Old faithful.

The Times published an article on the new fall cookbooks this morning, but the comments on the article are far more insightful than the piece itself. The question raised was, "What cookbooks do you find yourself returning to over and over?"  If you know my family at all, you know my mom collects cookbooks from all over the country, and that we all love to cook and really enjoy sharing recipes and cooking techniques with each other.

I have several new ideas for cookbooks I'd love from reading the first few hundred comments--if you're interested, you can look through the list here--but thought I'd share the ones we use most in our household:

1. Cook's Illustrated, The Best Recipe.  Goes through the science behind each recipe and explains things like "Why use butter instead of margarine for baking?" and "Do you have to sift the flour for cakes?" and "Why braise meat before roasting?"  The idea is that they cooked many, many versions of each recipe to test out the most effective techniques.  

2. The Best Make-Ahead Recipe. Same basis, but this time you can refrigerate or freeze things and serve them later.  Great for feeding larger groups of people, and the cinnamon roll recipe alone is worth the price of the cookbook.

3. Joy of Cooking.  I don't think we'd get through two weeks in the house without it, and I love all the explanations of ingredients and techniques.

4. Patricia Wells' cookbooks.  We haven't started working our way through the Bistro Cookbook yet but have made at least half of the recipes in the Paris  and Provence Cookbooks even though some of them have rather exotic and expensive ingredients.  She makes meat taste incredible.

5. Luscious Lemon Desserts.  My go-to cookbook for spring and summer desserts as Matt doesn't like anything too sweet so lemon desserts are an acceptable compromise.

What cookbooks do you use most?  Where do you get your recipes?