The All New, All Purpose Joy of Cooking by Irma S. RombauerMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
The bible of American cooking. And a surprisingly good read!
I started paging through this while reading The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook because I had to look up those crazy French sauces and things she kept referring to. Then I found myself reading the whole chapter on sauces and moving on to the bread chapter.
I then started having ideas about making my own bread, and stocked up on flour and yeast. Then suddenly, I got a full time job and all the bread-making plans fizzled. :(
It's dangerous to read this if you're too busy to try out the recipes. Seriously, I actually considered attempting to make my own mayonnaise at one point. I look forward to reading some more chapters of Joy of Cooking next time I'm between jobs.
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It's not the same as what the Joy of Cooking turns out, but watching a friend load up ingredients in his automatic bread maker and push the "start" button had me wondering what the results would be like. In a word: "Yummy!" Honest to goodness it tasted like home-baked bread, which I suppose it was, only we were at a movie while it was mixing, kneading, baking. Dumped out on a plate (there's no other term for this), sliced while still warm, and patted with butter. YUM! I'm heading to the thrift store to check out bread makers; they have them by the dozens.
ReplyDeleteThis is one of those books that everyone I know has in their house, but that I've never actually spent time with. Now that I know it's really so good, I'll have to check it out!
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