Top international cookbooks

If you are interested in recreating some of the food you have enjoyed during your travels -- and authenticity is important to you -- these cookbooks offer a good starting point.

With a half-dozen or more of these ethnic cookbooks, you will have recipes by the thousands to delight your palate.

With 19,000 food and cooking titles listed at Amazon.com covering most of the globe (including polar regions and even outer space), there are plenty of terrific choices.

This list started as one based on my personal foundation stones, books I had owned and nearly worn over the years. I expanded my list for an article for the Baltimore Sun, and the books below reflect input from top chefs, food-travel writers, cookbook store owners and a cookbook librarian -- see list at right.

If you know any young engaged couples, these would make excellent wedding presents. My niece Christine Hayes in Southern California enjoyed receiving a number of these for her wedding last year.

The Fabulous Five

French: Mastering the Art of French Cooking, by Julia Child, Louisette Bertholle and Simone Beck.

Our chefs eagerly picked Mastering the Art to lead off the canon. Craig Claiborne hailed it as a "masterpiece" when it was first published, and the praise continues nearly four decades later.

"Julia Child's book is an especially fine choice," said James Sinopoli, director of the Baltimore International College's School of Culinary Arts. "It's very easy to understand."

Reader reviews at Amazon.com agree, with one reader calling this text "the cookbook of cookbooks."

Mastering the Art of French Cooking can help the neophyte progress from simple store-bought baking mixes into a world of Chicken Tarragon With Mushroom Stuffing, Spinach Souffle and other elegant dishes from scratch.

Chicken recipes are particularly strong, including Boneless Chicken Breasts With Paprika, Onions and Cream, and Grilled Chicken With Mustard. And the recipes for garlic soup, leek and potato soup, omelets, vinaigrette salad dressing and many other dishes remain classic.

Julia Child and her fellow authors offer simple line drawings of equipment and step-by-step definitions of cutting, chopping, beating egg whites and making sauces and souffles. Their clear instructions mean that almost anyone can begin cooking French food, and anyone who can cook French food can cook from the world's other magnificent cuisines.

Italian: Marcella Hazan, the top-selling international cookbook author, scores big with Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking. Essentials combines revised and updated versions of her out-of-print, 1970s classics, The Classic Italian Cookbook and The Second Classic Italian Cookbook.

Even the simple pastas provided by Hazan are a revelation to the palate. Home cooks can delight the family week in and week out with stalwarts such as Lasagna with Ricotta Pesto, Orecchiette with Broccoli and Anchovy Sauce, Spaghettini with White Clam Sauce and Fettuccine with Gorgonzola Sauce. Also nominated by Johnson & Wales' Wright: The Splendid Table by Lynne Rossetto Kasper

Indian: Indian Madhur Jaffrey's Indian Cooking by Madhur Jaffrey the most compact cookbook in the canon, packs its 200 pages with so many winners that our cookbook committee loved it. Like Child and Hazan, Jaffrey takes an exotic, infinitely varied cuisine and teaches us how to re-create it step by step in the American kitchen. Recipes for Rogan Josh, Lemon Coriander Chicken, Pork Vindaloo and many more explode with color and flavor. The vegetable recipes, although described as accompaniments to meat, make scrumptious meals on their own. These recipes are easy, fun and tasty.

Mexican: With 40 years of eating excursions south of the border, Diana Kennedy rules for Mexican cuisine. Her Mexican The Art of Mexican Cooking may be the most comprehensive. Our committee also loved The Essential Cuisines of Mexico and My Mexico.

Southeast Asian: The Complete Asian Cookbook by Charmaine Solomon explores 800 recipes from 16 countries -- and our chefs loved its authenticity. Wright adds the Original Thai Cookbook by Jennifer Brennan, and True Thai by Victor Sodsook gets the nod from Francois Dionot of L'Academie de Cuisine.

More cookbooks!

Top international cookbooks

The Fabulous Five

Cooking experts who contributed to this roundup