Following up on my last post (books I’m currently reading and cooking from), I’m posting about my stack of ‘to-do’ Cookbooks. These are books I’ve been intrigued by, but have yet to delve into.

All the books noted below have been provided as review copies by publishers (when I’m approached, I ask publishers only to send books I’m actually interested in – it would do nobody any good for me to attempt to review a Rachel Ray title, for example, as it’s just not my thing. I may also experiment with reviewers other than me in the near future.).

Sausage, Victoria Wise

I’ve been very much interested in sausage the past few years, since my eyes were opened to the potential of the food by two things: first, here in Nanaimo there’s a great sausage store, aptly named ‘The Nanaimo Sausage House’. They hand-make a wide variety of sausages (the store smells amazing) and I’ve been regularly buying their Breakfast and French Breakfast sausage for years. Secondly, when I bought a quarter pig this winter, a substantial part of it came in the form of sausages. I was surprised when I cooked the first batch, as they were not like the sausages I was familar with – instead of a fairly smooth, homogeneous interior, they were very rustic – roughly ground meat, flecked with a good percentage of fat and only a tiny amount of seasoning. They tasted intensely porky, and have been incredibly useful – not only have I cooked them for breakfast, but I’ve used them as a handy source of ground pork. They are excellent uncased and cooked in Spaghetti Bolognese, for example.

The idea of making my own sausages had seemed intimidating before; I had visions of complicated machinery and wrestling with intestines. Sausage aims to demistify and simplify the whole business. Wise promises to have you creating a wide variety of sausages, all without casings and with no grinding or stuffing machinery required. Considering she has vegetarian sausages (wrapped in cabbage leaves), as well as veggie and meat burgers, and meatloaf, her definition of sausage is fairly broad. Purists may be appalled, but I’m intrigued: I can see this book being a good ‘gateway’ to the world of sausage, and perhaps working my way up to the whole grinder and casing business one day. If so, her first book, American Charcuterie, is probably a good one to graduate to (though there are a number of others out there: charcuterie has seen a renaissance the last few years).

The Good Stuff Cookbook, Spike Mendelsohn

I must admit to not knowing who Spike Mendelsohn is, not having watched Top Chef, nor being particularly interested. However, this book caught my eye, perhaps because summer is coming, and perhaps because I do appreciate some good comfort food. When I was recently in Denver, I had a great burger and liquid nitrogen milkshake at Ian Kleinman’s HBurger Co, and not long afterwards I found out that our butcher can source local organic, grass-fed beef. I haven’t had beef for a long time (just Google CAFO and you’ll see why), but it seems like the stars are aligning on this one.

I can’t help but be impressed by Spike’s nine separate variations on mayonnaise, and although the whole book has a loud, flashy design and breathless writing style that isn’t quite my thing, more than a few of the recipes look worth trying. He covers the gamut of burger joint classics too – salads, burgers, fries, milkshakes and floats… but with lots of interesting twists. How about a Tamarind-Glazed Pork Burger with Red Cabbage Slaw and Grilled Pineapple? Or an avocado shake? I’ll put a few of these on summer rotation and see what I think.

You Can Can, Better Homes & Gardens

After I opened the 20th can of supermarket tomatoes this past winter, I vowed that next winter it would be different. I’d go to the farmer’s market or a local organic farm late in the summer and buy 50 pounds of tomatoes – no, 100 pounds. And beets too. And who knows what else? And I’d can them all so I could escape the supermarket. I have fond memories of my parents boiling corn for corn relish, canning peaches, capturing all the flavours of an Ontario summer in a jar, and I’d love to carry on the tradition. But, to be honest, I haven’t canned anything since a rather sad attempt at corn relish over 10 years ago. At least I still have the canning gear. And now I have this book.

I’m sure there are more sophisticated books on home canning, preserving and pickling out there, but this one immediately appealed to me. It’s designed specifically for first-time canners like myself and has loads of clear, well-illustrated instructions. The recipes seem fairly basic, but that’s all right. I’m a first-timer and I just want to get a year of canning under my belt and build some confidence before I try to wing it (this personality trait is part of why I’m such a fan of cookbooks in general – I’ve always taken direction well…). So I’ll be starting with stewed tomatoes, some jams (we have two exuberantly growing rows of raspberries this year), and pasta sauce. I’ll report back with much pride, hopefully, later in the season.

The River Cottage Bread Handbook, The River Cottage Preserves Handbook

I first became aware of the UK-based River Cottage empire earlier this year, when I read Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s The River Cottage Meat Book. To quote my previous blog post about it, this is a remarkable book – a hybrid between a cookbook and a manifesto and a comprehensive instruction manual on the art and science of cooking animals. I read River Cottage Cookbook, and watched a couple of seasons of his show with interest. Very much in the spirit of the food movement, he’s encouraging making connections with local farmers, growing food yourself, and learning some of the ‘forgotten arts’ of the kitchen. Two of these arts are covered in these handsome, novel-sized cookbooks (previously published in the UK in 2008 and 2009): making bread and making preserves.

They’re not written by Fearnley-Whittingstall himself, but by two of the experts on his River Cottage staff (and it’s not really a simple cottage any more, considering it has staff!). Still, they’re spot-on introductions to two of the important skills anyone can (and should) learn if they want to get more serious about their food. Baking, in particular, is one of the skills I’ve learned in the last few years which has produced the most pleasure for myself and my family.

The Bread Handbook has a great introduction to materials, ingredients and techniques. It has a fine basic bread recipe, and enough variations to make this a good introductory book for someone who doesn’t have one of the other good introductory books on baking that have been written over the years (The Bread Baker’s Apprentice, The Bread Bible, The Tassajara Bread Book, The Laurel’s Kitchen Bread Book, to name just a few).

What most intrigues me is the last part of the book, which has comprehensive instructions on how to make a backyard clay oven. A bit of a surprise, this, but a welcome one. After all, bread from a wood-fired oven is at the heart of the recent artisan bread revolution in North America (and I presume the UK), and the instructions provided look like it would actually be fairly simple to make one yourself. Not that I don’t have enough other jobs to do around the house, but I’ll admit to being sorely tempted by this. I’ve dreamed of being able to make pizza at a proper 700+ degrees, and bread more than one loaf at a time.

The Preserves Handbook is very much fruit-focused, though it does contain a modest, and interesting, amount of recipes for chutneys and sauces. It’s also quite English in flavour, with recipes involving currants, damsons and gooseberries, as well as all the old favourites. I’ve already flagged the Apple Lemon Curd, Raspberry Fridge Jam, Onion Marmalade and Roasted Tomato Ketchup as worth my preserving efforts this year.