Kitchen's Kitchen

Edit: Just realised I spent another £1k on a 6 pans and 3 knives.

hope you like cooking!

Edit: Just realised I spent another £1k on a 6 pans and 3 knives.

I feel like we need details

I can safely say that the best part is clock synchronisation and the fact you can turn off the oven from your sofa if you smell burnt pizza

Le Creuset Signature Stainless Steel... 3 saucepans, 1 non-stick milk pan, 1 non-stick chefs pan, 1 non-stick frying pan, 1 square roasting pan... that's 7 items at £150-ish each.
https://www.lecreuset.co.uk/en_GB/p/signature-stainless-steel-saucepan-with-lid/ES54204.html

Kai Shun Premier knives... 1 chefs knife, 1 paring knife, 1 bread knife, and 1 santoku... each £150-ish each.
https://www.kai-europe.com/kitchen/shunpremier.php?lang=en

Sweet pans. I've had a similar stainless set from LeCreuset for 10+ years and they are bullet proof.

How is your cookbook collection coming along? I bet you could crowdsource unused cookbooks from the forum if you asked everyone nicely.

Unused! Who doesn't use their cookbooks!

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People who get them as gifts.

A couple of good ones to consider - Nigel Slater Simple Cooking. And if you are looking for meaty options then Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles Cookbook for all the French classics.

No meat in this house... occasionally a little fish though.

From the above, the good ones:

• All the Nigella
  
• Ottolenghi
  
• Amalfi
  
• Venice
  
• Provence
  
  

The bad ones to be donated to a charity shop:

• Vegan 100
  
• Deliciously Ella
  
  

The others I could take or leave, they occasionally are good for something.

What I find hardest to find are traditional UK baking recipes... I imagine there must be a good book that covers Eccles cake, Cornish pasties, Lemon drizzle, Chelsea buns, scones, Welsh cakes, Bara Brith tea loaf, Scotch eggs, bread and butter pudding, etc.

These are all kinds of things you'd find individually in most cookbooks as "my take on...", but I haven't found a book that has them all in their original form and then executed to a high quality. Online seems to be a lot of crowd sourced recipes, the variance is high and the reviews inconsistent.

I guess just like I have Amalfi, Venice, Provence... where's the Yorkshire, Cornwall, Wales, etc

My favourite cook book is Madhur Jaffrey Curry Easy. Everything is delicious and pretty simple to make. There’s vegetarian version too.

Deliciously Ella

Agreed. Rubbish book.

Bear in mind that for lots of those types of things there is no "definitive" version. Not even from Mrs Beeton. Everything is a take on a classic. If you want recipes from a single source then look for old Sainsburys cookbooks from the 70 / 80s. J has one that has all of that sort of stuff in it.

Try this.

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Ah, I shouldn't have used the word 'original', perhaps definitive is better. Just the most common version of a recipe - only refined to be better than average in taste and texture - rather than the "my lemon drizzle has chocolate chips because why not!" kind.

"my lemon drizzle has chocolate chips because why not!" kind.

Lord I hate that. "It's a classic with a twist!" No it's not Karen. No, it's not.

if you want to dip your toes in Greek cuisine... http://atlantisbooks.org/shop/atlantis-recommends/cooking-to-share/ written by a school friend.

Traditional UK baking recipes

Then you want this. Bit pricey, mind.

Current kitchen books stack

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Big recommendation for Jane Grigson, particularly "English Food"
Exceptionally well written and researched.

For English cakes and puddings I would also recommend the original 1977 version of Delia's Cake book

if you want to dip your toes in Greek cuisine... http://atlantisbooks.org/shop/atlantis-r­ecommends/cooking-to-share/ written by a school friend.

Suffice to say: we ate the whole thing. We hope you enjoy it as much as we do.

It's no longer available, they've eaten it.

Big recommendation for Jane Grigson, particularly "English Food"
Exceptionally well written and researched.

This and her other books look great, have ordered.

not a book, but the guardian website have a 'how to make the perfect...' series where they test bake and evaluate the different choices from various prochef recipes and then amalgamate an 'ideal' recipe from the pieces.

Quite nice as they are transparent about the recipes/choices they make which in turn allows you to alter back to other options as you prefer/see fit. If nothing else it often serves as a perfunctory literature review of other recipes.

For example:
Apple and Blackberry pie

It's a small project

I would not like to see what a large project looks like

Oh nice.

So I looked... and it seems ace, and this is the top level https://www.theguardian.com/food/series/how-to-cook-the-perfect----

461 recipes.

There must be a book! And there is... there are two.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Perfect-Essential-Recipes-Every-Repertoire/dp/1905490836/
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Perfect-Too-Essential-Recipes-Repertoire/dp/0241003121/

I've already ordered the Grigson, but have added these to my Wish List https://www.amazon.co.uk/hz/wishlist/ls/3GD2QRMGLDYQ9?ref_=wl_share I'm reasonably good at buying the most recent things on there... obviously not true of the books I added a decade ago.

I got the Noma vegetarian cook book for xmas and everything in it looks very nice but 90% or more relies on some ingredient which you can only find on the southern facing slopes of a hill on Okinawa island between winter and spring or some bullshit.

I'll have my staff go fetch them :D

Though this reminds me that I need to go to the Japanese Centre to stock up on things now the kitchen is almost done. I assume they're still open as they count as a food store.

FWIW I find the Guardian website better than the Felicity Cloake books. The books don't have any pictures in them which makes them less inviting and the comments section on the articles is often handy.