Saveur

Shane Mitchell, contributing editor, SAVEUR

Charleston Receipts by the Charleston Junior League
This is my bible for authentic Lowcountry cooking. The spiral-bound paperback has all the classic recipes I grew up eating in my South Carolina grandmother's kitchen: benne wafers, breakfast shrimp, cheese "daisies", tomato aspic, and watermelon pickle. A point of family pride: her sister, Fannie Lee Anderson, has an entry for palmetto pickle. It's the book I reference first whenever writing about the American South.

Biscuits, Spoonbread, and Sweet Potato Pie by Bill Neal
This is a book on regional baking by Bill Neal, who was one of the South's greatest culinary cheerleaders. It has never-fail procedures for company corn bread, coconut cake, stuffed dates, and peach leather. His lively anecdotes and historical notes help preserve knowledge about these traditions as well.

The New Cook by Donna Hay
Okay, I admit it. With its simple recipes and pretty pictures to go with them, this is cooking for dummies, but some days, that's all I feel like doing. An Australian Martha Stewart, Hay offers recipes ranging from adaptive Asian to updated Anglo comfort foods, and I've cooked from every section in this edition, so I know firsthand that the recipes work. Sweet potato tart with sage, bread pudding, fruit-stuffed roast pork loin, baked raspberry cheesecake—no one complains that I'm slumming when these hit the table.

Salsas, Sambals, Chutneys, and Chowchows by Chris Schlesinger and John Willoughby
I own an even dozen books on preserving techniques for both sweet jams and savory pickles. I've loved both since I learned at my grandmother's side how to make pepper jelly. This book has especially inventive, big-flavor ingredient pairings, which tend to work well with the sort of hungry-man barbecues these guys have made famous. The recipes circle the globe, from Latin mango–tomatillo salsa to Malaysian mixed vegetable atjar. K.C.'s Fruit Chutney is the base recipe I adapt for a dried apricot and dried peach chutney that I serve with smoked baby back ribs.

White Trash Cooking by Ernest Matthew Mickler
This book is just hysterical from cover to index. It's a cookbook that celebrates the worst food in America and, possibly at the same time, the best, with recipes for chicken feet and rice, "pore folk" soup, and stewed prunes. As an antidote to every pretentious pretty tome by celebrity chefs, Mickler collected "roots" recipes from the redneck South. Anyone who has access to a vine-ripened-vegetable garden immediately knows the joy of a recipe such as [the one for] Kitchen Sink Tomato Sandwich, which ends with this admonition: "Roll up your sleeves, and commence to eat over the kitchen sink while the juice runs down your elbows."

The Joy of Cooking by Irma S. Rombauer (1978 printing)
This is the first cookbook I bought myself. My mother, who was a brilliant self-taught cook, had only two cookbooks in her pantry. The other was Larousse Gastronomique. Again, it's a reference tool for basic American comfort food—bechamel sauce for macaroni and cheese, roast chicken, and peanut butter cookies. But more important, it has those useful sections on measurements, preparation techniques. and tips on high-altitude baking. Each section begins with the famously informative "About" notes for those who have forgotten, or never knew, how to skin a squirrel or bard fowl or even beat an egg properly.

Andrea Nguyen, author of Into the Vietnamese Kitchen

The Key to Chinese Cooking by Irene Kuo
This was my first Chinese cookbook. After my family arrived in the United States in 1975, we started going to our local library to check out cookbooks and then eventually joined "book-of-the-month" clubs to start our own cookbook collection. My three sisters and I read all the fine print and took turns joining so that we could get multiple deals on cookbooks. Kuo's was among our family's favorites. She was spot on back in '77 and still is today. I own two copies—one with a broken spine and another that's hardly been cracked open, as it waits for the first one to fall apart completely.

The Whole World Cookbook by Jacqueline Killeen
Another book that I treasure from those book club memberships is The Whole World Cookbook. Jacqueline Killeen edited the collection of 1,500 recipes, which were gathered from the published works of 101 Productions, spanning [the years] from 1969 to 1979. The concise recipes range from [one for] chicken Marengo to [ones for] Indian stuffed okra (which called for chickpea flour) and green chile pepper jelly. I used to come home from elementary school and read through the book to learn about "global cuisine", which wasn't even a term then. Americans have been interested in "ethnic" cooking for a very long time, and works like this one set the foundation. (As a side note, Sharon Silva, a well-respected editor in the Bay Area, worked on this book, and she also copyedited my book, Into the Vietnamese Kitchen. How cool is that?)

Làm Bếp Giỏi (Cooking Well) by Mrs. Vân Đài
My library would be incomplete without Làm Bếp Giỏi, a work that was originally published in Hanoi, Vietnam, in 1944. She wrote exceptionally well, with precision and clarity. Her straight-ahead recipes include classic Viet dishes as well as French preparations. My mother cooked from the book while she was in Vietnam and then got a photocopied version when we arrived here. I own an American reprint and a rerelease published in Vietnam in 2005. Whenever I research a Viet recipe, I go to her book first. This book is in Vietnamese and not translated.

The Way to Cook by Julia Child and James Beard's American Cookery
This holiday season, I wanted to bake a bûche de Noël (Yule log cake) like the ones that my family used to make. I made a beeline for The Way to Cook for the sponge cake recipe, but I also wanted a simple chocolate frosting, and I hit pay dirt in another favorite book, American Cookery. Both of these classics are chock-full of thoughtful culinary guidance, wit, and a no-nonsense approach to home cooking. Every time I see one of them, I end up perusing it again. After all these years, I've not tired of them but rather keep discovering something new.

Michel Richard, Citronelle and Central, Washington, D.C.

Encyclopedia of Practical Gastronomy by Ali-Bab
This was my first beloved cookbook. The information about how we used to cook in the 1800s is fascinating.

Cuisine du Marché by Paul Bocuse
This is great food. It's full of simple country-French food recipes from the market.

Cooking with the Seasons by Jean-Louis Palladin
Jean-Louis was a master of creativity and originality, while still keeping an eye on tradition.

Cuisine Minceur by Michel Guérard
M. Guérard was the first chef to introduce whimsical dishes without using a ton of butter. His light cuisine is inspiring to me.

La Table au Pays de Brillat-Savarin by Lucien Tendret
This is a great reference book, showing us the wonderful old recipes from Burgundy.

Eric Ripert, Le Bernardin, New York City

The French Laundry Cookbook by Thomas Keller and Michael Ruhlman

Any El Bulli book by Ferran Adrià

Au Pied de Cochon by Martin Picard

Nobu Miami: The Party Cookbook by Nobu Matsuhisa and Thomas Buckley

Recettes en Provence by Andrée Maureau and Marie Françoise Delarozière