Celebrate Culinary Arts Month: New Cook Resources

We’re celebrating National Culinary Arts Month by sharing a list of Mediterranean Living’s favorite home cook resources.

Get ready to add to your bookmarks! 

Here are our top choices for all things Mediterranean:

Stop by Old Ways’ Mediterranean Foods Alliance for information about Mediterranean Diet and more Mediterranean recipes. We love this non-profit organization’s work in preserving the Mediterranean Food Heritage.

Sourdough Bread is a key food in the Mediterranean Diet. If you are interested in connecting with home cooks making sourdough bread, you can join the Perfect Sourdough Facebook group.

Looking for a comprehensive Mediterranean Diet cookbook featuring the tastiest of recipes? Look no further than Nancy Harmon Jenkins’ Mediterranean Diet Cookbook. This is an excellent choice for anyone just beginning to explore Mediterranean Diet.

Diane Kochilas is one of our favorite cookbook authors for authentic Greek cooking. We think you’ll enjoy taking a peek at her recipe box.

Are you interested in trying new Mediterranean restaurants or stopping by your local Mediterranean grocery? We recommend doing a search on Yelp to find restaurants and groceries in your area. The users provide ratings for each establishment and useful comments. This resource comes in handy when you’re visiting a new area and need eating or shopping suggestions.

You can learn about Mediterranean herbs and buy them in bulk at Mountain Rose Herbs. They provide solid information on how to use herbs, spices, teas and oils in both culinary and health improvement applications. They focus on sustainability and ethical wild harvesting practices.

Check out these highly recommended resources for loads of information about food, cooking and culinary ingredients:

Food52 is a drool-inducing resource for fantastic recipes.

Our other favorites for on-line recipes are Food Network, All Recipes and Epicurious. You can count on anything by Ina Garten on Food Network to be dependably delicious.

Our favorite journalistic food resources are NPR Food, BBC’s Good Food, HuffPost Food and The Guardian’s Food and Drink section.

‘The New Portuguese Table’ author David Leite has an excellent webpage that shares wonderful recipes and food writings. Stop by Leite’s Culinaria and browse his recipes from all over the world.

Don’t forget that YouTube is a great resource for cooking videos. It’s a great option for those of us who learn best through watching.

Let’s talk books. We love a good cookbook and food writings. Here are some recommendations: 

Stop by Jessica’s Biscuit for your cookbook buying pleasures. You’ll love their prices. We also thought you would like the The Good Cook, which is a really popular cookbook club. Get 4 Cookbooks for $1.00 each. You just have to buy 2 cookbooks at regular prices throughout your first year in the club.

Our favorite culinary magazine is Saveur. We love this magazine’s great combination of winning recipes, interesting travel stories and excellent food writing.

Lacking that one “essential” ingredient for a new recipe you are trying? Don’t fret. Pick up David Joachim’s Food Substitutions Bible and find substitutions for any ingredient.

Here are some on-line resources just for fun: 

They Draw and Cook is an excellent place to go for the artistically inclined who also enjoy a good recipe. You can also join their Facebook group to regularly see some of their best work.

Are you obsessed with buying and looking at cookbooks? Do you want to get tips on some of the best cookbooks you can pick up? You might want to join Cookbook Junkies’ Facebook Group. It’s a very welcome place to be, indeed!

One of the most convenient ways to access cooking information is through Phone Apps. Here are just a few that we recommend:

Make good, sustainable seafood purchasing decisions by using the Seafood Watch phone app.

We LOVE Tastebud App, which helps you create delicious recipes based on ingredients you have in your kitchen. Enter your ingredients and enjoy new recipes without having to go on a shopping trip!

Interested in identifying Wild Edibles? Wild Edibles by Winter Root is a 5 Star App. This one comes at a cost of $7.99, but it is well worth it for anyone really interested in foraging for wild edibles.

Perplexed about picking ripe fruit and vegetables in the produce department of your local grocery store? Check out the Harvest App, which provides instructions on selecting ripe produce.

For the wine drinkers, download the Vivino App, for taking photos of your wine choices while dining out, then rating and categorizing them. Never forget what that fabulous wine was that you enjoyed at your favorite restaurants.

Tell us about your favorite food resources and we’ll add them to this list.