchased Joy of Cooking for all my restaurant libraries as well as my own. The recipes always work--always--and the informational chapters are accurate, to the point, and incredibly helpful--couldn't live with out it!!" --Cindy Pawlcyn, author of Big Small Plates

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A Brief History ofJoy

• 1930: The United States stock market crashes creating the great depression. • 1931: Irma Rombauer takes $3,000, the modest legacy her husband leaves at his death, and she self-publishes the first Joy of Cooking. She is 54 years old. • 1932: Irma tries to sell her book to a commercial publisher, Bobbs-Merrill of Indianapolis, IN, and is rejected. • 1933: Prohibition is repealed and Adolf Hilter becomes to Chancellor of Germany. • 1935: Bobbs-Merrill receives another submission of the Joy of Cooking from Irma. This version is not the self-published book but a revision, typed and bound in 15 notebook binders. • 1936: March 26 is the publication date for the first commercial Joy of Cooking. The first print run is 10,000 copies and the book costs $2.50. • 1937: The Golden Gate Bridge is completed in San Francisco and Gone with the Wind, a Scribner book, wins the Pulitzer Prize. • 1939: Bobbs-Merrill publishes Irma Rombauer's book Streamlined Cooking, a cookbook dedicated to convenience foods. The book is not a commercial success. • 1940: Freeze-drying is invented. • 1941: Pearl Harbor is attacked and America enters World War II. • 1943: The bestselling "wartime" edition of Joy of Cooking is published which includes how to creatively deal with the food rationing during World War II. • 1946: A "post-war" edition is printed with very few changes. • 1947: The microwave oven is invented. • 1951: Marion Rombauer Becker joins her mother Irma as co-author of this edition. • 1955: Gunsmoke debuts on CBS. • 1961: John F. Kennedy is inaugurated as the President of the United States. • 1962: Irma Rombauer dies in her native St. Louis. The sixth edition of Joy of Cooking is published. • 1963: The French Chef with Julia Child debuts on public television. • 1969: Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin become the first to walk on the moon. • 1970: The Beatles break up. • 1974: President Nixon resigns and Stephen King's Carrie is published. • 1975: The first--and last--edition of Joy of Cooking that is completely Marion Rombauer Becker's work is published. • 1979: Margaret Thatcher becomes the Prime Minister of Great Britain. • 1980: The median household income in the United States is $19,074 and it seems the entire country is playing PacMan. • 1981: The first genetically engineer plant--the Flavr Savr tomato--is approved for sale. • 1984: Coca-Cola changes its 99-year-old formula and launches New Coke. • 1990: East and West Germany unite. • 1997: After a more than a two decade hiatus, the eighth edition of Joy of Cooking is published by Scribner with Ethan, Marion's son, at the helm. • 2006: A new edition of Joy of Cooking, based on the writing and structure of the 1975 edition, is published to celebrate the 75th anniversary of Irma Rombauer's self-published cookbook.

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Joy Trivia

• For the 75th anniversary edition, 4,500 recipes were tested that used a total of 400 pounds of butter, 300 quarts of milk, 485 pounds of red meat, and 275 pounds of fish and shellfish. • The average age of a recipe tester working on the 75th anniversary edition was 46.7 years. • Recipe testers spend 8,798 hours testing recipes and techniques for the latest edition. • The knife was the first cutlery invented, followed by the spoon, and, much later, the fork (11th century A.D.). • Caffeine is the most widely used behavior-changing chemical ingested worldwide. • Eating cheese slows the decay of teeth. • A light coating of oil speeds cooking and improves flavor of most grilled foods. • Some of the most requested recipes from past Joy of Cooking editions include Chicken Marengo, Chocolate Cake (also known as the "Rombauer Special"), and Golden Glow Gelatin Salad. • Ice is considered one of the most important ingredients in making drinks. • Popsicles, baby back ribs, smoothies, and power bars are just a few of the recipes making their debut in the 2006 anniversary edition. • The 2006 Joy of Cooking has instructions on using natural ingredients to color Easter eggs: beets for pink; chopped red cabbage for blue; tumeric for yellow; and the skins of 12 red onions for orange to burnt orange. • Slow cooker recipes are included in the 2006 Joy for the first time.

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Price: $15.20 [Notify me when price goes down.]

