The Best Cookbooks for Beginner Home Cooks

If you are looking for some cooking inspiration this weekend, look no further than these books curated by the Bravojoy review team.

Small Victories by Julia Turshen

This is a terrific book for anyone who wants to approach the seemingly monumental cooking task by breaking the process down into bite-size pieces; as its title implies, Turshen is a master of achievable recipes without being mundane. Her book’s recipes are organized into lessons designed for self-empowerment, with tips for spinning them off to make them your own. In Turshen’s hands, even the task of making homemade gravlax seems eminently doable, a small victory in and of itself.

Baking Illustrated by the Editors of Cook’s Illustrated

If cooking is daunting for beginners, then baking tends to resemble a locked black box full of fear and abject failure. But this very comprehensive — and homey — tome makes a winning case for thinking of baking as the simple byproduct of trial and error, as, uh, illustrated by the lengthy prologues that explain precisely how the editors perfected each recipe. Step-by-step illustrations of everything from chopping nuts to cutting out rounds of parchment for lining cake pans provide extra reassurance, while the recipes themselves — blueberry muffins, glazed lemon cookies, focaccia — prize simplicity over showiness.

Barefoot Contessa Family Style: Easy Ideas and Recipes That Make Everyone Feel Like Family by Ina Garten

Ina Garten’s appeal has always lived at the intersection of classy and comforting, a combination that makes many of her books ideal for any cook looking for something simple but with a little zhuzh. This book is a sound choice for the beginner confronted with the spectre of entertaining: large-format recipes like rib roast, saffron risotto, and five-cheese penne offer satisfying, unfussy solutions to the problem of how to feed people and feed them well.

For more great cooking reads and eBooks, check out Bravojoy.

Make great recipes from these great cookbooks

Here are some great cookbooks from the Bravojoy review team.

“Momofuku,” by David Chang and Peter Meehan (2009)

For many accomplished restaurant chefs, authoring a cookbook is just another checkbox on the to-do list of culinary celebrities, which fit in after headlining a charity auction but before doing a stint on reality TV. Accordingly, countless celebrity-chef cookbooks consist of little more than dinner-party recipes sprinkled with pleasantly superficial biography. David Chang, whose Momofuku restaurants blew up American restaurant culture and then rebuilt it again in a decidedly hipper, more global, more postmodern form, did something similarly upending with his Momofuku book. Co-written with Peter Meehan, who later became Chang’s collaborator on the now-defunct food magazine Lucky Peach, the book is sometimes brilliantly cookable—see the dazzlingly effective method cast-iron ribeye, or the near-instant ginger-scallion sauce, which tastes good on almost anything. Other times, by design, it is impossible, outlining finicky and complicated recipes that are best suited for a brigade of swaggering line cooks. (I love the headline for the frozen foie-gras torchon, which advices you not to make the dish.) Throughout the volume, Chang spends time grappling with what was, at the time, the central drama of his career: initially, the proud outsider, devoted to rejecting the restaurant world’s stodgy establishment, Momofuku’s culinary subversion was so forceful (and so appealing) that it became an establishment of its own.

“Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking,” by Nathan Myhrvold, Chris Young, and Maxime Bilet (2011)

The molecular-gastronomy movement was in full swing in 2011—you could hardly snap a napkin in a top-tier restaurant without hitting a specified cocktail and disrupting a stabilized emulsion or two. Into the haze of edible smoke thudded Nathan Myhrvold’s five-volume, 2,438-page, several-hundred-dollar magnum opus, the result of three years of testing in a full-time, fully staffed research kitchen. (Myhrvold, a technologist and former Microsoft C.T.O.has a habit of professionalizing his extracurricular interests.) “Modernist Cuisine” strapped turbo boosters to the slow, iterative experiments that had been happening in restaurant kitchens, delivering hundreds of ideas, models, and scientific answers on a scale that had been previously unthinkable. (For those of more modest culinary means, there’s also the companion volume “Modernist Cuisine at Home.”) Curiously, almost as soon as the book landed, high-end chefs’ attention moved elsewhere—the mad-scientist era of gels and foams gave way to the more anthropological, emotional sense-of-place cooking spearheaded by chefs like René Redzepi, of Noma. “Modernist Cuisine,” it seems, had explored its subject so comprehensively that there was little ground left to cover.

