Avigayil Damm

How time flies by so fast! It seems only yesterday that I celebrated the new year of 2009 with a resolution to cook proper food for the whole year. Although I can’t really say that I have done that every single day of the year, I am still proud to say that at least 75% of the dinners we had was self-cooked. Of course the percentage is only calculated from the actual time that we were home (not on holidays).

I must say it has been a very interesting experience, and I don’t plan on stopping anytime soon. So, to celebrate my one year culinary experience – and at the same time take part in the ‘Group Writing Project: 2009 in Review’ hosted by Daniel Scocco on his Daily Blog Tips blog – I decided to list the top ten recipe sources that I have used over the year.

Here they are, with the most used source on the top of the list, working my way down to the least used source.

1. Epicurious: the website ‘for people who love to eat’ is indeed a very useful source of recipes for people who love to eat, like me. I have tried out their pan seared chicken with tarragon butter sauce, sausage and leek soup, Irish soda bread, carrot cake, chocolate cake, and rosemary sauce. I can’t say that I liked all of the results, but I must admit that their recipes are very easy to make and most importantly, the ingredients used are very easy to obtain in my part of the world.
2. Family Circle, Tasty Mince Recipes. Personally I love making anything from minced meat because it’s relatively easy. From this book, I have tried out the beef casserole with parsley crust, paprika meatball (loved it!), pork and veal potato bake, ravioli with creamy sauce (I loved it but decided I would use a ready made dough next time), chicken hotpot (needs some work because it tended to be a bit sour) and chicken rissoles in mushroom sauce.
3. Periplus Mini Cookbooks, Fast Pasta. The Periplus Mini Cookbooks recipes are in general very easy to follow and takes little time. I have many different mini cookbooks from their collection, as you can see from this list. This particular book is loaded with fast and super-fast recipes for all kinds of pasta with all kinds of ingredients. I have tried out their pasta with tuna, lemon and caper sauce, pasta with smoked salmon, pasta with fast tomato sauce (usually paired with parmesan chicken), pasta carbonara with mushroom, and pasta with chicken livers which I vowed never to make it again – but that’s more of a personal taste issue.
4. Periplus Step-by-Step Quick Short Chicken Recipes. Over the years I discovered that I prefer chicken to beef, so when I found this on a book shelf in the store, I just had to make it part of my recipe collection. I have tried out the chicken and mushroom soup (my hubby’s favourite), creamy chicken with tarragon, parsley and parmesan chicken, and chicken gruyere. The last one is a big hit in dinner parties as it’s easy to make but is still a very interesting dish (not just a daily meal).
5. My mom’s recipe collection: I have asked my mom to write down all the recipes of my favourite dish so that I can try them out one by one. So far I have only tried out the (mean and tender) oxtail soup, sambal goreng daging cincang (meatballs in chilli) and opor ayam (chicken in coconut sauce). I will continue to try out the recipes she gave me and make sure they are all posted on my website so you can refer to them here.
6. Women’s Weekly After Work Cookbook. This is also a very easy to follow recipe and made its way into my shopping bag because the recipes have very low demand in terms of efforts. This was very suitable for my hubby and I because we both work. This was before I quit my daily job to become a self-employed, work at home editor/writer/translator and food blogger) I have only tried two of the recipes in this book, but they were definitely to keep because I have used them several times over the year: stir-fried Mexican beef and sausage and bean hotpot.
7. Recipe clippings from Femina Indonesian women magazine. A while back, I subscribed to this magazine and it had a lot of interesting recipes which I collected into one big folder. Unfortunately I have only tried two of the recipes: salmon en croute and black pepper burger.
8. Rachael Ray 365: No Repeats–A Year of Deliciously Different Dinners (A 30-Minute Meal Cookbook). This book was a birthday gift from a friend of mine, but I have only tried one of the recipe so far, and that was the macaroni with cheese. The reason is – prepare for a lame excuse – most of the recipes did not have accompanying pictures. I don’t know why, but I always prefer to collect cookbooks with pictures. And I must tell you, I am not the only one. I know at least one person (a friend) who also has to have a picture to look at when trying out a recipe. Yeah we’re weird.
9. Periplus Mini Cookbooks, Simple Stir-fries. From this particular book, I have many times used the recipe for Chinese beef and asparagus with oyster sauce, but I haven’t tried other recipes yet although they seem very interesting. It will definitely be in my to-do list for next year.
10. Cooks.com: this website has a lot of recipes submitted by users and you’d be amazed at how many different recipes there are for, say, Bearnaise sauce. You can just pick the one you like best or is the easiest one to try out with the ingredients you have at hand.

So there you have it! There are actually plenty of other sources such as my hubby’s and my own inventions, word of mouth, suggestions from friends, recipes on the back of a food item carton box/packaging, etc. There are countless recipes from this source and I can only remember some of them that we use most: fried rice (Indonesian word of mouth heritage recipe), béarnaise sauce, hakkebøf, frikadelle (all three are from Danish word of mouth heritage recipes), and soto ayam (following the recipe from the back of the package).

My resolution for next year is to actually ‘force myself’ to try each and every one of the recipes in the cookbooks that I have, especially since I have very flexible working hours thanks to working for the best boss in the world.

Tags: 2009, cookbooks, recipes, review

December 3rd, 2009 | Tags: 2009, cookbooks, recipes, review
All Categories, Food and drink, Review | 14 Comments »