Tag Archive: Flour

What Makes A Good Cookbook

Written on August 11, 2013 by in Miscellaneous

What Makes A Good Cookbook

This week #confessyourunpopularopinion was trending on Twitter and here’s mine: On the whole, I hate cookbooks.

For starters they’re clumsier and more limited than looking up recipes online, but that isn’t the real problem. What’s worse is that most don’t actually teach you how to cook. If a cookbook just gives you a long ingredient list followed by an equally long process of steps that keep your nose buried in the book, it’s no good. That’s because you aren’t actually learning how to cook; you’re learning how to follow directions.

A good cookbook shouldn’t just tell you what to make, but also how to make it and why to make it that way. If you start understanding how different ingredients work together in recipes and why to treat them how you do, you can learn to cook just about anything without ever picking up a book over time.

So while I said, “I hate cookbooks,” there are a few I’ve read and swear by that do things the right way. Here are a few of my favorites.

How To Boil Water Cookbook

How To Boil Water is the first cookbook I can remember buying. If you were starting your freshman year of college, this would be Cooking 101. The recipes this book gives are more like tests to make sure you’re reading the words in between and understand  your way around a fully stocked kitchen. It’s a great introduction.

Cooking For Geeks Cookbook

If How To Boil Water is Cooking 101, Cooking For Geeks is the senior honors seminar. It teaches you what to do in the kitchen and explains everything scientifically. There are plenty of recipes but the book’s more about what makes a mousse rather than how to make a mousse so you can go on and feel comfortable creating any recipe you can dream up. It’s a lengthy read, though’; this one’s definitely not for the faint of heart.

Flour, Too Cookbook

Flour Too is a recent favorite. It’s more like your standard cookbook with long ingredient lists and instructions but it does it the right way. In the front you’ll find a lengthy section breaking down cooking vocabulary and ingredients with descriptions and reasons for their use. Having something like that in any cookbook is a great step to learning the hows and whys of the recipes.

So those are my favorites. If you’re interested in cooking facts, techniques, and tips, be sure to follow @Kitchen 101 on Twitter for some 140-character lessons from Russell and myself.

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{Gluten-Free} Flour, Too + Giveaway

Written on August 1, 2013 by in Giveaway

{Gluten-Free} Flour, Too Giveaway

If you’re from the Boston area you’ve probably heard of Joanne Chang-Myer’s Flour. If not, you’re in for a treat.

Flour is a local bakery with 4 cafes in the Boston area. They have all sorts of desserts, pastries, sandwiches, entrees and salads. I went one with a friend who’s also gluten-free and we split one of the most delicious meringues I’ve ever had with huge chunks of dark chocolate inside. Just thinking about it makes me want to go back and get another.

{Gluten-Free} Flour, Too Giveaway Book

Stonyfield offered to send some of their Clean Plate Club members a signed copy of Joanne’s second book, “Flour, Too”, and an extra copy to give away. Flipping through the cookbook I loved the photos, kitchen tips and tricks, and variety. For a cookbook with “flour” in the title, there are plenty of naturally gluten-free recipes from desserts to salads and entrees. It was hard to pick the first recipe to try but I settled on the Vegan Vanilla-Mixed Berry Muffins because the photo was so enticing and it seemed simple enough for a weekday afternoon.

{Gluten-Free} Flour, Too Giveaway Flour

Gluten-free all purpose flour is a great tool for people new to the gluten-free baking scene. Most allow for a 1:1 substitution for all purpose flour in just about any recipe so you can still make all your favorite recipes. I’ve been using the Bob’s Red Mill brand for 3 years now.

I wanted to stick as closely to Joanne’s recipe as possible so I only swapped the regular flour out for gluten-free all purpose flour and soy milk out for fat-free milk(what I had on hand). The muffins came out flavorful and fantastic. Next time I make them, however, I’d probably swap out half of the oil in the recipe(almost 1 cup) for Stonyfield yogurt to lighten them up. 

{Gluten-Free} Flour, Too Giveaway Raw

Giveaway:

Stonyfield has a second copy of Joanne’s book “Flour, Too” to give to a lucky US reader along with some Stonyfield coupons to get cooking. There are several different ways to enter. Please leave a comment for each entry.

  1. Leave a comment with your favorite kitchen swap. Yogurt for oil? Gluten-free flour for regular? Something else?
  2. Like Stonyfield Farm on Facebook
  3. Like The Wannabe Chef on Facebook
  4. Like Flour Bakery + Cafe on Facebook
  5. Tweet “I want to win a copy of Flour, Too from @Stonyfield and @WannabeChefEvan http://wp.me/p18mer-20y”

I’ll leave the contest open for a week and pick a winner on August 8th.

 

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