I recently bought a new cook book - Joshua McFadden’s Grains for Every Season. I was ecstatic to get it and get it home. His previous cookbook Six Seasons - A New Way with Vegetables, is an absolute joy to own. The chapters are straightforward and focus on seasons and the vegetables that are fresh at that time. It’s well thought out and the recipes are interesting and fun - it’s a book that continues to give.

There is something special about a cookbook. Maybe in some of the same ways an actual book is different from reading on a screen. You can actually flip the pages and it’s not just black text on a bright white screen. But still, cookbooks are different. You don’t often go back to a novel or nonfiction paperback. You go back to cookbooks though. Usually, if they are any good, you go back many many times. At least I do. A good cookbook is always a joy to return to because it always has something to offer. Recipes that never interested me are suddenly worth trying and old recipes you’ve made dozens of times can be tweaked depending on my mood or ingredients I have. A good cookbook can become like an old friend. New and familiar at the same time.

Growing up before the internet, cookbooks and magazines were the only way to get recipes. My mom has a scrapbook of recipes clipped from newspapers which is so cute. These days though, it’s so easy to open a laptop and search online which I adore doing. Especially when I want to find something specific to cook for dinner or I have an ingredient I need to use up.

It’s not uncommon that I browse recipes online just for fun but they tend to be more useful when I have a meal or ingredient in mind that I can focus my search on.

My go to websites for trusted recipes are:

Bon Appetit - I love the entire Test Kitchen team. Bon Appetit is my first stop when I want specifics on how to make something

Smitten Kitchen - This was one of the first food blogs I started following regularly and still regularly consult after Bon Appetit

There are other times though, when I prefer a slow approach. When I am not sure what I want to make - I just know that I want to spend time in the kitchen. That’s when I go to my cookbooks. I don’t actually own that many - a total of 12 - 15 of them. I think there’s something nice about limiting my options and not having endless tabs open - just one book at a time and no screens.

A cookbook from a good chef is a great place to look for inspiration no matter how many times you’ve used it - the recipes become interesting jumping off points for new meals.

So here’s a short list of a few of my favourite cookbooks. I’ve learned a lot from these books and I encourage you to revisit some old cookbooks you might have for new inspo.

Kitchen By Michelle Cranston
I bought this book when I was in university at a book sale in the forum of the main campus building. At the time I just really loved the styling and the photos more than anything. I love when there is a photo for each recipe. It’s important to see the finished product when deciding on the quality of a recipe. It wasn’t until much later that I realised how useful this book would be. Kitchen is full of ‘classics’ - Classic roasts, classic salad dressings, classic dumpling fillings. Each chapter is about kitchen basics: vegetables, breakfast, lunch, grains and the recipes range from familiar to completely unique. I’ve cooked from this book hundreds of times and with over 100 beautiful pages, it worth revisiting every time I am curious about what to make

1001 Foods to Die For
This book is over 1000 pages and doesn’t actually have that many recipes. It’s about foods from different parts of the world. I love reading about the origins and history of meals and specific types of foods. For example - there is a page describing fortune cookies; no recipe, just an explainer about their origin and popularity in North America. The book is filled with these random foods that I’ve never heard of and love learning about

Six Seasons: A New Way With Vegetables
This has become my all time favourite cookbook. As I mentioned above, it is a joy to browse and also to read. Yes, read. I read these recipes like paragraphs in a novel. I mean, it’s a smart thing to do when you’re about to cook anything from a recipe. Read the whole thing through once at least to know what is coming next etc. This book is educational, personal and inspiring. Written by someone who’s passionate about food and the soil and earth that produces so many of the things we love to eat

Thug Kitchen
I bought this book on a whim because I couldn’t believe how much swearing was included in the recipes. The authors went out of their way to use fuck as much as possible and I loved it. It wasn’t until I got home that I realized it was entirely vegan! I was heartbroken to be honest because I am not fully on board with the vegan ideology but this book at the very least changed my mind about the flavours you could enjoy via meatless and non-dairy meals. It became a book I would regularly cook from and again, it was so much fucking fun to read

These are just a few of the cookbooks I own and love going back to again and again. Writing for this post made me think back to all the memories I have with these books. When I got them, my excitement at the recipes and pictures. Sharing meals I made and lending them out to friends. These books are like real people to me. There special moments and good times between us. I don’t think I will add to the collection that often though. The internet provides an endless source of recipes and inspiration. And also, I still get a lot of inspiration from the few books I do own. Of course if money and space weren’t an issue I would likely buy quite a few more because I am madly in love with many chefs and would love to read about and see the food they create but sadly that’s not an option.

I will be content with the few I have right now and as I just bought Grains for Every Season that is centred around a topic I know almost nothing about, my excitement is still high and the book is entirely unexplored. I can’t wait!