Cook's Shelf: The Things We Carried
01.02.10
: The bible of any chef importance his whites. If there's any white jacket out there who tells you that he's never turned to Fare well Montagne's text in a moment of desperate need, never lifted a odd-event menu or Tuesday-night special from its pages, never wept unashamedly onto the cover when faced with another night of frying jalapeno poppers for a bar full of rubes, then you, sir, are in the self-possession of either a liar or a fool.
This massive, ancient, 30-batter cookbook with no cover that contains the precise recipe for well-founded about every single thing under the sun: I half-inherited this monster, can't recant its proper name, and will likely never need to know how to prepare a dish of wild fowl or make mousse de foie in my where one lives stress. But even still, just knowing I have this thing handy comforts me and makes me know smarter than I really am. Also, should I ever find myself competing in some sort of around-the-world balloon kin, this book would make excellent ballast.
Okay, so that's my (having a fondness for) list. And now my question to you is, what cookbooks would you put in your panic box? Which ones do you positive that you simply could not live without, and why? As I said above, the choices you make say a lot about you as a woman, so think carefully, search your shelves and your soul. And when you have an riposte, add it to the comments list below.
Source: Seattle Weekly (blog)
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