I am hoping that this forum subject will introduce me to some more wonderful cookbooks that I may have missed, so I spent a bit of time going over my cookbooks trying to figure out which ones would be on my top five list. While the books on my list are not always the ones that I go to the most often, I feel that they have contributed the most to my post-grandmother cooking education.

And finally, since I could not decide how to sort them, I opted for alphabetical. What I really wanted to concentrate on was the "why".

• Chef Paul Prudhomme's Seasoned America
• Cracking the Coconut
• Elephant Walk Cook Book, The
• Good Housekeeping Cookbook, The
• Professional Pastry Chef, The

Paul Prudhomme's book was the last one that I added to this list. I almost went for one of the Death By Chocolate books since I use them more often, but I felt that that would have been giving in to food porn (yeah, they have good recipes but I still feel that they are first and foremost picture books). While I adjust down the amount of fat in all of the recipes in Seasoned America, and I only make them a few times a year, I find that his spicing technique has worked itself into most of my scratch cooking.

While not as easy to prepare as Cambodian cuisine, Thai cuisine has a certain appeal to chile lovers. Cracking the Coconut has a wonderful collection of recipes that keep me wandering the aisles of my local Asian grocery stores looking for that next ingredient that I have not tried.

The Elephant Walk Cook Book is my current favourite and has been for several years. The recipes are delicious, and the techniques and ingredients have worked themselves into a lot of my everday cooking.

I did not have the Good Housekeeping book until I got married, instead I had a well-worn copy of Joy of Cooking. Since meeting my wife this book has replaced Joy of Cooking as my generic "go-to" book. If I could only have one cookbook in my kitchen, then this would be it. Get this one when you move into your first apartment and you start cooking for yourself.

The Professional Pastry Chef was a pleasant suprise. I probably never would have spent that much money on a cookbook for myself if I did not get a B&N gift card for Christmas. But it has turned out to be very useful for work and band parties and for teaching baking techniques that you would normally only get from over priced classes. Mine is the massive 3rd edition. In the 4th edition the publisher finally split it up into two, slightly, more manageable volumes.