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A few years ago I was bit by the bread-baking bug. While I own several stellar bread-focused cookbooks, I can't help myself from pouring over every new release--always searching for ways to improve my technique, or for unique bread...

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FOODIE PAM

Wine Country Cheese Explorations

Sonoma County is well known for wine and has great restaurants, but did you know it has cheese treasures? The rolling hills and mild climate are also ideal for...

Top General Cookbooks, 2009

Written by Team Project Foodie

Sunday, 13 December 2009

We've presented our top Baking Cookbook and Single Subject cookbook picks for 2009. Now it's time for the big time - the top General Cookbooks. These are books that you'll plop on your kitchen cookbook shelf and use frequently as they have everything from appetizers through desserts. This year, as in recent years, several are from chefs. You'll also find that a couple have themes and one is (inadvertently) a tribute to a lost foodie treasure...

My New Orleans, The Cookbook by John Besh (Andrews McMeel, 2009)

Amazon.com

This is no mere cookbook. It is a love story about a special city with a storied past that has weathered untold despair and destruction. Besh brings to life the sights, sounds, smells and people that make New Orleans unique. He shares his unparalleled recipes for his grandmother's biscuits, chicken and dumplings glammed up with chanterelles, classic crawfish etouffee, and boozy bourbon pecan pie. But more than that, he shares stories about dancing in the streets during Mardi Gras, families who toil in the back-breaking business of shrimping, the hard-working Vietnamese community whose members make their living fishing and farming, and his own first taste as a kid of a briny oyster chased with a frosty root beer. It's a book that not only brings food to life, but a community as well. It's a book you can't help but treasure. - picked by Carolyn Jung

Stir: Mixing It Up in the Italian Tradition by Barbara Lynch and Joanne Smart (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009) - Review | Recipes

Amazon.com

In a chef cookbook it can be difficult to balance time consuming preparations that require a kitchen staff with the simplicity that's needed for cooking at home. Cookbooks that get the balance right are the ones to treasure and keep coming back to. Barbara Lynch hit it just right with Sitr, her first cookbook. She adds her personal touch to make it a great read, imparts her technique throughout and creates wonderful flavor profiles across a range of recipes. As I was working my way through the book I felt as if I was working with Barbara at her cooking school, Stir, which also happens to have the same name she gave this book. It's a fitting title. - picked by Foodie Pam

Gourmet Today by Ruth Reichl (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009) - Review | Recipes

Amazon.com

Choosing this book is a little bittersweet now that Gourmet Magazine is no more, but the magazine has left behind a wonderful legacy with the Gourmet Today cookbook. This book clearly defines the way Americans are eating today. It contains over a thousand recipes with an emphasis on seasonality, ethnic cuisine, and non-traditional diets such as vegetarian and vegan. My very first impression of this book still stands; if you can only afford to buy one cookbook this year let Gourmet Today be that book. - picked by Heather Jones

The Big Sur Bakery Cookbook by Michelle Wojtowicz, Philip Wojtowicz and Michael Gilson (William Morrow Cookbooks, 2009) - Review | Recipes

Amazon.com

Take three friends who are culinary professionals, one fabulous location, and a community full of like minded farmers, bee keepers, and bread makers and you have the Big Sur Bakery. The cookbook of the same name contains the type of recipes that shows you how to take simple, delicious, ingredients and turn them into great home cooked meals. A cookbook that I will frequently return to for culinary inspiration. - picked by Heather Jones

Ad Hoc at Home by Thomas Keller (Artisan, 2009) - Review

Amazon.com

Foodies who worship at the altar of Thomas Keller, no doubt own every other cookbook this world-class chef has written. But I dare say that his newest tome is the one that will actually get the most use in the kitchen. Inspired by the family-style dishes served at his most casual restaurant, Ad Hoc in Yountville, the cookbook is filled with accessible, familiar recipes that Keller has put his own spin on. His chocolate-chip cookies use two types of chocolate, no vanilla, and start with cold -- not room temperature -- butter for cookies that really let the taste of the chocolate shine through. His pineapple-upside down cake will forever make you forget the overly sweet, mushy versions of yore that used canned fruit. His caramelized sea scallops are a revelation with its technique of brining the scallops first to amplify their flavor. And no doubt there will be a run on blow torches at hardware stores as holiday cooks try out his method for blow torching prime rib. It's a book you'll not only want to give to your friends, but to keep for yourself, too. - picked by Carolyn Jung

Mother's Best by Lisa Schroeder and Danielle Centoni (Taunton Press, 2009) - Review | Recipes

Amazon.com

Oregon chef and restaurateur Lisa Schroeder has taken 150 of her best recipes from Mothers Bistro & Bar and created a cookbook that will remind you of some of the best home cooked meals you've ever had. Comfort food at its best, everything from chopped salad to pot roast, and a whole chapter on macaroni and cheese that alone makes this cookbook one of the best I've seen all year. - picked by Heather Jones

Disclosure: Review copies of books discussed in this post may have been provided to Project Foodie by publicists and/or publishers.

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Last Updated ( Tuesday, 12 January 2010 )