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So, I know there are some obvious books out there that we all know and love (Joy, I'm looking at you) but what about some of your underrated treasures?  One of my favorites is The Uncommon Gourmet by Ellen Helman.  It's somewhat dated, but she gives some great suggestions for ways to combine good ingredients to get great food.

So what are some of your favorite hidden gems?

Off the top of my head, I think of three cookbooks that are treasured by me and my family but who I would think many people may have never heard of.

1. The I Love to Cook Book by Lauren Groveman was my unconventional first cookbook because it was the one I learned to make really really good muffins from as a teenager--still my muffin recipe of choice.  She has (had?) a PBS show which is how my Dad found the book I believe.  Lauren is a great teacher, and the book has a great balance between modern and traditional, simple and challenging, and homey and impressive.  I highly recommend it, especially for a new cook who wants to learn to make everything from AMAZING muffins and scones to corn pudding, AMAZING braised leeks, grilled meats, seafood, fresh pasta, and a nice variety of home baked bread items!  Lots of pretty pictures too.

2. Greyston Bakery Cookbook by Sara Kate Gillingham-Ryan is a fantastic little baking book.  It's an unassuming looking book in a world of Dorie Greenspan and Baking Illustrated cookbooks, but there is one interesting recipe after another, and they're ALL very do-able.  I tend to go to this book when I want to make something that will make me look like a brilliantly creative pastry chef without trying too hard.  There is something called an Olive Oil Sherry Souffle cake that I've been meaning to make for so long, and an Earl Grey Tea Cake which, hello, yum.

3. Recipes from Home by David Page and Barbara Shinn from the cozy NYC restaurant of the same name is like looking into someone's treasured family album interspersed with heirloom recipes.  The only reason you NEED to get a (now super cheap) copy is the mac and cheese recipe with roasted tomatoes.  With only a few tweaks it's  become my family's own ultimate mac and cheese.  I'd trust their version of almost any classic midwestern dish, of which many are represented in the book.

Oh yeah, one more!  Beth's Basic Bread Book by Beth Hensperger (same author as "The Bread Bible") has the most perfect yeasted cornmeal honey bread that's it's hard to believe it comes from a beginner bread baking book.  Truly, it's my favorite bread.  The book has many recipes with step by step illustrations and detailed instructions.  It's only 156 pages, which for a new bread baker is probably less intimidating, but Ohhh that bread...

Hmm, that's all I got right now.  Wow these all have really horrible names, don't they?  Don't judge a book by its name, please!

Three lesser-known treasures from my trove:

Judith Barrett's Fagioli: The Bean Cuisine of Italy (Rodale, 2004).
 
Vatcharin Bhumichitr's Healthy Salads from Southeast Asia (Weatherhill, 2001)

G. Franco Romagnoli's Cucina di Magro: Cooking Lean the Traditional Italian Way (Steerforth Italia, revised & enlarged edition, 2003)

I've cooked at least half the recipes in each of these and loved them all.

xxx, mcvl

ae.bell, the Greyston Bakery book is one of those which you end up wanting to bookmark almost every page. It's totally full of hidden gems!  I have Joy the Baker to thank for introducing me to the book via the Pink Grapefruit Yogurt Cake, but the author of the cookbook is also the editor of the Kitchn (on Apartment Therapy), and she actually shared several recipes on the site back when the book came out.  I made the fresh coconut cake last summer and despite having no luck finding fresh coconut (I used dried unsweetened) in upstate NY, it came out great.  And regarding the yeasted cornmeal bread, it alone is worth the price of the book.

mcvl, I'm excited to hear about the Fagioli cookbook!  Somehow it's evaded me in my searches.  It seems that cookbooks on beans are either of the hard-to-find ingredient variety (Heirloom Beans from Rancho Gordo) or they seem kind of outdated and unexciting.  Am I right to assume this one's got interesting food and normal types of beans?  Really just in the last yaer I've begun to eat beans enthusiastically, so this could be a great resource!

OK, I have to confess I'm a bean fanatic.  I use only dried beans, never canned; I soak them to save energy (not because I think it gives the beans a different texture or taste); I salt the soaking water and do not discard it; I cook the beans in their soaking water (plus more if needed) in a crockpot.  I always have at least two cups of cooked dried beans in the fridge at any time; when I get below two cups I start another batch.

Dried beans are just about the cheapest luxury that exists.  I buy from amazon sellers (especially Angelina's Gourmet), Kalustyan's, Rancho Gordo, Market Hall (just sent off an order for cicerchie and Umbrian lentils, see below), plus Bob's Red Mill in my food co-op, plus random beans that I set my eyes on as I walk through any market in any country in the world,  Many the customs agent has rolled his eyes at my suitcase full of dried beans.

Here are the beans Barrett calls for:

borlotti, a.k.a. cranberry
cannellini
chickpeas
cicerchie (another kind of chickpea)
corona (big white bean)
fava
lamon
lentils
romani

I use any kind of bean in any bean recipe.  So for instance I might make hummus-like bean dip with pinto beans instead of chickpeas and Cuban beans with fava beans instead of black beans.  Sometimes I make brilliant discoveries, sometimes not.  Goooooo BEANS!

I store them in their broth, and we use them pretty quickly.  I eat three meals a day at home, and beans are almost always on the menu for at least one of them.  I make bean salads, bean soup, beany stews, pasta & beans, fish&beans (divine combination), bean dips and spreads -- lotso beans.  I also have on hand at all times home-made broth, a cooked whole grain, and braised greens.  My four mason jars of freedom.

