How often do you use a cookbook to cook as opposed to reading or browsing ...?!
How often do you use a cookbook to cook as opposed to reading or browsing ...?
Answers:
never... my wife says i always cook the same thing.. pasta, or curry, or chilli... tonight its veg curry, onions tomatoes garlic with courgettes and mishrooms with red peppers... and fresh cream, the curry is also home made, 1tsp of tandoori powder, 1.5tsp of madrass, some cumin and coriander...
in fact its cooling now just waiting for no1 daughter to come home from seeing pirates3.... who needs a cookbook...
For me personally, it's probably 50-50. I normally don't use cookbooks or recipes to cook, just for baking. I will look through a cookbook for ideas, but I don't think I've ever followed a recipe to the T for anything but baking.
MAYBE ONCE EVERY 2 YEARS, I MIGHT GET FRUSTRATED WITH A RECIPE, THAT I DO NT REMEMBER ALL INGREDIENTS, NAMASTE
Not that often ?, been cooking a long time now and know a lot of recipes, so its mostly experimenting now !.
I do read a lot of cookbooks and watch cooking programs too and get a lot of inspiration from them !.
I'm teaching myself to cook and bake, so when I try something new, I follow the book. But the next time I make it, I tend to maybe use it as a reference (ie, what temperature to set the oven).
If there is a product I like to use like Campbell's cream of mushrooms I like to try the recipes that they have on the label.
But I try to follow recipes mainly because I'm still pretty new to this home cooking thing so if i have directions i do much better than without.
I never use a cookbook unless I am baking something. Baking takes precise measurements, other types of cooking are really best if you add your own special touches and ingredients, it's hard to do that baking cakes and cookies.
50/50. i love to read them and look at them, especially when there is beautiful photography. i also love to experiment with new recipes. when i get a new book, i'll read it through, pick out my favorite recipes to try, then let my husband pick from those.
when my daughter was born, the first year of her life, i actually read her cookbooks. i figured she didn't know what i was reading anyway, and she loved the pictures! same with food network. now she's 3 1/2 and obsessed with cooking. i had to get her own kitchen for her. here's a pic:
http://www.step2.com/product.cfm?product...
i dont have a job for me to buy cookbooks,
anyway i look on the internet since its free
For home cooking, I have a card index of about 700 recipes with the basic ingredients and cooking times on each card - the cards are cross-referenced to the cook books from which the recipes are culled, and there is space on the cards for me to note any changes I have made off my own bat.
I maintain a computer database of dishes that are on my card index that is searchable by the name of the dish or by ingredients, so, if I have a glut of aubergines (eggplants) , all I have to do is search by 'aubergine' to get a listing of the dishes I have recipes for using this ingredient. I've got it honed down as far as lemon grass, so it is a very useful tool.
I cook in English, French (Haute Cuisine), French (Regional Cuisine), Italian (Tuscan and Puglia, also Sicily), Greek, Persian, Parsee, Kashmiri, Gujerati, Kerala, Punjabi, Baluchistani, Bengali, Moroccan and Irish styles of cuisine, so the acquisition of a standard technique is out of the question.
When I cooked professionally, I relied on about ten sauces, three basic stocks that I made myself, and about 30 special dishes that I kept written recipes for - these were used for special occasions such as mess nights and were of a cordon bleu nature. I always cooked from fresh, relied as little as possible on advance preparation and I would have burned my tocque (chefs hat) and walked off the ship for good and all if I had been expected to use cook-chill products.
Cooking for a lot of people - my average was 35 (known as 'covers') requires a very different technique than cooking at home. All I had to help me was a steward - the galley on the average small naval vessel is not big enough to allow a kitchen platoon, never mind a brigade!
I urge all home cooks to use their cookbooks! There is a vast range of cuisines out there that are slavering to be cooked, and horrible things such as curry powder, jars of pasta sauce and gravy granules clamour to be dumped in the bin (they all wish to be re-incarnated as Balsamic vinegar).
If you take recipes off the web, print them, file them and keep a card index - your web results will become your personal cookbook.
Keep cooking, keep experimenting, keep living and use your eyes as an adjunct to your tastebuds!
