cookbooks

Reviewed by Bobbie Leigh This year’s cookbooks reflect new flavors and priorities, the basics and beyond. The big surprise and most welcome is a massive, totally updated  JOY OF COOKING by John Becker and Megan Scott.  The first Joy was published in 1931 and rapidly became the home cook’s bible.

  By Bobbie Leigh Even if you are addicted to celebrity cooking shows or online advice from Mark Bittman or Melissa Clark, these cookbooks will add to your repertoire and come in handy when you are “shopping” in your fridge to see what’s around. Each one promises to teach you

Reviewed by Bobbie Leigh Home cooks have a bonanza  to choose from this holiday season.  Some  gravitate towards the anthropological  while others  are  strong on  the how and  what to cook.  All are entertaining reading, not guaranteed, but likely to crank up your skills and repertoire to PhD level. Here’s

By Bobbie Leigh With  so many recipes online,  who is buying  cookbooks?  There is no reliable answer, but for all the home cooks who clip recipes from newspapers. print them from the web and file them away somewhere,  a cookbook you can pull off a shelf and refer to easily 

Reviewed by Bobbie Leigh Some books deserve to get gritty with spills and smudges of oil and parmesan cheese. But that is not the case with Colman Andrews’ new THE COUNTRY COOKING OF ITALY (Chronicle Books).  It is door-stop big and glossy. Crammed with  photographs. It could easily tempt you