How to Cook Without a Book: Recipes and Techniques Every Cook Should Know by Heart


Pam Anderson - 2000
    Times have changed. Today we have an overwhelming array of ingredients and a fraction of the cooking time, but Anderson believes the secret to getting dinner on the table lies in the past. After a long day, who has the energy to look up a recipe and search for the right ingredients before ever starting to cook? To make dinner night after night, Anderson believes the first two steps--looking for a recipe, then scrambling for the exact ingredients--must be eliminated.  Understanding that most recipes are simply "variations on a theme," she innovatively teaches technique, ultimately eliminating the need for recipes.Once the technique or formula is mastered, Anderson encourages inexperienced as well as veteran cooks to spread their culinary wings.  For example, after learning to sear a steak, it's understood that the same method works for scallops, tuna, hamburger, swordfish, salmon, pork tenderloin, and more. You never need to look at a recipe again. Vary the look and flavor of these dishes with interchangeable pan sauces, salsas, relishes, and butters.Best of all, these recipes rise above the mundane Monday-through-Friday fare.  Imagine homemade ravioli and lasagna for weeknight supper, or from-scratch tomato sauce before the pasta water has even boiled.  Last-minute guests? Dress up simple tomato sauce with capers and olives or shrimp and red pepper flakes. Drizzle sautéed chicken breasts with a balsamic vinegar pan sauce. Anderson teaches you how to do it--without a recipe. Don't buy exotic ingredients and follow tedious instructions for making hors d'oeuvres. Forage through the pantry and refrigerator for quick appetizers. The ingredients are all there; the method is in your head. Master four simple potato dishes--a bake, a cake, a mash, and a roast--compatible with many meals. Learn how to make the five-minute dinner salad, easily changing its look and flavor depending on the season and occasion. Tuck a few dessert techniques in your back pocket and effortlessly turn any meal into a special occasion.There's real rhyme and reason to Pam's method at the beginning of every chapter: To dress greens, "Drizzle salad with oil, salt, and pepper, then toss until just slick. Sprinkle in some vinegar to give it a little kick." To make a frittata, "Cook eggs without stirring until set around the edges. Bake until puffy, then cut it into wedges." Each chapter also contains a helpful at-a-glance chart that highlights the key points of every technique, and a master recipe with enough variations to keep you going until you've learned how to cook without a book.

Twelve Recipes


Cal Peternell - 2014
    Based on the life-altering course of instruction he prepared and honed through many phone calls with his son, Twelve Recipes is the ultimate introduction to the kitchen. Peternell focuses on the core foods and dishes that comprise a successful home cook’s arsenal, each building skill upon skill—from toast, eggs, and beans, to vinaigrettes, pasta with tomato, and rice, to vegetables, soup, meats, and cake.Twelve Recipes will help home cooks develop a core repertoire of skills and increase their culinary confidence. Peternell tells you what basic ingredients and tools you need for a particular recipe, and then adds variations to expand your understanding. Each tip, instruction, and recipe connects with others to weave into a larger story that illuminates the connection between food and life. A deeply personal book, it was written by the chef alone and it glows with warmth and humor as he mulls over such mundane items as toast and rice to offer surprising new insights about foods that only seem exceedingly ordinary. It’s a book you’re as likely to keep by your bedside as your stovetop. With Peternell as your guide, the journey is pure pleasure and the destination is delicious.Twelve Recipes features gorgeous color photos and inset illustrations by Peternell’s wife and sons (all artists), and forewords by celebrated chef Alice Waters and New York Times columnist and bestselling author Michael Pollan.

Vegetarian Epicure


Anna Thomas - 1972
    For all who love the fruits of the earth and the art of cooking. A classic with almost a million copies sold to date.

