Also, if you work in mostly vanilla survival mode as I do, the very simple "CraftGuide" mod works very well for recipes, too. I like it as it gives no option whatsoever to, ahem ... cheat. An option which is far too tempting with as much gathering and crafted is required for this terrific mod.
NEI got waayyyy better Mod compatibility, craftguide may not work with GC. BTW, you can lock recipe mode in the NEI config so you cannot actually cheat with it