“Zahav: A World of Israeli Cooking,” by Michael Solomonov and Steven Cook (2015)

This book isn’t responsible for the new trendiness of Middle Eastern food—that honor belongs, arguably, to the collected works of Yotam Ottolenghi and his artful deployment of pomegranate seeds and tahini. But, in my mind, Ottolenghi’s books make better sources of inspiration than instruction or learning. For the latter, there’s Michael Solomonov. “Zahav,” like “Momofuku,” is a restaurant cookbook that avoids the clichés of restaurant cookbooks—it’s based on the menu of Solomonov’s Philadelphia restaurant of the same name, where the kitchen specializes in what he calls “modern Israeli cuisine,” a patchwork of Levantine, Maghrebi, Persian, Egyptian, Yemeni, and Eastern European influences. The book goes both deep (into Solomonov’s own life story, marked by significant loss) and broad (addressing the cultural and political complexities of considering Israel as a culinary entity). It’s also a patient and encouraging guide to Solomonov’s dazzling recipes. It is worth the price of entry for almost any single chapter alone, especially those covering Solomonov’s magnificent salatim (dips, salads, and other small vegetable plates) and his approach to open-fire grilling.

For more great cooking books and reviews, check out Bravojoy.

The Basic Cooking Techniques Beginners Should Learn

If you’re a beginner in the kitchen, it can be a bit overwhelming knowing where to start. But, don’t panic, there are a few simple things to learn that can be used as the basis for a vast array of dishes. Learning these basic techniques will give you a good foundation of knowledge, and mean you can begin cooking delicious crowd-pleasers in no time.

Chopping & Frying An Onion

Fried onion is the starting point to countless dishes - from pasta to casseroles to omelettes. Once you’ve learned to chop an onion, you’ll be able to apply the same technique to chopping up other veg. Quick tip: when frying, add a pinch of salt at the beginning as this helps to draw out the moisture in the onions and prevent them from burning.

Béchamel Sauce

A basic white sauce comprises of a roux, made from butter and flour, and milk. Once you’ve got this mastered, you can get creative. Add a little stock in the place of milk and you’ve got a delicious gravy for traditional pie: or add cheese and a little English mustard and you have a divine mac & cheese sauce - and the list goes on.

Boiling an Egg

It sounds simple, but you’d be surprised at how many people struggle with this task. Everyone has their own methods depending on the softness of egg they desire, but this is the most straightforward. For soft boiled eggs, bring a pan of water to the boil and gently lower your egg in with a slotted spoon. Remove after 4-5 mins for the perfect soft, gooey yolk. For a hard-boiled egg, cover the egg with cold water, bring to the boil and simmer for 10-12 mins. Once the time is up, plunge the egg into cold water to prevent the yolk from going gray. Quick tip: adding a splash of vinegar helps protect the shell from cracking.

Feed your love of cooking with a book all about food: visit www.bravojoy.com to find a new delicious read to inspire and instruct you in the kitchen today.

Send Your Burgers Over The Top With These Unexpected Toppings

Everyone has their secret for the best burger, from the meat they use right down to the bun. We’re not saying these topping ideas will make your burger the best, but then again, we’re not saying they won’t.

Avocado and feta. The perfect pairing on their own, but oh do delectably delicious when added atop your freshly cooked burger!

Salsa and Monterey Jack cheese. For a spicy southwest kick to your burger, it’s hard to go wrong with this fantastic combination.

Bleu cheese and BBQ sauce. For a different kind of kick, be sure to bust out the bleu cheese! BBQ sauce will complement it quite nicely and create a burger experience you won’t soon forget.

Pineapple and bacon. How you feel about Hawaiian pizza may just determine how you feel about this burger topping combination, but fans of Hawaiian pizza will kick themselves for never having tried it before and may never be able to go back to something else!

Granny Smith apples, brie, and honey mustard. Apples on a burger? Oh yes! And the tartness of Granny Smith apples blends perfectly with the creaminess of brie and the tangy honey mustard.

Guacamole. All on its own, guacamole makes for a great topping to any burger. Add the cheese of your choice if you prefer, and a strip or two of bacon wouldn’t be the worst either!

Looking for some mouth-watering reads? Visit our online library at www.bravojoy.com for a wide variety of ebooks, audiobooks, music, and more. Accessible anytime, anywhere, from your favorite devices.

Everyday Food Hacks You’ll Love

Here are three great food hacks we know you’ll love!

Keep taco shells from breaking with melted cheese. We all love taco night, but unless you’re a fan of soft shell there’s often some frustration involved when those cracked shells lead to huge messes. Next time, try sprinkling some cheese in the taco first and melting it in the oven, the cheese will add some strength to the shell and make that taco easier to eat!

Keep cake moist with slices of bread. It’s always great to cut into a large cake, be it for birthdays, family gatherings, or just because! But odds are you might not finish that cake in one sitting, and the exposed sides will get stale in short order. Bread to the rescue! Simply cover any exposed side of the cake with slices of bread to keep the whole cake from drying out.

Wrap banana crowns to keep them from browning. It seems like bananas can brown in a matter of minutes, especially during the summer. But if you’d prefer to eat them fresh rather than make another batch of banana bread, wrap the top of the stems of your next batch of bananas in plastic wrap and they’ll keep from browning for an extra couple of days.

