Along with Jennyema's excellent selections,
some choice bits:
Any book by master baker Nancy Silverton.
After all, her dessert brought tears to Julia's eyes!
I have been making her desserts from early years and each recipe has stood the test of time and never failed! She takes baking to the next level without resorting to exotic ingredients...
Christmas Memories with Recipes (from chefs once famous, yet now of a vintage era and gone) The book is an incredible intimate sharing of real memories and recipes from the best of the best vintage era 1970-90? Bert Greenes contribution alone (Hint: his mother HATED Christmas) is worth the purchase alone.
Here are some of the contributers copied from amazon: Lee Bailey, Jerhane Benoit (the last piece this Canadian writer wrote before her death), Robert Farrar Capon, Irena Chalmers, Craig Claiborne, Marion Cunningham, Robert Finigan, Carol Fliners, Betty Fussell, Ed Giobbi. Bert Greene, Jane Grigson, Helen Witty, Maida Heatter, Evan Jones, Jenifer Lang, Edna Lewis, Bryan Miller, Beatrice Ojakangas, Jacques Pépin, Felipe Rojas-Lombardi, Julee Rosso and Martha Stewart.
Another very interesting and curious book is
Jane Grigson's GOOD THINGS
She skips from BOUDOIR BISCUITS (imagine Madame de Pompadour delicately nibbling such delicacies as she sent out her deadly lettres de cachet)... to a diagram and program of purging, cleansing snails for cookery with many fascinating stops along the way. One shouldn't miss this!
Any cookbook by Laurie Colwin
Ms. Colwin was a beloved writer for GOURMET magazines for many years, and her cookbook recipes are SIMPLE, not a challenge for your mother, yet, her throughly modern approach to providing good food everyday for oneself and others is important I think. Her philosophy in simplicity without fuss in order to get on with actual eating.
Everyday. These are really essays with recipes and several re-printed from GOURMET submissions.
Marcella Hazen's cookbooks...
Marcella's savory flair gave everyone fabulous recipes easily made at home, and the entire fabulous menu could be reproduced by a fair cook without a brigade de cuisine in the bowels of an ancient cellar with gigantic stockpots simmering calves heads for stock.
Delicious, yet not high tech. Any recipe could stand alone or pair with others with various compositions.
That's all I can think of now...although I cannot recommend too much, the writings of
MFK Fischer. The passions, appetites, and constant need for feeding the spirit and mind along with body and soul are meat for her pen. Her extensive writing on her pre-war French experiences are tremendous and really give an idea of the real reason French food is so good. It was a very serious subject to eveyone high and low. The (painful to me) recounting of her maitresse de hotel's relentless, implacable devotion to provide delicious meals while driving the meanest bargain was incredible. I am exhausted just remembering this singular, daily triumphant struggle.
I know these writings with recipes are a bit different than the usual beautiful huge chef's offering...but, because they are different, they may be a very delightful experience.