From our new podcast network, The Genius Recipe Tapes is lifelong Genius hunter Kristen Miglore’s 10-year-strong column in audio form, featuring all the uncut gems from the weekly column and video series. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts so you don’t miss out.
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30 Comments
Exbruxelles
April 21, 2015
The Joy of Cooking, believe it or not, received as a wedding gift over thirty years ago. Many years of reading Gourmet Magazine and trying recipes. And, more recently, Judy Rodgers' Zuni Cafe Cookbook--it's right next to Marcella in my pantheon.
AntoniaJames
April 21, 2015
So many influences over the years - I started with a great foundation of basic skills, intuition and confidence, picked up from my mother while helping her as a child. Frances Moore Lappe has made me conscious of the environmental impact of food choices since I discovered "Diet for a Small Planet" in college in the 70s. Then, Marcella Hazan and Julie Sahni opened my world up to brilliant traditional foods with which I was not familiar. (I still make her brown rice cashew broccoli pilaf from the vegetarian classics book, which I discovered as a young bride.) James Beard plus a college boyfriend (still a good friend) and a post-college roommate (still a good friend) all expanded my horizons in bread making. I've been hooked since. More recently, Paul Hollywood and Mary Berry have shown me another world of baking - yeasted doughs as well as cakes and pastry -- while Chad Robertson has significantly raised my game with respect to artisanal baking. Thomas Keller's helpful "Bouchon Bakery" has put baking of all kinds into a whole new perspective. Perhaps most importantly in recent years, several talented members of the Food52 community (non-editorial, for the most part) and two of the columns here: Genius Recipes has opened all kinds of doors, each to a wonderful surprise looked forward to every Wednesday, and Alice Medrich inspires while offering endless tips and techniques which, taken together, have had a huge impact on my baking and creation of sweet treats. ;o)
JessicaHansen
April 20, 2015
My kids forever changed the way I cook. Before my husband and I had kids, we cooked often, but we generally made meals that were projects. We ate out a lot and had a lot of take out. Now that we have two little girls to feed, we are much more conscious of what we eat and how we prepare it. Cost and time are more of a factor than they ever were before. But the incentive to regularly make healthful, complete, and interesting meals is huge. And it has improved my adult food game tremendously as well! I plan better, I am more able to think through how groceries become dinner, and I am much more effcient in the kitchen. Also, now I have two little excuses whenever I feel the need to bake cookies!
Jenna B.
April 20, 2015
I've always been interested in cooking but my mom was definitely a big influence. Her mom never really knew how to cook that well so she learned most of it on her own which meant a lot of weird mixtures of food while growing up. I appreciate that more now because I'm not so stifled in the kitchen. I'm a little more traditional then her but her influence can still be seen in my cooking.
Lazyretirementgirl
April 19, 2015
Boy, does this make me feel old! My answer is Marcella Hazan. When I was in college, a friend invited me for dinner, and cooked the straw and hay pasta from Marcella Hazan's Classic Italian cooking. It was a revelation, and I went right out and bought the book. Reading Marcella's advice about ingredients -- Reggiano, extra virgin olive oil, San Marzano tomatoes, -- was all a newsflash to my 22 year old self. Back then, these were only available at specialty stores like the Oakville Grocery, but that served to cement my commitment to the hunt for lovely ingredients and the work and expense they can entail.
Pegeen
April 19, 2015
I had the blessing of a mother, two grandmothers and sometimes my Dad to teach me to cook. My world of food opened up when I started reading the Food & Wine section in The New York Times. Reading the paper was a requirement in our household and I soon became addicted to F&W. Restaurant reviews, recipes, technique. And then I found Jacques Pépin on TV and a love affair with food was born.
Kevin G.
April 19, 2015
Sara Moulton, Julia Child and Ina Garten taught me not to be afraid of Food. Martha Stewart was my biggest influence because I like her methods. Ina Garten changed it the most, however by teaching me that the cook wants to attend the party too.
ccsinclair
April 19, 2015
My mom, who reads cookbooks like novels, and at 84 still scouts new recipes. She has cold pastry hands, and makes perfect pie crusts by feel. After her, Bernard Clayton Jr. and Laurie Colwin, Elizabeth David and Jane Grigson. They all gave me confidence to get in there and cook, taste, take chances and get messy.
sandy P.
