A slave to cookery books or a free spirit?

I treated myself to 'The little Paris' cookbook and love just browsing through it at the moment. I looked round my tiny kitchen after seeing Rachel's and started sorting out and getting rid of clutter! haven't begun to cook anything yet but have made a list of possible recipes to get me going.

I use recipes for cakes but main courses come out my head/imagination, well actually I rarely cook nowadays as I had a broken ankle and DH had to learn. When I got better he asked me when I was going to start cooking again and I said "well I did the first 43 years ..........................." Now he does it all unless we have visitors and he even does that sometimes.

Now I would like to learn sugarcraft but there is nowhere near here to learn. Tomorrow I'm off to Surbiton where there is a great shop and also hoping that my birthday will bring some books on the subject. If anyone knows of (and can recommend) a full day or more residential course please let me know

DD1 loves Maddar Jaffrey's curry bible too, charlotta. Time is the key, as you say, but DD finds it very clear and easy to follow. As she said of the last curry she made: it was one of those three hours to make and five minutes to eat recipes.

I know, I know. But really we have big problem getting rid of books which people have brought in because cookery books are bought nice and new and shiny for Xmas presents and really no one buys them in a charity shop. I am a good cook and being pedantic always follow the recipie. I have had lunches with friends who make up their own and add this and that and all I can say is
very often they would have been better advised to keep to what the expert wrote down.
Usually there are only one or two good recipies in the book but the exeption to this is Maddar Jaffrey. I learned to mix my own curry from her book and have made lots of her dishes and they turn out very well, very tasty, but there again not easy. You need time for preparation.

I love reading cookery books and do follow some recipes but like most of you often just bung things in. I know you can look things up on line and sometimes do BUT there is nothing like having the book there to see the wonderful photos and be able to go back and fore. I have just bought the Rachel Khoo book and find a lot of the extra info in there great. She must be a tidy cook who is always washing up with the menus she produces in that tiny kitchen!

I rather agree with you, Elegran.

Charlotta You are a vandal. Someone will find a vital page missing and be unable to make the best recipe in the book.

Apparently, on average, people cook only 2–4 recipes out of any single cookbook. I reckon you can usually tell which ones because of the smears of tomato purée and/or splashes of red wine.

Are these celebrity cooks having a laugh? Just read the weekend Telegraph supplement and there are 5 pages on Mary McCartney's new book. The recipes featured are sphagetti with courgettes, cheese quiche ( with long details about how to make shortcrust pastry), banana muffins and.....eggy bread!!!!The recipes are more exciting in my daughter's ancient copy of Usbornes First Cookbook(1992)

I work in a charity shop and we have a lot of Cook books. I am now over the buying cookery books phase as I feel I could write my own. What I do though is, browse through if there's nothing doing and if I come across a really different recipe in a cookery book, I tear the page out when nobody's looking and take it home. I have some excellent dishes that way as I can spot the best recipe in the book and don't need the rest to put me off cooking altogether.

Then I feel guilty because I was brought up not to treat books like that.
I know that the people who buy the book will only read though it and cook nothing.
My favourite recipe got that way out of a Tuscany cookery book was rabbit and black olives. A ravishing dish. Nigella could have cooked it.

Love it! Should we revive the "What's for dinner" thread?

Oh yes, mamie, that's why I've kept the best. I love reading Nigella, and agree with you about Jane Grigson too. But for something you've eaten somewhere, or when a thought strikes, online is excellent.

I also have one of those recipe boxes, with recipes from friends and family, started by DD for my 69 th birthday. She had collected them from everywhere and everyone, all over the world. DH's contribution is there (He does NOT cook, and this is result of the odd times I've had to live away during the week. It bears no resemblance to my cooking!)

"Most food is yellow" (He's thinking instant, freezer stuff)
"Most food cooks at gas mark 5 if you leave it long enough."
"put yellow food on tray, put into oven at gas mark 5 and eventually it will be cooked. Eat."
"Alternatively, go to the Mess."