With The New Best Recipe, we invite you into America's Test Kitchen where you will stand by our side as we try to develop the best macaroni and cheese, the best meatloaf, the best roast chicken, the best brownie, and nearly 1,000 more best recipes for all your favorite home-cooked foods.

Behind this book is a deeply felt understanding of how frustrating it can be to spend time planning, shopping and cooking only to turn out dishes that are mediocre at best. With The New Best Recipe in hand, you will have access to a wealth of practical information that will not only make you a better cook but a more confident one as well. In fact, as long as you follow our instructions, we guarantee that these recipes will work the first and every time.

We have also included 800 illustrations showing you the best way to do almost everything from how to carve a turkey and beat egg whites properly to how to frost a layer cake and set up your grill. Also, get valuable information on how and when to splurge on that expensive knife or baking pan and when the basic model will do just fine. We also explain the science of cooking since understanding the science of food can help anyone become a better cook. Complete with recipes ranging from appetizers to desserts, The New Best Recipe.
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Over time, twin enterprises Cook's Illustrated magazine and America's Test Kitchen have published many books dedicated to providing exhaustively tested recipes--"best" versions of traditional dishes plus definitive takes on kitchen equipment and ingredients. Some series readers have complained of endlessly recycled or rejiggered recipes; others take each book at face value, finding the formulas and cooking insights good and helpful. America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook, which calls itself a cookbook, cooking school, and kitchen reference in one, offers over 1,200 approachable recipes for a very wide range of dishes--from "weekday" fare like Creamy Rice Casserole, Cheesy Nachos with Spicy Beef, and Skillet Lasagna, to dressier recipes, including Pan-Seared Lamb Chops with Red Wine Rosemary Sauce, Roasted Trout Stuffed with Bacon and Spinach, and Chocolate Marshmallow Mousse. There are "specialty" chapters devoted to sandwiches, drinks, and slow cooker and pressure cooker dishes; a grilling section is a tutorial in itself.

Unorthodox, "better-way" approaches abound. For example, a fried chicken formula instructs the cook to wet the bird's dry coating slightly before it's applied for an extra-crunchy crust. Predictably, side bars feature equipment and ingredient evaluations, on bottled salsa, for example; "good food/bad food" photographs show readers what to aim for when producing fare like holiday cookies; and there are tips, charts, and "Cooking 101" sidebars galore. Step-by-step photos offer more direction still.

Though the majority of recipes are sound and yield tempting results, readers poring through the book will note gaffes and curiosities. The recipe for poached eggs, for example, offers the option of extra cooking for "firm yolks" (hard-boiled poached eggs, anyone?) and hamburgers receive an indentation before cooking to avoid "puffy" domed burgers, a novel problem that could, in any case, be solved by proper shaping. The addition of sugar to some savory dishes--for example, a pan sauce for steak--is misguided. Readers should also know that the book, which comes in loose-leaf form, requires some assembly, and that the pages themselves are quite thin, making them vulnerable to spills and tearing in daily kitchen use.

These things said, the book delivers solid, family-friendly dishes with enough fully orchestrated "how- to" to make even novice cooks feel secure when tackling the basics or more ambitious fare.

What's New in the Revised Editon?
First out in 2005, America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook was praised for its recipe ease, inclusiveness, and wealth of helpful information, but was also criticized for its physical production. A loose-leaf book with its pages included separately, readers found it inconvenient to assemble and its paper impractically thin. The revised edition is printed on heavier stock, and arrives with its pages already on its rings (there are two more now, for sturdiness) with only chapter dividers to insert, a simple task.

In addition, new inside front and back covers provide information on emergency substitutions, roasting guidelines, equivalent measures, and more--and a "Light Recipes" chapter has been included. Without defining precisely what "light" means--fewer fats and carbs, or a combo?--the section offers attractive all-course recipes, such as turkey chili, veggie burgers, meat and cheese lasagna, and chocolate bundt cake. Some readers will welcome the "slimming" of familiar dishes while others will find some of the manipulations--using cornstarch to thicken the sauce in fettuccine alfredo or ricotta to add body to a reduced-fat pesto, for example--unappealing. The book, however, remains a valuable kitchen tool--and one with greater convenience and durability than before. --Arthur Boehm

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With few exceptions-such as corn and pumpkins-everything edible that's grown in a traditional garden can be raised in a container And with only one exception-watering-container gardening is a whole lot easier. Beginning with the down-to-earth basics of soil, sun and water, fertilizer, seeds and propagation, The Bountiful Container is an extraordinarily complete, plant-by-plant guide.

