I've been bursting at the seams anticipating this latest cookbook list. Many of you are familiar with New York-based designer Isaac Mizrahi, his list of accomplishments is wide-ranging and impressive. Any attempt by me to communicate them to you in one concise sentence is futile (I spent the last twenty minutes trying) - his illustrated timeline does a much better job. The thing I love most about Isaac is the way he weaves many different creative layers into his work, life, and creations - color, texture, design, film, publishing, fabric and photography. And while you might be familiar with Isaac from his television appearances, documentary, collections, or his new web show, what you might not know is that he knows his way around the kitchen.

ISAAC'S COOKING STYLE (in his own words):
I don't know where my passion for food comes from. I was a really fat kid and food was central to my happiness and neurosis. When I was eleven or twelve I remember falling in love with the word 'saute' and I began to saute things in my mom's kitchen. On Saturday mornings I would cut mushrooms and vegetables and saute them in her non-stick pans with vegetable oil. Sometimes I think I got into cooking through my love for the words. When I moved out of my mom's house I got a set of Le Creuset cookware in blue from Macy's Cellar along with the two volumes of Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking. I would just cook things - I still use the Creuset. I had a close friend who was married to the most divine French guy who made cooking seem really easy. He used to make fruit tarts in a snap and I always envied that skill.

I wouldn't know what to call my cooking style. Sometimes it's hit-or-miss but mostly it's plain, plain, plain. I think the best things are the plainest. The best thing I make is mint chocolate chip ice cream with fresh mint that comes from my garden in the summer. I'm also really good at fruit tarts now. I use Jacques Pepin's recipes for doughs, which are FLAWLESS. All his recipes are FLAWLESS. I might call my style "When a Jew Relaxes He Can Cook Okay."

I also have a terrible confession to make. My knives are not sharp enough and I don't know what to do. I've taken them to places to have them sharpened, I've tried to sharpen them myself with different sharpening machines and it's not possible to ever get them to be as sharp as when you first buy them. Anyway, I've given up, my knives are dull, and I'm ready to replace them all (which is a shame because real chefs are not supposed to replace their knives. I ADORE my ovens which are the electric Wolf ones that have the beautiful Russian blue enamel inside and the heavy, heavy doors and the perfect convection feature. Sometimes I think I'm not worthy. I hate my dishwasher, a Kitchen-aid. There, I named a name. When I was a kid my mom had a fabulous one that lasted as though it were new for thirty years. The one I got is a lemon. In fact, most of the appliances I got in my kitchen three years ago were lemons and I had to have maybe seven out of nine of them replaced. It was a crazy, crazy thing which I owe to the basic decline of quality. I have the greatest ice cream maker on Earth. It's a giant Italian job, I think the name of it is Lello. It's huge and it weighs two tons and will only make a small quantity of perfect ice cream, maybe one and a half quarts, if that, at a time.

FAVORITE COOKBOOKS (the ones Isaac turns to most for inspiration):
- Jacques Pepin: La Technique / La Methode. Out of print which I like to rub in people's faces. I own his Complete Techniques which is the same thing only better, in one new, easier volume. I just think he's the greatest teacher and greatest recipe writer.

- Mark Bitman: How To Cook Everything. Which has replaced Fannie Farmer for me. His recipe for Hollandaise is the easiest and most fantastic recipe. Coming from someone who was baffled by Hollandaise for years because, wonderful as Julia Child is, her Hollandaise recipe is so confusing and crazy. To tell you the truth, a lot of her recipes are - though I attribute my ability to cook to her books and to the confusion surrounding certain recipes. One has to cook her things a few times to work out kinks - you develop technique because of the mistakes and the crazy ways recipe come together in some of her earlier books. The ones she made with Pepin though are flawless and that one called Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home is a national treasure.

- I use Lidia Bastianich's books till the pages are no longer legible. She is a goddess of a certain kind of Italian food that I adore. I also love Marcella Hazan's book, the first most basic one. I developed my own INCREDIBLE fritata repertoire from her basic recipe.