I agree there is a lot on line Ariadne, but my list of favourites above are definitely cookery writers rather than just collections of recipes - though of course, there are recipes in their books as well. I think if you read, for example, Jane Grigson on charcuterie, then you understand the principles behind the recipes much better.

I have found that I don't need the shelves full of cookery books, so have only kept Delia, Nigella and one or two others. If I want a recipe, they are all on line and you pick up other interesting stuff as you go!

I agreeMamie I feel really ill whenever the current trend for bone marrow rears its ugly head! The thing is, I love cooking and am quite good at it but feel a bit of a fraud when I am praised!

I don't think you should feel blue about that Kitty. I think great cookery writers have spent years studying and getting things right, why should we feel we have to invent things? I don't regard it as being a "slave" to recipes at all, just having respect for cookery writers and their expertise. When you look at the recipes of the TV chefs you very often recognise the origin of the recipes elsewhere. As for some of the inventions on TV cookery competitions - a bit more honest cooking and a bit less innovation wouldn't go amiss IMHO.

I have shelves and shelves of cookery books (Nigel Slater being a favourite) and tottering piles of ripped out recipes and would have thought I was a slave to a recipe. I have noticed though that, when I copy a recipe for a friend or my daughters, I have so many alterations to put in that it is hardly the same in any respect.

My father was a brilliant, instinctive cook as was his mother but my Mum was quite pedestrian. I suspect I take after Mum but wish I was more like my Dad. Two of our daughters can through things together but the third is more like me and needs a base point.

I tend to use books, but vary the recipes a bit sometimes. My favourites are Jane Grigson (not Sophie) for English and Northern French, Madhur Jaffrey for Indian food, Claudia Roden for Mediterranean and Middle Eastern, Marcella Hazan for Italian and Tamasin Day-Lewis for good everyday and dinner party food. I like the early Rick Stein books for fish.

I'm a retired Food Technology teacher and one of my favourite lessons was going through 'one pot' main course recipes with yr 9s so they could substitute ingredients for those that might be too expensive, difficult to source, take too long to cook, tricky to prepare etc., etc. They used to come up with some brilliant (and some not so brilliant) suggestions and we would cook the best modified recipes. I hope it stands them all in good stead when they are cooking for themselves....on a budget!

Don't need a cookery book for cheese sandwich/cheese on toast/toast/cheese and tomato sandwich........

I am definitely bit of this bit of that but agree with bags knowing basic recipes and how things go together helps and then improvise.

I have lots of cookery books and sometimes follow a recipe and sometimes don't. Like Bags I think a basic understanding of how ingredients work is a help, but I don't mind a bit of experimentation. The Wonderful Man is much more adventurous in the kitchen than I am though and is prepared to eat all sorts of odd combinations - just because the food is there. Anyone for a rice pudding sandwich? (Yes, honestly; he once took rice pudding sandwiches to work for his lunch. )

DH buys cookery books and tries a few recipes out of them. Then I make the same dishes without the recipe book and substituting other ingredients where and when. He always says my versions taste better then his. Crafty? But I think it's more to do with practice and cooking from first principles (understanding how ingredients work).

It's Nigella most of the time for me though I've just bought the Rachel Khoo cook book; it seems a bit time consuming for me though. I've got Jamie Oliver's book and again it's more time consuming than Nigella whose dishes always seem to turn out fine and are easy to do - and DH enjoys them.

Well, I cook because I like eating and have always been an adventorous eater. I am always cutting recipes out of newspapers and magazines - and trying them, but I substitute or leave out any ingredient I do not like, or cannotget or cannot be bothered to get and no matter what the recipe says about frying this, putting it aside then frying that or adding something later I tend to just put everything in one pan/casserole and fry/simmer/bake as required.

It all usually turns out alright and DH rarely leaves anything on his plate so he is happy and generally speaking I thoroughly enjoy my experiments.