ookbooks are addictive. Reading them is usually more fun (and more practical) than cooking from them. The illustrations are gorgeous, sometimes reaching what one wag calls "food porn" (it's as airbrushed and unreal as the other kind).
But as fun as those cookbooks were to read, I never really used them; they had expensive ingredients I didn't know how to work with, or techniques that never seemed to be fully explained, or required exotic pieces of equipment I didn't have and couldn't afford. Mostly, they just plain didn't help me figure out what to cook day-to-day. I had shelves of them, most of them gathering dust unused, until I figured out what most experienced cooks already know: You need a few general reference works and the rest is, you should excuse the term, gravy.

These are the three cookbooks I turn to daily for everything from the timing of a roast to making chutney. None of them are perfect; all fill in the gaps of the others.

"How to Cook Everything: Simple Recipes for Great Food"--Mark Bittman [1]

I used to say that if you could only have one cookbook, "Joy of Cooking" was the way to go. I've changed my mind. Mark Bittman has achieved cookbook nirvana with this enormous and enormously valuable book. What makes it so great is that it really does give you pretty clear directions on how to cook just about everything--and if your specific ingredient isn't covered, you can extrapolate from what's here. Techniques are covered thoroughly, with illustrations (better ones than JoC). Once you've mastered a basic recipe he gives you several variations, ideas and jumping-off points to create your own recipes. Metaphorically speaking, he doesn't give you the fish, he teaches you to fish. A fearless and thorough study of Bittman will turn even the most cooking-challenged person into a competent, even creative, cook.

"The New Joy of Cooking" [2]

"JoC" remains about as complete as an American cookbook can get and still fit on the shelf. Beginning cooks can't do without it, and experts find it a handy reference. The New "JoC" features expanded sections for such rediscovered arts as breadmaking, and new sections for pasta and noodles, grains and beans, and more. Comparing "JoC" with "Everything," "Everything" is like the creative friend you have who can show you 2 dozen amazing things to do with hamburger, while "JoC" is like your home ec teacher: Just the facts, ma'am. Nutritional breakdowns, equivalents, explanations of cooking terms, information on basic ingredients--this book is a life-saver in the kitchen and is a terrific gift for the new homemaker in your life. It's like home cooking--nothing fancy, but you'd miss it if you couldn't have it.

"The New Laurel's Kitchen"--Carol Flinders, Laurel Robertson and Brian Ruppenthal [3]

Not every recipe here is a winner; some of them have that late '70s-early '80s earnestly leaden health food quality about them that makes them more useful as doorstops than dinner. But to the beginning whole foods cook, this book speaks volumes. The introductory essay on the real value of homemaking by Carol Flinders (an amazing writer on the spiritual lives of women as well) is worth the price of the book alone, and I have read and re-read it so much that my decade-plus-old copy is nearly in tatters. That essay turned my thinking around on the subject of staying home and is a major inspiration for this site. It is a life-changing book (though it never did convince me to give up animal products--I think it's the Slav in me that can't give up a good sausage).

Runners-Up

"Lorna Sass' Complete Vegetarian Kitchen" [4]

Actually, I have an out-of-print Sass cookbook called "Recipes from an Ecological Kitchen" that I use, but this is a terrific replacement for it. Lorna Sass is a thoroughly modern whole foods cook; she knows how to get the most out of her ingredients, her fare is never leaden, and her vegetarian cuisine does not rely on dairy products for flavor. In fact, she is the best vegan (no meat, no dairy) cookbook author out there. But you don't have to be vegan to appreciate her. This is just darn good food.

"Good Cheap Food"--Miriam Ungerer [5]

Miriam Ungerer is just a joy to read. The food here isn't necessarily all that cheap (though it's hardly costly). She just gets you thinking about food and cooking in a certain way; you'll find yourself looking at ingredients with a more critical eye, meaning not that you'll reject them, but that you'll start weighing all the possibilities inherent in a cup of rice or an egg. A book not just to cook from but to sit down and actually read.

Not Really a Cookbook, But You Should Read It Anyway

"The Art of Eating"--MFK Fisher [6]

Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher was one of the great nonfiction writers of the 20th century. That she chose to write mainly about food caused her to be taken perhaps less seriously than she should have been. Much of what I know about living well, let alone food and cooking, I learned from Mrs Fisher, and I would give my eye teeth to have met her before she passed on a few years ago. There is a saying that we have written round our dining room table (one of many, actually): "It is at table that everything happens." A more apt description of Mrs Fisher would be hard to find. She takes as her subject food and how it triggers our emotions, our memories; her long and amazingly full life (covered only in its first half here) she chooses to explore using food and eating as her touchstone. This is a collection of her five best books on food. It can be read over and over and it never becomes tiresome, and in fact I have gone through three copies. Never lend it out, for you will never get it back. Oh yes, and there are recipes scattered throughout it as well, some quite astonishing either in ingredients, simplicity or setting.