- I use Lindsey Shere's Chez Panisse Desserts book like crazy, THAT BOOK IS A MASTERPIECE ! ! ! I love Dave Pasternack's book about fish and I think anyone who can cook fish beautifully is a poet. I WORSHIP Nick Malgieri's book called How To Bake. Anything I've ever baked from that book works to perfection. And I must say the best chocolate cake on Earth comes from little old Fannie Farmer. I went through EVERY DAMN chocolate cake recipe and it's still the best. Fannie Farmer does rock.

***

To keep up with Isaac, check in with him on his new show or through his blog . THANKS again Isaac, for sharing your favorites (and not-so-favorites) with us!

Related links:
- Isaac Mizrahi NY
- WATCH ISAAC
- Isaac's blog
- Browse Isaac's article archive
- Past cookbook list: Grace Bonney of design*sponge shares her favorite cookbooks.
- Past cookbook list: Cookbook author Eric Gower shares his favorite cookbooks.

This breakfast polenta just edged out the do-it-youself waffle bar as my favorite crowd-pleasing brunch component. I love the idea of making a big pot, keeping it warm over a low burner (or crockpot!), and offering up a range of toppings, sweet and savory, for friends to choose from. It is creamy and comforting, and receptive to many add-in flavors and textures. For this version I served small bowls of fluffy yellow polenta topped with toasted almonds, jewel-colored dried fruits, and a drizzle of cream and honey.

Considerations: While you can certainly get away with using an instant polenta (and in turn much shorter cooking times), treat yourself to real deal, stone-ground, coarse polenta this time around. Keep in mind that each polenta has its own personality, required cooking time, and quirks (based on factors like the size of the grind, how long its been around, etc). The reward for a bit of patience is a loose, creamy, beautifully textured final polenta eagerly awaiting a dollop, swirl, or sprinkling of your favorite ingredients. Again, its great for a mixed-crowd brunch because the polenta itself in this case is dairy-free, vegan, vegetarian, I think it can qualify as gluten-free if you buy the polenta from the right source (maybe the GFers can help me out here)....I'm going to add a list of brunch-friendly toppings below here:

Breakfast Polenta Bar, topping ideas:

- toasted almonds, walnuts, or hazelnuts
- all manner of berries
- a drizzle of this blueberry maple syrup
- Rosewater Plum Compote
- poached eggs
- chopped herbs
- cream or even better, an infused cream
- chopped dates or dried fruit
- re-hydrated, chopped sun-dried tomatoes

Add any other ideas in the comments and I can eventually add those ideas to the list as well. Also, be sure to check back on Thursday, I have the next favorite cookbooks list going up and its a great one!

Today's chickpea hot pot recipe was inspired by a small burst of early spring cleaning. I have a certain shelf in a certain cupboard in my kitchen that houses all manner of grains, legumes and rices. These ingredients do their best to spill over and infiltrate other areas in their proximity (the refrigerator, various bowls on the countertop, other cupboards), but I do my very best to keep them in their place. One of the problems I run into are the almost empty bags and jars - the 1/2 cup of purple rice here, the 3/4 cup of whole wheat couscous there. I end up with whole clusters of these stragglers. On this particular cleaning spree I came face to face with a large billowy plastic bag containing just a handful or two of bulgur wheat nestled in one of its corners. Not wanting to toss it out, I used it as the starting point for today's recipe. I have an abundance of citrus around right now, so the fast-cooking bulgur cooks in a light orange-juice accented broth. Plenty of chickpeas, tiny cauliflower pieces, onions, and greens add texture and substance to the hearty pot.

And for the sticklers, I don't meant hotpot in the traditional sense, I'm naming it this because we're literally talking about a big hearty pot of hot stew - and truth be told I think I've overused the soup title lately here, here, and here.

Other bulgur recipes:
- Bulgur, Celery and Pomegranate Salad Recipe
- A Beautiful Bulgar and Spinach Pilaf Recipe

Readers looking to make this gluten-free can trade in an alternate grain (quinoa would be nice) and this should work for you as well - I'd likely pre-cook the grain and stir it in, but you might also cook it in the pot.

This freckled batch of fluffy buttermilk pancakes is punctuated with all manner of surprises. The recipe was inspired by a tiny pouch of Full Belly Farm poppy seeds hand-delivered to me by regular Mighty Foods contributer Rachel Cole. While the poppy seeds here are apparent, enveloped by the batter you'll also find deeply toasted sunflower seeds which lend a nutty depth to the pancakes you wouldn't get otherwise. I drizzled the lot with a chunky, orange and lemon-flecked, homemade citrus syrup.

