Recipe books

[boobesque]

Can any of you recommend some recipe books that you use lots (everyday foods). What are your favourites?

[La Diva]

Marguerite Patten's Everyday Cook Book - even tells you very basic things like how to prepare cabbage and how long ot boil it for.

Don't know if its still in print now - mine was inherited and is over 30 years old!

[gilby]

The Dairy cook book is supposed to be excellent

[scatty mare]

Gilby's right, The Dairy Book of Home Cookery. My Mum had a copy when I was younger and I loved to cook using it (usually while she was out, she hated the mess I made in the kitchen). I've got my own now, and still use it all the time. Great recipes, and not too complicated.

[thikasabrik]

I still swear by a 1967 edition of The Good Housekeeping Cookbook (it was my mum's...honest!), but I don't think you can beat Delia Smith for the everyday stuff.

Why is it that I could buy every magazine in the newsagents and never see a recipe I like, but the minute I go sit in a doctors or dentists waiting room I pick up a magazine with a big sticker on saying "do not remove or deface" and find it's full of super recipes?

[boobesque]

Thanks guys, Thikasabrik, is the good housekeeping one like a huge dictionary? my mum has one and its mahoosive, but its so old she said that i can have it when she is too old to cook :-( lol i used to make some of the cakes from it when i was younger.

I get Delicious mag, Olive, Fresh and family circle, am cancelling the subscriptions on my womens monthlies and geting them instead! My mum bought me some recipe folders from matalan and they are already full lol so now i am moving on to books!

[thikasabrik]

I wouldn't say the GH cookbook is particularly huge...I've got bigger cookbooks. By coincidence, I was recently browsing in a 2nd hand bookshop and found loads of old cookbooks. They are so much more informative on the basics than the modern books. They gave me a good laugh as well...photo's of 1960's groovy men in tank tops and checked trousers, and housewives with corrugated perms and aprons all grinning wildly over fondue sets!