favorite cookbooks?

[kangamitroo]

i'm looking for new ideas and would love to hear your favorites, especially the following varieties:

1. mexican
2. caribbean
3. baking

here's to healthy, yummy, nourishing meals...and food-related stories/anecdotes are a tasty bonus!

[elanorh]

Can't help you with the first two, specifically - dh isn't into Mexican or spicy foods.

My favorite cook books overall though are:

Alton Brown: I'm Just Here for the Food; Back for More Food; Gear for your Kitchen (3 books) - the first is cooking methods, the second is baking methods, the third is about kitchen organization/utensils etc. He covers techniques, some basic recipes but more the "why" behind using particular ingredients/techniques.

Baking:
Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book - good information about how bread is made, works, etc.

King Arthur Flour Company's Cookbook (excellent info, again)

I like many of the recipes I use from the Pillsbury's Book of Baking, but the binding is lousy.

Perhaps my favorite overall is a book called The Butte Heritage Cookbook. It's available from Uptown Books in Butte, MT and was first printed in 1976. Ethnic recipes from all over the world, for making food from scratch (I want to make their chicken ravioli recipe, it's a two-day process).

[Arduinna]

Mexican: The Art of Mexican Cooking by Diana Kennedy. Technically any of her cookbooks.

Baking: Bernard Claytons New Complete Book of Breads. All of Ina Garten's Barefoot Contessa cookbooks.

[mata]

Favorite Caribbean (has a great companion book A Trip to the Beach by the Blanchards of VT fame

http://www.amazon.com/At-Blanchards-.../dp/0609610821

oh, and not Mexican or specifically baking, but my primer is Alice Water's The Art of Simple Food-super important, imo.

[Mihelinka]

For Mexican, anything by Rick Bayless
I also have a book by Two hot tomales, they used to have a show on foodnetwork & have some recipes i always use

Baking: Nick Malgeri, how to bake
Any of the King Arthur Flour company books

General cooking/baking: Anything by cooks illustrated

[californiajenn]

Mexican: I agree, anything by Rick Bayless. My mexican husband and inlaws were very impressed with my meals using his recipes.

Caribbean - no help

Baking - Peter Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads is amazing! I just got it about a month ago and have received so many compliments!

You can't go wrong with anything by Cooks Illustrated/America's Test Kitchen...or Alton Brown.

[Traci mom23boys]

The Yellow Farmhouse Cookbook by Christopher Kimball-editor of Cook's Illustrated

Great recipes and fantastic stories about growing up in small town Vermont

[journeymom]

Baking: Joy of Cooking.