I have a supply of tried and tested recipes that probably orginated from books but are now ingrained on the memory! I do use books for new recipes, for inspiration with what to do with the ingredients I have and for the sheer pleasure of trying something new - I love cooking and have so many cookery books, we have a moratorium on buying any more - somehow, they still sneak in! Every so often we will declare a week - maybe Italian, or Spanish, or whatever, and will then have totally new recipes at each meal from the region we have chosen - by doing this we get to test things before we try them out on friends, and widen our reportoire.
Some books, however, are just a sheer joy to read, even if you never try the recipes - try out just holding the hard back version of Nigel Slater's The Kitchen Diairies - it's a beautiful book - with a great feel to it and wonderful photos - and great recipes too!
I read cook books when i buy them, and if i want to do something new i might get three or four out and look at various ways people do broadly the same thing and from this i get a feeling of what needs to be done and then I go and make my own food. I also keep a loose leaf book in my kitchen draw for things I do and like or reminders to try something slightly different next time I do something like lower oven or less sugar or try a pinch of salt type comments.
I also have a few pro cook books which are great references for things you know you want to do but cant recal and dont want to guess the the quanitities.
Never,I make it up as I go along and if i do it again i usually add something else,or ask my mum!Curries are a really good thing to experiment with,but please people promise me you'll never do a mince curry at least be bothered to go out and buy some frying steak etc
Maybe once a week. I know most things by heart after cooking for 49 years. I use a cookbook for new and different meals and deserts. I love fancy deserts. I clip recipes from magazines and own about 12 cookbooks. I have a bag full of clippings that I actually use. Most for deserts.
Cookbooks are great foundations for cooking and baking. I prefer the older versions...a lot of your tried-and-true recipes are in them. Recipes from your grandma/great-grandma days where taste was the predominate factor. I use my cookbooks all the time to get ideas and try new recipes. I even scour flea markets and yard sales for them. Once I find a recipe that I like, if I think there is something that I can do to make it better, I will then work on improving it on my own.
I use a cookbook when I am searching for a favorite recipe that I use alot.
Very Often
i never use a cookbook.
I seldom open one of the several cooking books you would find in the den, not the kitchen. I enjoy cooking from scratch, experimenting and tasting as I go. I have a multitude of spices so no two recipes are the same. Well, I do have a few choice ones on cards but I only open one of those Joys of Cooking or Good Housekeeping cookbooks if I am unsure of how to cook something.
I use a cook book like a great library book! I take it to bed with me and read it till the early hours!
If I am miserable I pick up a cook book and also if I am sad!. I must be a sad old lady! but you see if you have read hundreds of them so things really do stick!
I never use a recipe any longer becuse they are all in my head! Hell at the grand old age of 67 there should be an awful lot in there!
But seriosly in my youth I would use a recipe once and then oh boy! I would have to change it. I looked at recipes only as guide lines they are there to be improved and bettered, and believe me there isn't one that I haven't had a little go at!
So be inventive because anything goes! Enjoy your cooking and if it doesn't work out right just get a Take away!!!!!
Best of Luck!!!!!
I love to cook so i try to buy a recipe book every month, and I use maybe 4 recipes out of a cook book every week.
Very Rarely.
Never. Just bung it in the microwave. (kidding!)
once in blue moon ...having cooked from long time ago just know ...and listen to or watch chefs on TV ...and taste says it all ...traditional cooking is best .....bit of this bit of that maybe even a little dash of something else ...and must be seasonal ...none of this foreign stuff ..buy local ..we also grow garlic ...lol
Maybe once month.
I love to read them and do often find things I would love to try, but I mostly get my recipes from Cuisine at Home magazine. I love it, lots of tips, great recipes and NO ADDS!
Well I read more cookbooks than I use to cook with, but I get great ideas from reading cookbooks. You learn a new sauce or technique to cook something different than they way you have in the past. Or you learn how to work with something you never experienced before like raw chestnuts or how to make your own smoked salmon etc... I love the Zunni cafe cookbook by Judy Rogers you have to make the famous roast chicken and bread salad. I put my twists on their recipes, the great thing about a recipe is if its a good one it will be time less. I also have a rule too not buy any new cookbooks unless I can get three new recipes from them, other wise I would have way too many cookbooks
I do not use a cookbook, at all, and do not follow recipes.
Measurements by the eye...and all my grandmas specialties are memorized, passed down tradition, i guess...
I use a cookbook at least 3 nights a week. I browse them all the time.
i suppose i bake so much that i have them off by heart