Cuisant

I love to cook.

The Joy of Cooking is a great cookbook for basic recipes. When I need to know how long to cook squash, how to make basic pancakes, or just to determine what a souffle involves, this is where I look. We have a mini-paper back copy that's throuroughly stained and dog-eared from tons of use.

Gourmet is great inspiration for flashy dishes, and just how to embellish a basic dish. I love that epicurious.com offers a searchable database of Gourmet's recipes with reviews. I generally like to know whether something is good before I spend time making it, and the reviews often offer great additions and tweaks that make dishes even better.

Cooking by Hand is my most recent cookbook obsession. This book makes you want to brine your own olives (insane), and create your own balsamic vinegar which you store in your attic for 20 years. The closest I've come to either of these is making my own yogurt. There is a huge section on meats, butchering, etc, which I just pretend isn't there (because we're vegetarian and the idea of making sausage kills my appetite). But, it's a great read, and makes me even more determined to put in a huge vegetable garden next spring.