Written by two seasoned container gardeners and writers, The Bountiful Container covers Vegetables-not just tomatoes (17 varieties) and peppers (19 varieties), butharicots verts, fava beans, Thumbelina carrots, Chioggia beets, and sugarsnap peas. Herbs, from basil to thyme, and including bay leaves, fennel, and saffron crocus. Edible Flowers, such as begonias, calendula, pansies, violets, and roses. And perhaps most surprising, Fruits, including apples, peaches, Meyer lemons, blueberries, currants, and figs-yes, even in the colder parts of the country. (Another benefit of container gardening: You can bring the less hardy perennials in over the winter.) There are theme gardens (an Italian cook's garden, a Four Seasons garden), lists of sources, and dozens of sidebars on everything from how to be a human honeybee to seeds that are All America Selections..
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Bill Buford's funny and engaging book Heat offers readers a rare glimpse behind the scenes in Mario Batali's kitchen Who better to review the book for Amazon.com, than Anthony Bourdain, the man who first introduced readers to the wide array of lusty and colorful characters in the restaurant business? We asked Anthony Bourdain to read Heat and give us his take. We loved it. So did he. Check out his review below. --Daphne Durham

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Guest Reviewer: Anthony Bourdain

Anthony Bourdain is host of the Discovery Channel's No Reservations, executive chef at Les Halles in Manhattan, and author of the bestselling and groundbreaking Kitchen Confidential, Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles Cookbook, A Cook's Tour, Bone in the Throat, and many others. His latest book, The Nasty Bits will be released on May 16, 2006.

Heat is a remarkable work on a number of fronts--and for a number of reasons. First, watching the author, an untrained, inexperienced and middle-aged desk jockey slowly transform into not just a useful line cook--but an extraordinarily knowledgable one is pure pleasure. That he chooses to do so primarily in the notoriously difficult, cramped kitchens of New York's three star Babbo provides further sado-masochistic fun. Buford not only accurately and hilariously describes the painfully acquired techniques of the professional cook (and his own humiations), but chronicles as well the mental changes--the "kitchen awareness" and peculiar world view necessary to the kitchen dweller. By end of book, he's even talking like a line cook.

Secondly, the book is a long overdue portrait of the real Mario Batali and of the real Marco Pierre White--two complicated and brilliant chefs whose coverage in the press--while appropriately fawning--has never described them in their fully debauched, delightful glory. Buford has--for the first time--managed to explain White's peculiar--almost freakish brilliance--while humanizing a man known for terrorizing cooks, customers (and Batali). As for Mario--he is finally revealed for the Falstaffian, larger than life, mercurial, frighteningly intelligent chef/enterpreneur he really is. No small accomplishment. Other cooks, chefs, butchers, artisans and restaurant lifers are described with similar insight.

Thirdly, Heat reveals a dead-on understanding--rare among non-chef writers--of the pleasures of "making" food; the real human cost, the real requirements and the real adrenelin-rush-inducing pleasures of cranking out hundreds of high quality meals. One is left with a truly unique appreciation of not only what is truly good about food--but as importantly, who cooks--and why. I can't think of another book which takes such an unsparing, uncompromising and ultimately thrilling look at the quest for culinary excellence. Heat brims with fascinating observations on cooking, incredible characters, useful discourse and argument-ending arcania. I read my copy and immediately started reading it again. It's going right in between Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London and Zola's The Belly of Paris on my bookshelf. --Anthony Bourdain

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This full-color cookbook is an exciting collection of the best recipes ever developed by the experts at Weight Watchers—225 tempting dishes never before presented in book form. If you’re a fan of the Weight Watchers New Complete Cookbook but are looking even more recipe choices, this new Weight Watchers collection will be an irresistible new kitchen companion. It’s packed with recipes that you’ll love, whether you’re cooking for a weeknight family supper, a casual backyard get-together with neighbors, or a festive gathering with friends..
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