Whats your favourite cookbook and why?

[jackrose]

I am a cookbook fiend! I will read them over a novel any day and have a shelf full of them.

By far, my favourite is Stephanie Alexander's Cooks companion. I love is as it is arranged by food rather than recipe type. That means if I have eggs, I can look up eggs and get a whole lot of ideas. Too many carrots, check out the carrot chapter for inspiration. She also has heaps of tips on how to choose, store and cook everything from Morton bay bugs to Beans (fresh, canned and dried). This is the one book I always go back to.

At the moment my other two favourite are Jamie Oliver At Home, based on his recent tv series cooking from his garden. I am working my way through that one cooking each recipe in it! I just got Karen Martini's Cooking at home for my birthday and have tried a couple of recipes from that - it is really good. (these two are on high rotation mostly because they are my newest!)

One I always go back to reguarly for simple meal ideas are the books by Donna Hay from her Marie Claire days. I find any of the Marie Claire ones good as the pictures are so good - inspirational! - As Olive said, the Marie Claire Food Fast. This one gets a vote from me too. It is good for the meat and veg main meal thing you are looking for.

Otherwise, I regularly check out websites like Taste - they always have new recipes up which are pretty good.

ETA: I also subscribed to Delicious for a year, that was great. There was always something to try in that mag with the added benefit of being seasonal. I like Delicious more than others as I find some Magazines too fancy to really be helpful on a day to day basis (eg Gourmet Traveller - great for a read but not too handy for feeding the family) and some others too simple/bland/boring.