 Oh, and jzanger, I have a wonderful recommendation for you -- get Aliza Green's simply named and gloriously imaginative Beans: More than 200 Delicious, Wholesome Recipes from Around the World.  You'll be glad you did.

mcvl, I just got a package that made my day: a used library copy (my favorite kind) of Fagioli: The Bean Cuisine of Italy and I can't wait to dive in.  So far I'm liking how it's organized and the beautiful clarity of the layout.  Thanks so much for the suggestion!

Lean Bean Cuisine by Jay Solomon is a good unknown bean book.

Thanks for your post, Lindacakes!  It called my attention to this thread, which escaped me at the time it started up.  I'm still chuckling at mcvl's "four Mason jars of freedom".

My contribution is a cookbook that was a big seller and very well known in its day but hasn't been re-issued more than once in the decades since it appeared. As a result, it's not as widely used as it ought to be, even though the wheel has turned back to the fresh, seasonal vegetable consumption that made it very much the right book at the right time when first published:  The Victory Garden Cookbook, by Marian Morash.

Few cookbooks of any type, let alone vegetable-focused ones, cram the amount of reliable and useful information into the relatively small amount of shelf space the VGC takes up -- and the lavish use of full-color photographs is instructive, not just decorative. It's a book for omnivores, written by a skilled cook for other cooks facing new harvests or farmer's market abundance.  It would be among the untouchables if I were ever to shed some of the cookbooks here. <--(Not any time soon; I only have a hundred or so. My EYB Bookshelf is two-thirds wishlist/reading).

These are my best friends and have been with me from the beginning of my cooking adventure.  Many of these I brought back with me from Okinawa to the US in the mid 70's 

Best Recipes from the Cook Book Guild copyright 1972. Every recipe I've used have been been excellent.  My favorite simple beef stew comes from this book and is still my faovorite.  The stew is called Beef Stew, Daisyfield and what makes this one different is the use of small amount of cloves.

The Uncommon Cook Book copyright 1968 - _the_ best stroganoff recipe and too many other greats in this book.  This book is smeared from all the years of me cooking from the book

Love many of Recipes on Parade esp Foreign Food and Desserts.  All the recipes comes military wives.  And most copyright 1970.  I learned to cook from these books as well as Joy of Cooking.  Made the best curries, soups esp gazapacho and onion soup gratinee, desserts galore like the mouses.  Still some of the best recipes here. 

The Sunset Ground Beef Cook Book copyright 1968 - great use of ground beef - my favorite cottage cheese meat loaf comes from this one. 

Betty Crocker's Dinner in a Dish copyright 1965 - still the lasagne recipe I use the most

McCall's Cooking School - the best eggplant Italian style.  Tried plenty, but this is the one I come back to. 

My favourite under-rated cookbook would have to be Tasty by Roy Finnamore.  I bought this book for $2.00 Canadian a few years ago.  I have made breakfast dishes, rice dishes, beet, and lamb shanks from his recipes.  Always simple enough, but like the title, "Tasty"!

The Art of Fine Baking by Paula Peck!

When I was young, Paula Peck was the baking authority.  Then after a while you never saw her mentioned; it was as if she'd never existed. 

I'd be very interested to hear from EYB members who've used The Art of Fine Baking some comparison with any of the more recent bibles they have experience with.  Starting with you, suemac, if you're willing..

The Art of Fine Baking is one of my favorite bake books, it covers a wide range of pastries without becoming a tome. The genoise and the basic sponge sheet are my go-to recipes, I've made numerous strawberry rolls with that basic spong sheet. Unlike modern bake books, there is not one single picture of any of the finished product, however, there are a few illustrations for some of the techniques. Per 101 Classic Cookbooks, these, as stated in my note on my copy of the book, are the notable recipes:

apricot cream filling

chocolate brownies

chocolate truffles

croissants

genoise

linzer torte

Swiss meringue

I was so impressed with the book, I bought Paula Peck's other book, The Art of Good Cooking, which I, sadly, have never cooked from.

Maybe its unindexed status is partly to blame... 

Are the Mel Klapholz illustrations purely decorative (as the cover image of this edition seems to hint), or do they attempt to convey the finished dishes or preparation techniques?

Yes, the illustrations in my edition of The Art of Good Cooking are mostly decorative. Flipping through it, I saw a few non-decorative illustrations, one on how to bone a chicken breast and a whole series on how to bone a whole turkey tor a roulade.

My favourite hidden gem is Lucy Cufflin's Lucy's Food.  I've had it for a couple of years and the recipes are really straightforward.  She also tells you what to put with the main dish, and gives tips on cooking ahead.  If she wrote another book, I would buy it!  (Actually, I think there's one called 'Lucy's Bakes', but I'm not too bothered about baking.)

I'm not sure how 'hidden' this book is, though - I just looked on Amazon and it has 56 reviews - most of which are 5 star!

Japanese Country Cookbook - I grew up on the recipes from this book, and it's actually how this fussy eater of a child learned to love my vegetables. So many great, simple vegetable salads and side dishes, plus classic simple Japanese food. I have bought so many $1-2 copies of this book for friends off Amazon!

Pasta: Every Way for Every Day - pretty much my "go to" for classic pasta sauces, the first book I look to for any standard sauce and easy variations to make thereof (it's on my list of titles I want to index here in the future)

Stir Fry: Tasty Recipes for Everyday Cooking - this is one of those "bargain books" I picked up once, which again I ended up buying copies of for a lot of friends. It's one of my mom's favorite cookbooks as well, everytime I visit her we usually make at least 1 or 2 dishes from it. I have yet to make a recipe from this book I haven't really liked and it's such a nice mixture of traditional Asian dishes and flavors with a few fun "fusion" recipes as well. (This is another one on my eventual "to index" list.)