"Posted by foodonastump ------------ Wow, dcarch, if there's a book that screams your name, this one is it! Accordingly, I expect it will stir up a lot of controversy. Which all the more makes it perfect for you. ;-) Just from the Amazon review I'd question some ideas, but I'm definitely intrigued. ------- I always forget how to embed hyperlinks, but adding a link at the bottom of a post is a fairly mindless procedure." If there is a Nobel Price to be given in the cooking world, Nathan Myhrvold should be the one to get it. He has contributed so many revolutionery ideas in the art and science of cooking. No. Don't waste your time and money to buy his book, if all you are interested in is more recipes. What a crazy brain this guy has! I absultely urge everyone, expecially if you have children or grandchildren, to look him up in YouTube and see him in action. What this country needs is more people as creative as he is. I have corresponded with him in another WEB site. He is a geek with a great sense of humor also. Regarding links. I admit I have been lazy. I post in a few other forums. Each one has a different way of doing things. I just don't bother trying to remember. Also, sometimes I post from different locations and I don't always have my files with me. Please check out this web site: http://modernistcuisine.com/ dcarch

As usual, I find Rachelellen's post full of wisdom. It gives me some of the guidance I want. Cooking the same cuisine (not the same dishes) for one week straight would be no hardship at all for me. When I returned from a one week trip to Italy I cooked nothing but northern Italian food for at least three weeks. There was nothing monotonous about it. That experience has faded. I need another trip to Italy for a refresher course. I don't see the need to limit the experiment to a single cookbook, although that could be an effective way to do it, given the right book. Books I would recommend are: Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art by Shizuo Tsuji The Key to Chinese Cooking by Irene Kuo Classic Indian Cooking by Julie Sahni The Cuisines of Mexico by Diana Kennedy These books are similar in approach and format although about different cuisines and by different authors. They provide a solid foundation for cooking each cuisine. Again, I say that switching to another ethnic cuisine for an extended period of time is a fine idea. Those for whom that is their native cuisine eat it daily year after year don't they? Jim

I am not a vegetarian, but love vegetables, grains and legumes and am as happy eating vegetarian dishes as meat dishes. I love the two cookbooks produced by the owners of Greens restaurant in San Francisco, titled, "The Greens Cookbook" and "Fields of Greens". They are wonderful books full of recipes delicious to long time vegetarians as well as dabblers or outright omnivores. They are written with a true appreciation for variety and balance, using ingredients that almost everyone would be familiar with. A few years ago, I began to teach myself how to cook the foods of India, and found a wonderful book called, "Dakshin..Vegetarian Cuisine From South India" which is a wonderful introduction to a cuisine and method of eating that is vastly different from what most of us are accustomed to, but quite delicious and satisfying. Be warned that if you are unaccustomed to eating spicy hot food, as in food prepared with chili peppers, you should probably cut down the amounts that are listed in the recipes. Also, you will be using many spices that you might be unfamiliar with and might be hard to find if you don't have a local Indian grocery store. However, there are many sources on line. The cuisine also makes ample use of Curry Leaves, which are an herb that really has nothing to do with what we think of as curry. They are a pungent, strongly flavored tree-leaf that nothing can really substitute for. In fact, the first time I bought some, I thought they smelled like a mix of B.O. and old socks. But cooked into food, they lend a wonderful depth of flavor. Most cookbooks will tell you to use cilantro instead, which is a completely different flavor, but compatible to most recipes that call for Curry Leaves. Again, you can find them in Indian grocery stores. They last quite a long time in the refrigerator, and I have had some success freezing them. Dried Curry Leaves aren't worth the bother.

Oh, great! You have a picture!! That helps! That looks like the Rösle, which is part of their whole rail system. (Note, the price doesn't include the rail.) There are a lot of accessories that can hang on that rail, as well. What I like about that, for a cookbook, is that you can move the book to where you want it. The rail can be much longer, and span your whole backsplash. OTOH, the acrylic kind I have costs orders of magnitude less and holds large books. The only problem with most covered cookbook holders like this is that you have to take the book out to turn the page. The Clear Solutions one has a hinged cover so that you can turn the page more easily, but costs four times as much (still many times less than the Rösle).