recipe book recommendations please

stef240377

I have found a lot of cook books i have picked up and browsed through seem as though the meals are quite sofisticated for every day use so i stick to the bbc good food ones currently £3 each in Asda. I have 4/5 of them now and can honestly say i have had a good go at a few of the recipes from each one and some of those are now regular on the meal plans.

Trinny

Hi there

I am a pretty basic cook - i have:

1. How to feed your family.... Gill Holcombe
2. The Pauper's cookbook - Jocasta Innes

But one of my favourites although its a little old is the Shirley Goode cookbooks - I think they are called "shirley goode cookbook, and goode for one" or something like that.

Her blog is really good too - type shirley goode in google - you should find it easily.

Trin

JillS_2

I like Delia Smith's Frugal Food. I don't think I've made a recipe from it that I didn't like.

ubamother

The one I keep going back to again and again is The Farmhouse Kitchen, which I was given years ago - there was a television series as well, but the book has hundreds of really useful recipes.

sandraroffey

i collect cookery books just because i love them. i have over 300 and the majority of them, apart from the ones the kids buy me, have all come from charity shops. really good old fashioned,moneys saving type recipes. the best place for cookery books by far. last week i picked up a £20 book that had clearly hardly been opened, and it cost me the grand sum of £1.50.

and i got a huge farmhouse kitchen book for 20 pence!!!!!

take a look, you will be pleasantly surprised.

spend_thrift

I like the Use It All Cookbook by Bish Muir.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Use-all-Cookbook-Delicious-Recipes/dp/1900322307/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1260277166&sr=8-1

I found the specific recipes that I tried at first weren't really to my taste, but it is invaluable for basics that perhaps in the past people knew and took for granted. I pick it up almost every day to look up how to make things like gravy or basic pastry etc and it has some great generic recipes for things like curry, pie, crumble, pasties, rissoles.... the sort of thing my grandmother would have known and which can be endlessly adapted to suit what you have in your fridge.

I used to have a bit of a one-track mind when it came to the contents of my fridge (eg pesto always goes with pasta, potatoes are for baking or mash, veg always goes into a pasta sauce, carrots always go with humous....) and now I look at my ingredients and see many more possibilities. I mix them up now on a regular basis and my cooking is much more varied

The Use It All Cookbook also has a really useful directory of likely leftovers and tips on using them up. So you can easily find several ideas for each thing, some of which are simple and instant, and others include it as an ingredient to make something more hearty.

debtdesperado

I like the Kitchen revolution, which gives weekly menus, shopping lists etc for an entire year. It takes into account seasonal food, variety etc...amazing. Am still getting the hang of getting organised with my shopping and cooking!

I also like an old Delia book which is from the 70s or 80s with her in a red top on a black background which has all sorts of recipes.

I personally prefer older cookbooks as I think they are designed for housewives operating on a budget and include sensible suggestions for using ingredients up, or what do with things are past their best with regard to home economics, whereas I find modern cookbooks are designed for home cooks who want to be professional chefs, who are prepared to go to a farmers market every day to source the very freshest fish etc etc and lots of specialist ingredients for just one meal...but are no good if you just want a weeks worth of sensible recipes, and to know what to do with fish that isn't quite fresh (so just a squeeze of lemon and a drizzle of olive oil a la the modern chef isn't going to make an appetising dish of it), and yet isn't off, but is somewhere in between.

mollythewestie

The Traditional Farmhouse Fare book here:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Traditional-Farmhouse-Fare-Collection-Country/dp/1851524223/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1260283989&sr=8-1
is my current favourite cookery book.

It is a fantastic book for stews/casseroles, using up gluts of veg, using cheap cuts of meat etc. The recipes were sent in by readers to Farmers Weekly magazine. And I have tried around 15 recipes so far and they are all brilliant. It is my first "port of call" when I need a filling, bt cheap meal.

PS. That link shows the price to be £2.99, but I got it for 99p in a cheap book shop, so maybe worth looking around for it.

foxgloves

I like Rose Prince's The New English kitchen'.....she uses the best ingredients in ways which get the most out of them so there's nothing wasted. It's also an interesting book to read if you like cooking. When I first got it, I read it from cover to cover.

salome

I have loads of cookery books as well :-) My lot can't understand why I like looking through them. They think I'm mad lol. I have two of Gill Holcombes books. They are very good. Although one has a few recipes from the other in it. I have quite a few wartime recipe books, mainly the Marguerite Patten Good Food. The Collection is a good one.
I can remember the Farmhouse Cooking series, when it was on the tele :-)
Anyway. Hope you enjoy what ever book you choose jackie_w. Let us know what you end up with :-)