Sweet and Sour Spectator

“Wolfgang Puck’s Modern French Cooking for the American Kitchen” which was Puck’s first book written before he morphed into a food empire. It contains uber-delicious dishes based on classic French technique and piles of puff pastry. Orson Welles is quoted on the back cover as an admiring the artistry of Puck and his creations, and a picture of the middle aged Welles provides ample evidence of this.

My favorite cookbook is The Way To Cook, by Julia Child. I own hundred's of cookbooks, but this is the one that really taught me how to cook. It is witty, well written and comprehensive. Not since The Goldberg Variations has there been a better riff on theme and variations, as Julia teaches by presenting a master recipe and then explains how it can be varied to produce related but different dishes. It is the best cookbook by our best cookbook author of the 1970s and 80s.

Bouchon by Thomas Keller, is both a beautiful and instructive book, teaching that attention to detail really does matter, a lesson exemplified by the recipe for veal stock that takes about 72 hours to execute. The results are worth every hour.

Sauces – Classical and Contemporary Sauce Making by James Peterson is the standard reference book on sauces. No serious cook should be without it... though I suspect Alice Waters might disagree with that assessment.

Taste Pure and Simple by Michael Nischan is the cookbook that most successfully turned the impulse for healthy cooking into delicious food. It is noteworthy for its original ideas, including the use of vegetable juices for thickening sauces.

And finally, The New Spanish Table by Anya von Bremzen must be included, as it is leading us into the future. Modern Spanish cuisine is full of the most amazing creativity, and tastes. Though Bremzen’s book does not cover Ferrán Adrià's technique for spherification, it does have two, count them, two! recipes using the modern miracle ingredients of chocolate, olive oil and flaky salt.