Cooks' Books: Can You Try This at Home?

Go beyond the Joy of Cooking with Slate's recommendations

(NEWSER) - What to get the foodie or chef who already has all the classic cookbooks? Slate compiles offbeat favorites recommended by Mollie Katzen, James Oseland and other standout chefs, food editors, and more.

1. Ethan Becker: Cookwise—Less a cookbook than a bible of general cooking knowledge.
2. Dan Barber: The River Cottage Meat Book—"A carnivore's manifesto."
3. Melissa Clark: The Mensch Chef —Traditional Jewish recipe perfection.

Focus, routine, exercise...and also just running around a lot

(NEWSER) - Rotund chefs like Mario Batali and Paula Deen have given way to a crop of stick-thin kitchen wizards who clearly know a thing or two about how to stay slim while being surrounded by food. The Daily Beast gets the skinny from the skinny culinary elite, and won't take "high metabolism" for an answer:

• Taste: Chefs taste their food, the operative word being "taste." Anyhow, one says, "it's possible to work an entire shift and not eat anything, since we're running around all the time." Which leads us to:
• Exercise: Whether its just a byproduct of a busy day, or a concerted gym effort, you've got to burn the calories you put in.

From 'grilled to perfection' to 'garden fresh'

(NEWSER) - Tired of menus that use the same old phrases over and over? So are the food critics at the Chicago Tribune. They nominated nine menu clichés for the compost pile:

• "Grilled to perfection": Subjective to the point of meaninglessness. And why always grilled, and not “boiled” or “baked”? Can only grilling reach perfection?
• "World famous": Almost always an empty boast.
• "Kobe burger": “Kobe” is becoming a general synonym for “high quality”; it doesn't apply unless the beef actually came from Japan.

Putting toxin on salad not so good after all

(NEWSER) - A British celebrity chef has dished out a heartfelt apology for recommending in a magazine interview that readers use a poisonous plant that's "great on salads." He intended to push the wild herb fat hen, not henbane, which is a "very toxic plant and should never be eaten," the magazine has since warned. More»

So-called 'cook-through' bloggers go through cookbooks recipe by recipe

(NEWSER) - Food blogs are usually simple things, fun and easy to create, writes Lee Gomes in the Wall Street Journal. And then there are the increasingly popular "cook-through" blogs, in which devoted chefs of all skill levels pick a book, say the French Laundry Cookbook or the Gourmet Cookbook, and make every single recipe. More»