Couldn’t find an existing thread, so here goes. Nagi Maehashi of Recipe Tin Eats website has been working on a “cookbook” for a long time. It’s now available (albeit only in AU and NZ). Her website is wonderful, and I’m sure her cookbook is also. It’s my go-to for new ideas and big-flavour recipes. The twist here is that it’s a printed book, but aim your phone at the QR code and you get a how-to video (and they are very good) for each recipe. I can’t wait!
I like her recipes as well. Tasty, don't take long, good tips!
Or instead of buying the book, people could just use her Youtube channel for free where many of the recipes are listed https://www.youtube.com/c/Recipetineats
I have so many amazing physical cookbooks I rarely ever use any more because its so much easier to watch a video or check online.
See, I'm the opposite...I love to take a cookbook down and page through it. I read them like novels. I love the printed page, but I also like her idea of linking the videos--best of both worlds. Anyway, her recipes are super.
I will buy this when it's available. I prefer cooking from recipes on my phone too, but I love flipping through a physical book for ideas. And I've already profited so much from Nagi's recipes that showing support via my pocketbook is a no brainer.
This. (And she gave me 3 mini-cookbooks for signing up to receive emails that are always enjoyable and amusing.) Proceeds from the book will go towards her charity established during the pandemic to feed the hungry in her area with creative and nutritious food. She's someone I admire greatly...she could have been retired and sipping cosmos by the pool, but she didn't do that.
I’m with you in that, I much prefer cookbooks to YouTube videos.
I love leafing through them for ideas.
I find videos incredibly slow.
I suppose they may be useful for learning a new technique but for a recipe, I just need to know the ingredients, the method and approx. cooking times and I can get all this in thirty seconds from a printed page.
I always cook a new recipe twice (not in the same week) in case it was just fluke that it turned out right the first time.
If it still doesn't work - it's sometimes because there's a miscalculation in the amount of one or more of the ingredients - even in a published book.
Many Tik Tok video recipes are fake click-bait and I think my kids have at last learnt that many of these recipes do not work and cannot possibly work.
with a printed recipe I cook in my own time, in my own space, minus anyone else’s voice, minus devices on the counter to get touched with messy hands, or spilled on, out of reach to read messages (and possibly burn the garlic )
I haven’t bought a cookbook for at least a decade, the rather significant collection on my shelves have plenty of recipes and ideas both tried and yet to be tried. Revisiting favourites from my teen years (several decades ago ) when my mom often had work colleagues over as I was a willing chef, is also fun. Have our tastes evolved or are the dishes as good as ever (usually the case)?
Realising that a very close friend (also a longtime vegetarian transplant from the US to this side of pond) relies on the same books for ideas (and reading) made me appreciate the connection I have with those books (Anna Thomas The Vegetarian Epicure, vol 1 and 2) even more.
Leafing through a familiar cookbook is rather similar to flipping tnrough a photoalbum
...or a web page, which is also not a video. My point was that you don't need to buy shelves full of physical books (like I did) when inevitably you only use a small proportion of the recipes within them.
I am at best an ok cook, and we don't cook dinner every day. What has really helped me is saving whatever recipe I think my family will like in the Paprika app and bookmarking my favorites, as I tend to forget what we tried, what worked, or who wanted what tweaks (three picky people, each with their particular quirks). Many of Nagi's are saved in my Paprika app as well!
In addition to about a hundred cookbooks, I have one of those little boxes of index cards, thumbed to death and stained with tears and tomato sauce. I can see my beautiful handwriting from 50 years ago. My neighbour saw it and said, "How quaint!"
I have one of those boxes as well, cards with my mom’s handwriting, the neighbour’s, my own, my friend’s mom, my uncle’s - and the torn out pages from various mags and newspapers. The feeling I get is similar to looking at an old photo album.
Same here.
Some of them even have my grandma’s writing and the recipes are things I used to make with her and she’s long gone.
I also have such a collection of index cards. In fact, every keeper recipe that is in the regular meal/baking rotation gets copied to a card, even if I have the recipe in a book. But I also get the same comment that using cards is an old-fashioned thing to do.
I'm a messy cook, so the last thing I want in the kitchen is any kind of screen that I might absentmindedly spill on. (BTDT, fried a Notebook.)
I love my cookbooks. Tasebo's comparison to an old photo album is spot on. As I browse through I remember fondly all the people and events connected to those recipes. (Proust's madeleines, anyone?) I cherish the old family favorites I've inherited, love coming across notations from generations past.
I only regret that my great-grandmother, a legendary cook whose Swedish specialties I can still taste, was of the 'a bit of this, a pinch of that, mix until it feels right, cook until done' school. I'd give anything to be able to re-create her masterpieces, but I lack her... je ne sais quoi.
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I had not heard of Nagi until this thread, so thank you all! I'm looking forward to her book.