April 18, 2015
My father, without a doubt. He was fearless. His tastes were formed by his travels during WWII in the Navy. We had a wok and regional Chinese food when my friends had really dumbed down Chinese take out food. He experimented with many cuisines and had quite a few cookbooks including some by Helen Evans Brown, James Beard, Edda Servi Machlin and "The Complete Book of Pasta" by Jack Denton Scott. I had terrible insomnia in childhood and often read the cookbooks over and over again after everyone else in the whole wide world was asleep. He cooked only one or two nights monthly, if we were lucky. He had an excellent palate for seasoning, thank god, because our primary cook, my mom, was happy with ketchup on overcooked pasta. She thought I was a picky eater, ha! I still use my dad's cookbooks and I love to cook.
Ellie B.
April 18, 2015
There are sooo many people who've influenced my cooking! Not to mention, I'm learning to venture out of my "only healthy food" comfort zone. I've gained a lot of ideas from restaurants in LA, but nowadays I am incredibly inspired by people like Lady and Pups and Mimi Thorrisson :D
Orangina
April 18, 2015
Mark Bittman. How to Cook Everything really taught me to relax. Don't have an ingredient - leave it out, or sub it out. The variations presented with each recipe helped but also the narrative peppered throughout the chapters about how cooking at home is cooking like your grandma not your local chef.
ARTIST
April 18, 2015
Not who but where....spending July and August in Italy, when everything was ripe and every town and village was having a fair, a celebration of a first pressing of olive oil, limoncello, truffles, a cheese, porchetta, calamari, pasta, artichokes on and on and on. Everything fresh, everything beautiful, everything in season and everything simple and real and slow. Those first months in Italy inspired my approach to food from then on....bellissima!
Lis
April 18, 2015
Tamar Adler's The Everlasting Meal and the writings of M.F.K. Fischer made a huge impression on me. They both write about finding good ingredients, cooking them simply, and relishing their flavors. Learning to find pleasure in the basic flavors, colors, and textures nature has to offer. That's all it needs to be.
scruz
April 18, 2015
i always loved to cook and watched food tv and before that public tv with julia, jacques and others. but the two biggest influences in the past decade of two have been firstly the produce available on the central california coast where i live and the food i've eaten in san francisco/bay area and secondly, watching youtube especially chef john and many of the chinese and japanese videos. my cooking has really taken a leap ahead and above what it was. it's also fun to have the sig. other do the shopping and then to figure out what to do with it when there is something in the bag not included on the list. my very own real life episode of iron chef at home!
ortolan
April 18, 2015
I thought this was about who changed the way you cook, not who taught you to cook! Of course my mother taught me to cook. But for me, Ottolenghi's approach to celebrating vegetables and cross-cultural ingredient mixing changed my game considerably. It also allowed me to improvise in new and extraordinary ways with everything I keep on hand now--from sumac and za'atar to freekeh and preserved lemons.
Mary L.
April 18, 2015
My mom taught me how to cook. Gourmet opened me up to a whole new world of foods. I grew up in a 2nd generation Italian household. Everyday food was a mixture of Italian and American foods. When I started reading Gourmet, I fell in love with French food. Dorie Greenspan is my new Julia.
Gia R.
April 18, 2015
Absolutely my boyfriend, Chris, & the fabulous Julia Child. Both of them made me feel like I wasn't a complete moron for not knowing how to properly dice an onion or bake bread, but they damn sure taught me how.
Beez K.
April 18, 2015
My mom and Grandma -and PBS - I spent countless satruday afternoons growing up watching all the cooking shows on PBS ( BEFORE the invention of the food network)
Julia Child, Jacques Pepin, Sara Molton, Rose Levey Beranbaum, Eric Ripert, Jose Andres, Lida Bastianich -all of these shows. Even now I prefer PBS cooking shows over Food Network.
Julia Child, Jacques Pepin, Sara Molton, Rose Levey Beranbaum, Eric Ripert, Jose Andres, Lida Bastianich -all of these shows. Even now I prefer PBS cooking shows over Food Network.
Janelle I.
April 18, 2015
Sara Moulton, Cooking Live. She is amazing, that show was wonderful, I learned SO much watching her cook. And then came my first 10 inch chef knife, which I now can't imagine cooking without.
Ludolph W.
April 18, 2015
The books of Matt Moran and Thomas Keller, followed by the three books by Michael Ruhlman about. Chef's life. Without a doubt
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