Looking for some food related reads? Visit our online library at www.bravojoy.com for a wide variety of ebooks, audiobooks, music, and more. Accessible anytime, anywhere, from your favorite devices.

Delicious Ways to Use Up Old Bananas

It happens to the best of us, you definitely planned on eating those bananas but as soon as they started to brown they just became less and less appealing, and now you’re stuck with the prospect of yet another loaf of banana bread. Worry not! Here are three delicious ways to use up those old bananas that aren’t just another loaf of banana bread.

Banana ice cream. When you’re craving a sweet treat, banana ice cream is not only quick and delicious but healthy too! Simply slice up unused bananas and pop them in the freezer, then when the craving hits place those slices in a food processor and you’ll have delicious soft serve in a matter of minutes. Combine with peanut butter, chocolate sauce, or anything else you can dream of!

Banana pancakes. Warm and fluffy, and the perfect way to start any morning, bananas can be easily incorporated into most pancake recipes for a delicious breakfast. The truly daring can add some extra bananas on the top, or even some chocolate chips into the batter just to make them extra decadent!

Smoothies! Bananas make the perfect addition to just about any smoothie. An easy and delicious way to add more nutrients to your day, bananas are an essential element to all sorts of smoothies, be they fruit smoothies, green smoothies, protein smoothies, or any combination thereof.

Looking for more food related content? Visit our online library at www.bravojoy.com for a wide variety of ebooks, audiobooks, music, and more.

Essential Kitchen Skills: Carryover Cooking

For many of us, cooking skills are only learned out of necessity; when we move out on our own for the first time and are finally responsible for feeding ourselves. Skills were often developed through trial and error, handed down from our parents and grandparents, or even picked up from cookbooks and recipes. That said, we live in the age of convenience, where everything imaginable can be delivered, and cooking has become little more than novelty thanks to meal prep packages. For those who still love to cook from scratch, or those looking to learn, here’s a basic skill everyone should know: Carryover cooking.

Many of us already use the technique of carryover cooking, but sometimes unintentionally and without even realizing. Ever cook a roast to a recommended temperature but find it’s a little more done then you thought when finally cutting in? That’s the effects of carryover cooking. While we’re letting our foods rest straight out of the oven oven or off the grill, we’re letting them cool down, but we’re also allowing the residual heat from the outer ends of the food cook the inside.

Carryover cooking need not be something to avoid, however, it’s actually the best tool to avoid overcooking. Meats, particularly thick, bone in roasts, can be taken out of the oven a few degrees shy of their recommended cooking temps and allowed to come up to temperature on their own. The technique can even apply to eggs, taking scrambled eggs off the pan just before they’re done ensure they’ll be perfectly cooked by the time you’re ready to eat.

Looking for more mouth-watering content? Visit our online library at www.bravojoy.com for a wide variety of ebooks, audiobooks, music, and more. Accessible anytime, anywhere, from your favorite devices, and perfect for your next culinary adventure.

Great cookbooks from around the world

If you want to spice up your life, and your kitchen! You absolutely must check out this selection of great cookbooks from around the world. Cookery can be an amazing, and rewarding way to immerse yourself in other cultures without ever leaving the comfort of your home. And, by sampling a range of cuisines you can experience new bold flavors and ideas, as well as finding new dishes that will become staples of your cooking. These tremendous cookbooks give you an insight and education into some of the best cuisines from around the globe.

Ottolenghi Simple-Yotam Ottolenghi

One of the most famed chefs and restauranteurs of the world, Yotam Ottolenghi inspired countless others and helped to give middle eastern food a glowing global reputation. This great book takes his challenging restaurant quality food and simplifies it for home cooking, all whilst retaining the style, skill, and flavor.

A Table in Venice:-Skye McAlpine:

Whilst Italian food is famed and well-known across the world, some of its regional variations have become lost in that homogenized shuffle. This debut book from Venice based writer Skye McAlpine offers an insight into what makes Venetian cuisine so special and unique, drawing on the city’s rich history of merchant trading and bakeries to bring light to an underrated and unheralded regional cuisine.

Nopalito: A Mexican Kitchen-Gonzalo Guzmán and Stacy Adimando

Nopalito enjoys a truly international reputation as one of San Francisco's most acclaimed and beloved restaurants, as well as a bastion of Mexican cuisine. This book brings all that knowledge and flavor to your table, as well as a vast array of salsa recipes that will have you wowing dinner party guests with ease.

Whether you’re an avid home cook, or just beginning to find your feet, you’ll find something to inspire you at www.bravojoy.com with their appetizing range of cookery related eBooks and audiobooks.