Erstellt am: 12. 1. 2012 - 11:21 Uhr
Today's Webtip: Cookbooks
Being a man between cultures, food has been a constant struggle. Trying to make the comfort food of my youth used to be almost as difficult as learning to make the foods I only recently learned to love.
Even if I managed to grab the recipes I needed, transitioning that information to the kitchen was rather difficult at first. And you would be surprised how hard it can be to get integrated in the kitchen without the help of some people who grew up with the food.
Fortunately the days of being dependant on austrianized versions of American classics, or struggling with unfamiliar process or taste combinations are pretty much over.
My go-to site for local cooking is www.ichkoche.at
It's pretty much the only thing I use anymore to make all of the stuff Austrian school kids might like, and has given me a fighting chance at keep up with other kids’ grandmas. It also put me on my path toward my favorite potato gulasch recipe, something that has made me very happy indeed. It's not quite a replacement for the ancient Wienerküche book that I have, but it has its place.
For the hungry American in me, I turn to allrecipes.com One of the biggest problems with many U.S. recipe collections is that they tend to be very dependent on recombination. Throwing together various industrial food stuffs to make something else. That's how most people in my Midwest town seemed to cook, and it's almost impossible to translate those recipes into Austrian.
Das FM4 Kochbuch kommt.
Schick uns deine Rezepte!
Which is a very good thing indeed. It's also one of the reasons I love allrecipes.com Most of their recipes rely on natural ingredients, so if I can find the basics, I can recreate almost anything I want. As long as I don't need Anchos at least.
It also has one of the best tools for measurement translation, actually moving between teaspoons and grams where it is appropriate rather than doing simple volume equivalencies. In other words, no cups, no problem.
Both sites would like to make recipe hunting a social experience, but only one actually pulls it off. allrecipes.com actually has real comments for most recipes, much more useful than star ratings and a good source of cooking tips and alternative ideas.
Not that you can't comment at ichkoche.at, it's just that there are fewer users to actually do the commenting and many recipes have ratings but nothing more. Although the ones that ARE there are a little bit more entertaining.
Just avoid the US or tex-mex recipes there. Trust me, they suck.