Suzanne F

Can any of you seasoned visitors to NYC tell me about a good place for a pre-opera dinner for me and my parents? Our curtain time at the Met is at 7:30 on a Thursday. We would be looking for something French, Italian, or Contemporary American. The food is the first priority, followed by price and atmosphere. Thanks for any advice you can offer.

Telepan starts serving at 5:00pm, is close by (West 69th Street), and is terrific. And they use Rancho Gordo beans, for those of you who know him.

We went to Obelisk not long after it opened, and found it to be every bit as good as I'd been told (by one of my chef-instructors, who knew the people behind it). That's quite a while ago, and we have not been back since the only place we almost always hit when we're in town is Asia Nora. So I am sad to hear that Obelisk might have gone downhill, but happy to hear it's returning to its earlier splendor. Well, splendor isn't quite the right word -- we loved the almost austere space (very much like the late lamented Quilty's in NYC). But the food was indeed excellent.

I'm going to disagree with your disagreement

Welcome to DR.

The Joy of Cooking, How to Cook Everything, and The Fannie Farmer Cookbook, for example, are general purpose how to start cooking books. Each one has sections about the food item, how to buy, store, and prepare. The recipes are easy in most and are very accessible standards. Some aren't my thing like the casseroles in Fannie Farmer, but they are for better or worse, the history of last century's suburban kitchens.

I agree that some of our recommendations are a bit advanced, but I grew up in my Mom's professional kitchen, so I was cooking by myself by age 6 and didn't really buy starter books as my parents took care of teaching me the basics.

However, I bought How to Cook Everything after a former coworker who couldn't boil water was happily making dinner everynight for his wife. It's a good book and approachable even to my kitchen phobic wife.

Also, I know some people hate him, but Jamie Oliver's books are a good simple approach to cooking too. Many are one pot with few steps in the cooking process. I know many Brits who started cooking since this guy came on the scene.

Thanks for the welcome. It's nice to see some old and not-so-old friends.

My first was a paperback of Fannie Farmer, circa 1959. And I grew up under my mother's elbow in her not-great-but-not-terrible 1950s NYC kitchen (lots of frozen vegetables, but TV dinners only as a "treat" ). We had the advantage of having someone show us how to cook. We learned what ingredients look like, and how steps in a recipe should look. Nowadays fewer and fewer people have that. Even if they watch tv carefully, they don't get to see all the intermediate stages as food cooks. That's why I like the books Dorling Kindersley puts out: multi multi photos. Very few -- if any -- of the other books have that. Can you imagine what Bittman's book would cost if it had color photos of everything??

Oh, I don't think there's anything wrong with any of those other books. (See here for a review of one of them in this regard.) I just happen to believe that for someone starting out, if they're going to learn from a book, simple text and really good pictures are essential. The recipes have to be clearly written, and they have to work as written. Believe me, that is a huge problem (even in some of the books mentioned )*

*For those who do NOT know me: I make my living editing and proofreading cookbooks.

Hi all -- am looking for some great beginner/intermediate level cookbooks as holiday gifts for my sister, who struggles with the difference polish sausage and shoe polish. Thoughts? . . . I'm looking for anything that will both allow her to eat AND keep her alive in the kitchen..

For my debut post here, I'm afraid I have to disagree with pretty much all that has been said already.* If she is as clueless as you originally said, great though all those books are (and I agree, they ARE, and I love most of them), they will be way beyond her skill level. My suggestion in cases like this is The New Cook by Mary Berry and Marlena Spieler. This is the book I give as a bar/bat mitzvah present, and to people I know who barely know which end of the spoon to stick in the pot. It's got tons of pictures that show what things should look like -- invaluable for the novice. There's even stuff I've learned from it!

* Hello to all whom I've known elsewhere! Not surprised, are you, that I'm shooting off my mouth again?