Don't skimp on the poppyseeds, there's something irresistibly delightful about the role they play in these crowd-pleasing pancakes. I mean really, who can complain about the peppy crunch they lend to every bite of pancake or muffin they infiltrate?

And lastly, while I love this citrus-drizzled version of the recipe, you might certainly rework it into a delicious savory poppy seed pancake. You would just stir a few handfuls of anything from chopped sun-dried tomatoes, herbs, lemon zest, and/or crumbled cheese to chopped olives, cooked grains, or smashed roasted garlic into the batter. Replace the syrup with a generous slather of a creatively concocted compound butter and you're on your way.

Related links:
- Full Belly Farm
- My other favorite pancake recipe (with an outrageously delicious blueberry maple syrup)
- Just noticed this informative Michael Ruhlman post on compound butter as well.

Many of you are familiar with San Francisco-based Eric Gower, I've highlighted his work in the past. You may have seen him on Yahoo!, attended one of his classes, or welcomed him into your kitchen though his innovative books and recipes. Eric and I have traded emails for years now, and I'm so happy he agreed to share some of the cookbooks that have become favorites in his kitchen.

ERIC'S COOKING STYLE (in his own words):
"Ethnic markets meet farmers' markets" sort of captures my cooking style. I like to combine what I call global flavor blasts--ingredients and condiments from around the world--with local organic bounty in easy, no-fuss ways. What to have for dinner is such a source of stress for so many people; I try to offer easy, innovative, and tasty solutions to this problem that never seems to go away!

FAVORITE COOKBOOKS (the ones Eric turns to most for inspiration):
- Gray Kunz (with Peter Kaminsky), The Elements of Taste. My vote for the most creative, interesting, and ground-breaking cookbook of all time. Kunz considers thinking about taste in the traditional five ways – sweet, sour, salt, bitter, and umami­-to be a pathetically primitive way to understand great food, especially the preparation of it. He has about 15, complete with groupings like Tastes that Pull (tangy, vinted, bulby, floral/herbal, spice aromatic, funky), Tastes that Push (salty, sweet, picante), Tastes that Punctuate (sharp, bitter), and Taste Platforms (garden, meaty, oceanic, starchy).

- Deborah Madison and Ed Brown, The Greens Cookbook
I cut my teeth on zen cooking, and really recommend it. I grew up in a meat-centric (actually wild-game-centric) household, and when I learned about how zen monks cook and eat vegetables and grains, it changed everything for me. I consider this book the best of the lot, which would include all the Tassajara books and other zen cuisine books.

- Jeremiah Tower, Jeremiah Tower Cooks -- It’s not so much the recipes in this collection that inspire, it’s Tower’s utter conviction in absolutely everything he does and says. There is no falliblism with Tower; it’s unthinkable to him to cook a dish in any way but the way he has devised, tinkered with, and thought about. There is a great deal of information for people who really want to learn how to cook well, all infused with Tower's considerable panache.

- Robert Wemischner, The Vivid Flavors Cookbook
This guy has broken away so far he's coming out the other side! A wildly creative, boundary-smashing, bold and daring book full dishes that pop, pop, and pop some more. His writing style (not to mention recipe titles) can be cloying, and many of the recipes are very labor-intensive, but my hat is off to his originality and sheer nerve.

- Jerry Traunfeld, The Herbfarm Cookbook, and the The Herbal Kitchen
Traunfeld is the undisputed King of Herbs -- he uses them, usually in large quantities, in everything, and everything seems to taste better as a result. The main influence in my own heavy reliance on herbs to deliver flavor and to keep things on the lighter side.

- Michael Field, All Manner of Food
The fussiness and sheer arrogance of Field's books make Tower look like a wilting wallflower, but there is so much to learn from him that it's like a complete culinary school education wrapped in one volume. Long out of print but easily found on the net.

***

A big THANK YOU to Eric for sharing his favorites with us. To keep up with Eric, check in with him on his new blog.

Related links:
- The Breakaway Cook blog
- The Breakaway Cook website
- Grace Bonney of design*sponge shares her favorite cookbooks.