Recommendations

Favorite Cookbooks

• The Mediterranean Dish. Suzy’s work is excellent and approachable. I also just love this style of food.
• Zahav Home. These guys own Israeli restaurants in Philly and spent the pandemic basically riffing on “okay, how do I make all this stuff in a home kitchen with little kids running around?”
• Rick Bayless. Mexican Everyday and More Mexican Everyday. Rick reconstructs labor-intensive recipes to work in home kitchens. The salsas rock. I’m also a big fan of his “theory of feasting”—you’ve got your everyday dishes and your regularly scheduled indulgences full of big roasts etc. This is where the standard American diet went wrong, we turned too many indulgences into daily habits, people need balance. As long as balance is “more tacos” I’m down.
• Make It Japanese. Pairs well with the website Just One Cookbook.
• Essentials of French Cuisine. I’m amazed with almost everything that’s come out of here.
• Les Hals. Non-frills Bistro cooking with Anthony Bourdain’s attitude.
• The Indian Cooking Course. I love Indian food. What’s great about this book is how approachable it is. Will you make your own naan without a tandori oven? No, but I’m pretty damn happy with my lamb and chicken curries.
• Maydan. From the excellent DC restaurant. This is the other secret behind my mezze game. Also, I really need a grill now. For kebabs.
• Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking. This is the Italian cookbook. There’s few photos, but the writing is so clear that it doesn’t really matter. Besides, Italian food is about taste, not appearance, and you can always get a second opinion via YouTube.
• The Woks of Life. Having covered all the major culinary cultures except for one, I obviously needed a wok. It’s early days, but the book and website are both excellent.

You can also never go wrong with Jose Andres or Samin Nosrat.

Podcasts, Audiobooks about Food and Cooking

Which are great things to listen to while, well, cooking. Just pause when you’re actually doing stuff.

• Gastropod, food science and history.
• The Sporkful. Like gastropod if it was about people rather than science.
• The Land of Desire was a one-woman French history podcast. Her food episodes are excellent and there are a lot of them.
• A Very Thorough Examination. Two identical twin brothers (who are doctors) argue about health in the most entertaining dive into food and health you’ll ever find. There’s a related series on chickens called Fed.
• Kitchen Confidential is just fun.
• Heat and Dirt are fun. I audiobooked both of these while cooking.

Gear, toys, and gizmos

1. Get the biggest bamboo cutting board you can find. Bamboo is cheap, and supposedly has anti-bacterial properties. Mostly I just want a big chopping space. Keep a few plastic ones for meat since you can’t put this in the dishwasher.
2. Mercer Genesis is the most popular knife for culinary school. It’s got an excellent grip (which was very important, this followed an abject lesson in slippery knives). I figured anything that can survive nonstop professional use is more than good enough for a home kitchen. I have a Chef’s knife, Santoku, bread, carving, utility knife, and a pair of sheers (which come apart for easy washing).
3. Joyce Chen Wok as recommended by the Woks of Life. This thing is awesome.
4. You need a kitchen scale. Any kitchen scale. This one is fine.
5. If you want to make fresh pasta, the Atlas is the canonical pasta machine.
   • We upgraded from a cheaper one of the same design and it actually makes a big difference. I’m not sure why, but the first first batch of noodle-dough to crank out of it was more solid, more precise, and more consistent.
   • Do not buy an electric extruder. They’re stupid and more work to clean than it takes to make the pasta by hand.
   • Also surpringly useful: a big wide Italian style pan for pasta. Oxo lives up to the hype.
6. Plug in meat thermometer. You know how there’s like a 1 minute window during which the meat comes out perfect, and before that its raw, and after that its overcooked? Pick a temperature (usually a little below desired doneness since it will continue to cook after you take it out of the oven), leave the probe in, and it will beep like crazy the moment you hit that window. Especially useful when you’re making something new and don’t have the timing down.
7. Dutch ovens are magic. Cast iron deserves the hype (I like Victoria, it’s made in Columbia and has a smoother finish).

Other Notes

Catering companies have low margins but need stuff that will stand up to abuse. This is where we get a lot of plates and flatware for a fraction of the consumer retail prices.

The same trick works for pots and pans. They won’t look fancy but if you want a practical workhorse webstraunt store is full of highly-rated stuff. Also if you ever needed a 50lb bag of flour they’ve got you covered (someone I know did this during during the great pandemic flour shortage).