Jacqueline Raposo

The Ellis Island Immigrant Cookbook by Tom Bernardin. I'm a proud New Yorker and first-generation American on my father's side (his family emigrated from Portugal in the 1960s). This beautiful, simple book traces stories from those who brought very little with them to the United States, save their rich histories and traditions. I love playing with the recipes, tracking their origins from Germany, Italy, Yugoslavia and Wales. Before the Internet opened the world up to us, books like this helped make that world a little smaller.

I started cooking as a child because an illness and subsequent food allergies made dining out challenging (this was before gluten was considered a dirty word) and my parents had enough to deal with. Over the years, it's been a guide when I've needed food to be a method for healing. Seasonal vegetables, mindful eating, the reactions of raw versus cooked food... it gently covers a wide gamut when learning how foods affect your body.

I recently inherited this book from a cousin in Portugal, who inherited it from my great uncle, a priest who was gifted with it by some of his parishioners. The recipes are vague, with their non-specific measurements and methods assumed as common knowledge. Being in Portuguese, it takes me a while to make sure my translations are completely accurate. Without pictures or even much of a description of a final product, I don't really know how something is supposed to even come out. But it forces me to take my time, and to transport my actions to what I imagine I'd be doing were I to live on a tiny island off the coast of Portugal in the 1950s, with only a wood-fired oven and range to play with.

I've probably baked more from this book than any other dessert book in my library, since I was part of a blogging group that ambitiously decided to make every recipe together on a weekly basis. We didn't quite make it, but we came really, really close. My sweet preference is far milder than Tosi's, but I learned her methods through repetition that really taught me to be a better baker: my cookies now have more texture and are more visually striking, my layer cakes are structured strongly and have so many interesting flavor elements to them, and I started gravitating towards a mind frame where desserts were composed with several complimentary elements, rather than just putting a platter of one thing on a table. Baking through it was the best master class I could have given myself.

I LOVE how faith and food meet during the holidays. I grew up Catholic, but some of my closest friends have been Jewish, and their stories of why foods were celebrated throughout the year always moved me. A close friend and roommate gave me this book as a gift after I'd made challah and latkes for our holiday party. I love how it describes recipes by their place in the bible as well as in modern day life. I cook from it regularly, and reach for it whenever I want to honor the faith of those I love.

Once upon a time I'd have been horrified at the idea of grinding my own meat or combining off parts of animals in terrines. Now I feel like a champion when I master something as simple as his chicken liver mousse recipe (sooo good!) and can chart out what I'll do first with my new meat grinder. The way he relays his techniques is so clear, I feel myself learning how to be a better cook more than even having delicious fruits of my labor.

Brooks is so badass, and his book is too. The simplicity of slow-cooking fruit in an oven come together with stories of music and roadies and being vegetarians with no money, that I wanna keep cooking from it for its entertainment value as much as for its recipes. The recipes are really, really awesome though.

More books need to embrace visual creativity, in my opinion. Amanda's take on cooking with vegetables is notoriously unique. Having a cookbook that reads like a graphic novel screams so much more about her personality and the kind of food you'll be eating from it than any other form I can imagine.

I'd say a good 90% of things my mom, siblings and I baked from growing up in the 80s and 90s came from this book. Peanut Butter Krinkles, lace cookies, variations on the classic chocolate chip, plus all the hand written cards we jammed into the binder's pockets... this book was my childhood, which I then Xerox'd when I left home. I love it so much, I just bought my own on Ebay four minutes ago. It's special.

I've been on a gluten-free diet for health reasons for over twenty years. I work with around ten kinds of flour on a regular basis, and this book has been instrumental in helping me figure out how to get what I make to taste like what other people normally eat via applying ingredient ratios in basic baking. It's a base level of knowledge home bakers should work on often.