I need a 12-step program for new cookbooks. I’ve acquired far too many lately 
Flavor the new one by Ottolenghi arrived last Monday. Totally devoted to vegetables. 4 techniques…charring, browning, infusing and aging. 4 pairings…sweetness, fat, acidity and chile heat. First pass looks very promising.
The Pie Room by Calum Franklin
LaBuvette by Camille Fourmont
Poilaine by Apollonia Poilaine
And more on the way! Lol i have a problem as well!
Were you guys in the cookbook club on Chowhound? It was insane… insanely fun. Some of them had rooms just for cookbooks!
It’s been so long since i posted on chowhound i hardly remember! I think it was 90% LA area the rest on the cooking / equipment. My user name was the same over there as here so you can check!
Just mildly curious. 
I discovered it shortly before the mass exodus, but they were serious cookbook junkies.
They are still going strong. I can’t believe the number of cookbooks some of these people buy…and I thought I as bad 
They’re also doing Cookbook of the Month. Half the time I’ve never even heard of the book they’re cooking from.
Right?! 
I was… it was tons of fun… but I only took part if it was a cookbook I could find at the Library. It was nice that they didn’t just pick the latest and greatest… and if they did… at the time… you could often find a free recipe that the book used for publicity online…
I need help. What else do you cook from this book? It’s lovely but has an unreasonable amount of hard to find ingredients. I have a lot of ingredients but even the khao soi recipes require extra trips here & there (took me 2 days to make a chicken one)… or do you omit things?
Sorry for the delay in responding, but I was out of town.
I don’t cook much from this book; I would love to, but my wife is not a fan of Thai food so I only make it when our daughter is in town.
That said here in the Valley we have a number of Asian grocery stores where most (not all) of the ingredients are available. 99 Ranch and Seafood City have many Thai ingredients. Indian Sweets and Spices often has kaffir lime leaves. Some items, such as bitter tomatoes, I have given up on finding. https://themalamarket.com/ carries black cardamon and several types of pickled mustard greens. Highly recommend them although their focus is more on Sichuan and Yunnan cuisine.
I do substitute when I can: for instance catfish is similar to snakehead fish; Chinese eggplant can be subbed for Thai eggplant although 99 Ranch often has the Thai in stock.
I omit things if I can’t find them, and it seems it won’t make that much difference in the final product.
Welcome back. Looked lovely.
Yah, the pickled greens are important. I got lucky when I made the Chicken Khao Soi because I happened to have a pot of leftover greens which could be pickled. Otherwise that’s another step or trip to the market.
I need to get on board with that. When I first attempt something I get so anal about having to have everything. Plus, a lot of the Northern Thai dishes in the book aren’t popular in L.A. restaurants - you can’t try them to see if yours tastes anything like the original dish. Egs., the Chicken Khao Soi recipe is more brothy, not coconut milk based like most restaurants. I guess it tasted good, lol. If I find a photo I’ll post it. 
The latest cookbook!
I haven’t acquired many new cookbooks, but I have about 70 (English & Spanish) that I’m looking to offload.
I hear ya’. I know you do a lot of Mexican cooking. Do you have a favorite(s) cookbook?
I got this one recently. No plans to cook anything from it.
Actually, I do. For basic, entry level Mexican cooking I like Roberto Santibañez’s Truly Mexican . What I like about it is that he takes a good 50 pages to discuss ingredients, utnensils and cooking methods and explaining the what and why of why they are important. His recipes are well written, easy to follow and genearally yield a very good result. His recipes for carnitas and fideos have become my “go-tos” over the years and there are some creative ideas for guacamole.
I just finished doing a pretty deep dive into My Mexico City Kitchen by Gabriela Cámara who owns Contramar (one of my top 3 favorite restaurants) in Mexico City and Cala in SF. I was surprised by how much I liked this book. The sections on breakfast and salsas is outstanding. The only fail I had - and it was a pretty big one - was with her recipe for Chocoflan.
Another entry level cookbook I often recommend is Salsas That Cook by Rick Bayless. The first chapter of the book is 8 of what he calls “essential” salsas. For each recipe he gives 3 yields (small, medium or large volume), recommendations for chile substitutions to change up the flavor profiles and in which recipes they could/should be used. The remaining chapters of the book contain 50 recipes that use one (or more) of his essential salsas. This is an old book, probably first published about 25 years ago, well before he got famous. The recipes are pretty solid.
Everyday Mexican also by Rick Bayless is also pretty good. Mexican cuisine can be notoriously labor intensive. This book does a great job of preserving the traditional flavors while shortening the preparation process. Also there is a good chapter on salads and salad dressings, which would not typically be found in most Mexican cookbooks.
In that same vein is Pati’s Mexican Table which I think is the companion book to her PBS series. Everything I’ve cooked from this book has turned out well and it’s written for the home cook.
As much as I like Diana Kennedy and have never had any real failures from any of her cookbooks, unless you are a serious student of Mexican cuisine or reasonably well versed in Mexican cooking, her recipes are usually viewed as intimidating. They aren’t really, but when faced with an extensive ingredient list and an equally detailed method, many cooks will simply move on to something else. If traditional Mexican is the objective either of her first 2 cookbooks will fit the bill. The recipes work (and work well) and are quite detailed, but they are not for the faint of cooking heart.
Some of Kennedy’s recipes are simple, e.g. carnitas caseras with an orange from The Art of Mexican Cooking.
Yes, as are most of her salsa recipes. But her recipes are daunting for the average home cook that wants Mexican flavors, or what they know as Mexican food in the U.S. and don’t want the time consumingness of a traditional recipe. I’ve been cooking from DKs first 2 books since the 80s and have a pretty extensive background in Mexican cuisine. I don’t find her particularly difficult but I’ve got plenty of cooking friends and acquaintances that do. They’d rather have me do the cooking so they can do the eating 
Thanks @DiningDiva!
They all sound great. I like that Bayless’s Salsa book gives 3 yields, chile substitutions and especially what salsas go with certain recipes.
Yah, I have a few too many of those cookbooks, right now, and want something a little simpler.
Delete. Wrong thread! 
I know who Bayless is, lol.