What sites / books inspire your cooking?

aberdeensaver

Good Morning All,

Sorry if this is a daft question, but I wonder what websites / books etc inspire you for new money savvy recipes.

I am currently trying to create a list of out household favourite recipes but seem to have hit a brick wall for new inspiration.

In the past I have used the BBC food wesbite as well as a few cookery books, but find alot of them contain meals which either have ingredients in which are expensive / not easy to source or are far too time consuming for a weekday meal.

I wonder if other people have any good websites or can recommend any good cookery books that you couldnt live without?

Lippycow

Got to say Goodtoknow.co.uk site is a great source for recipes and i turn to there for many of my recipes.

hattifattener

Lippycow wrote: »

Got to say Goodtoknow.co.uk site is a great source for recipes and i turn to there for many of my recipes.

I was just going to say this, they update regularly and I love reading their articles like '7 meals for £1 a head'. I never use all 7 meals, but I can usually use one or two. Our family favourite veggie crumble came from there and we use it every month.

aberdeensaver

Lippycow wrote: »

Got to say Goodtoknow.co.uk site is a great source for recipes and i turn to there for many of my recipes.

hattifattener wrote: »

I was just going to say this, they update regularly and I love reading their articles like '7 meals for £1 a head'. I never use all 7 meals, but I can usually use one or two. Our family favourite veggie crumble came from there and we use it every month.

Thank you both so much, this is exactly the inspiration that I needed. Cant imagine I am going to have a productive day now as I sit and drawl over all these yummy looking recipes.

lostinrates

The bbc food website is good, as are some of the cooking forums and chef websites, but I prefer books personally.

I have a huge food and cooking boo collection...mostly still in boxes from our move, but quite often just read a book to refresh my memory and "read a meal". I find this very satisfying.

When choosing a cook book in a shop or charity shop, I do the "three recipe test". That is at least two out of three recipes opened at random must be new to me or an interesting take on something familiar, and they must be something I would like to cook and eat.

We try generally to eat fairly seasonally, and ATM I have a leaning towards vegetarian and seasonal cook books. This Christmas I was given the great British food rivaval book which I really love, and onto lenghi which is mouthwateringly superb...the way we really like to eat but better IMO. I have a lot of 'poncey' celeb chef books, but only buy the ones who cook in a way that really appeals to me. Nigella, nigel slater, a little bit of Jamie....

But, some of the very best value books I have, despite it being a surprise to some of my friends who say 'your a bit beyond all that, aren't you?...are the type that say 100 Chinese meals, or 300 cakes etc etc, usually the same puBlishers, and often the recipes cross over, so check them if you buy more than one on cross over recipes....the pics etc are all the same in different books. These books contain simple, clear recipes with a picture..I do like a picture.....and can give tiny insights into other cooking cultures...I bought an eastern European one I have not yet read a few weeks ago, for example. I know it will be clear and easy to explore a different culture of eating in this way, even if it is a little prosaic and doesn't touch on the culture. These modern and inexpensive books are very undervalued. One of the best books I ever had was picked up by my mother when I was a student and called 1001 recipes. It died because it was well used, by me and flat mates and we used to joke that whatever we had in our cupboard we could cobbled something out of that book together...it was totally not flash, just a basic book based on the realities of a simple kitchen.

Need2bthrifty

I've been using the BBC Goodfood website a lot recently, for inspiration and looking for recipes using specific ingredients. My last search was for spinach - got a huge bag, froze some but wanted to use up the rest and found a lovely pasta dish - Fusilli with glorious green spinach sauce - it was a very green plate of food but delish.

There are also useful comments and ratings from people who have made the dishes and any changes they have made.

kittycat204

I know i am doubling up on what others have said but i use
BBC food
My dish
BBC good food
Delicious Magazine
food network
come dine with me
waitrose
good food channel
recipes good to know
allrecipes.com

they should inspire and keep you quiet for a while

david39

My wife has a couple of shelves full of cookbooks and is still adding to them. However, she only uses them for looking at the pictures.

For proper recipes, she always goes back to a scruffy, dog-eared, now almost coverless, book by Mary Berry that she bought about 40 years or more ago.

Incidentally, aren't we totally fed up with all the cookery programmes on television these days? For the three weeks before Christmas all there was, in every programme, was how to cook a turkey! By the time Christmas had arrived, we could only face beef.

Now Christmas is over, we've got to suffer weeks of Masterchef and, no doubt, Jamie Oliver will be turning up with hot cross buns well before Easter.

freyasmum

I use the bbcgoodfood, delicious. magazine and waitrose websites.

My mum used food.com, food.co.uk, allrecipes.

I (used to) get loads of food magazines as well, but I have enough recipes to last a lifetime so I'm trying not to buy any more :A

I also have a very extensive cook book collection

If you have a calendar, write up what you eat each night and you'll be able to see what you eat regularly. I know the feeling, you sit down to write menu plans/recipes and you have no idea what regular meals you eat :rotfl:

HelenYorkshire

I use a lot of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, not necessarily followed to the letter but to get the gist of what to do with an ox tongue, or pigs trotters, or old fashioned veg.
I also use a website called Chowstalker (def not vegetarian) - it links through to various blogs and websites - and again can be as much inspiration for flavour combinations as for actual recipes.
Google for a specific ingredient can also be enlightening or frustrating.

freyasmum

Can't believe I forgot taste spotting!