The Vegetarian 5-Ingredient Gourmet


Nava Atlas - 2001
    In The Vegetarian 5-Ingredient Gourmet, Nava Atlas pares meal preparation down to the essentials, using just a few high-quality ingredients in each delicious dish. Focusing on whole foods and fresh produce (with a little help from convenient natural sauces and condiments) she serves up a varied range of choices for everyday fare.More than 250 recipes include soups, salads, and pastas; grain, bean, and soy entrees; wraps and sandwich fillings; simple side dishes; fruit-filled finales; and more. The full-flavored fare made from five ingredients or less includes Curried Red Lentil and Spinach Soup; Greek-Flavored Potato Salad; Black Bean Nachos Grandes; Baked Barbecue Tofu and Peppers; and Miniature Fresh Fruit Tarts. Filled with ingenious shortcuts and sprinkled with kitchen wisdom and tips throughout, The Vegetarian 5-Ingredient Gourmet also offers the reader dozens of menu suggestions to help make meal planning effortless.From sophisticated (Mixed Greens with Pears, Cranberries, and Goat Cheese) to kid-friendly (Peanut Butter Noodles), here are recipes to suit every taste. Nava Atlas makes it simple for busy families or active singles to eat the kind of high-nutrient foods everyone needs and to enjoy the robust flavors everyone craves.

The Vegetable Butcher: How to Select, Prep, Slice, Dice, and Masterfully Cook Vegetables from Artichokes to Zucchini


Cara Mangini - 2016
    The skills of butchery meet the world of fresh produce in this essential, inspiring guide that demystifies the world of vegetables. In step-by-step photographs, “vegetable butcher” Cara Mangini shows how to break down a butternut squash, cut a cauliflower into steaks, peel a tomato properly, chiffonade kale, turn carrots into coins and parsnips into matchsticks, and find the meaty heart of an artichoke. Additionally, more than 150 original, simple recipes put vegetables front and center, from a Kohlrabi Carpaccio to Zucchini, Sweet Corn, and Basil Penne, to a Parsnip-Ginger Layer Cake to sweeten a winter meal. It’s everything you need to know to get the best out of modern, sexy, and extraordinarily delicious vegetables.

Tartine Bread (Artisan Bread Cookbook, Best Bread Recipes, Sourdough Book)


Chad Robertson - 2010
    At 5 P.M., Chad Robertson's rugged, magnificent Tartine loaves are drawn from the oven. The bread at San Francisco's legendary Tartine Bakery sells out within an hour almost every day.Only a handful of bakers have learned the bread science techniques Chad Robertson has developed: To Chad Robertson, bread is the foundation of a meal, the center of daily life, and each loaf tells the story of the baker who shaped it. Chad Robertson developed his unique bread over two decades of apprenticeship with the finest artisan bakers in France and the United States, as well as experimentation in his own ovens. Readers will be astonished at how elemental it is.Bread making the Tartine Way: Now it's your turn to make this bread with your own hands. Clear instructions and hundreds of step-by-step photos put you by Chad's side as he shows you how to make exceptional and elemental bread using just flour, water, and salt.If you liked Tartine All Day by Elisabeth Prueitt and Flour Water Salt Yeast by Ken Forkish, you'll love Tartine Bread!Additional categories for this book include:Baking BooksBaking Recipe BooksBaking Cook BooksBread Recipe Books

Love Real Food: More Than 100 Feel-Good Vegetarian Favorites to Delight the Senses and Nourish the Body


Kathryne Taylor - 2017
    The path to a healthy body and happy belly is paved with real food fresh, wholesome, sustainable....

Barefoot Contessa at Home: Everyday Recipes You'll Make Over and Over Again


Ina Garten - 2006
    She will be the first to tell you, though, that nothing beats a cozy dinner, surrounded by the people you love most, in the comfort that only your own home can provide. In Barefoot Contessa at Home, Ina shares her life in East Hampton, the recipes she loves, and her secrets to making guests feel welcome and comfortable.For Ina, it's friends and family-gathered around the dinner table or cooking with her in the kitchen-that really make her house feel like home. Here Ina offers the tried-and-true recipes that she makes over and over again because they're easy, they work, and they're universally loved. For a leisurely Sunday breakfast, she has Easy Cheese Danishes or Breakfast Fruit Crunch to serve with the perfect Spicy Bloody Mary. For lunch, she has classics with a twist, such as Tomato, Mozzarella, and Pesto Paninis and Old-Fashioned Potato Salad, which are simply delicious. Then there are Ina's homey dinners-from her own version of loin of pork stuffed with sauteed fennel to the exotic flavors of Eli's Asian Salmon. And since Ina knows no one ever forgets what you serve for dessert, she includes recipes for outrageously luscious sweets like Peach and Blueberry Crumble, Pumpkin Mousse Parfait, and Chocolate Cupcakes with Peanut Butter Icing.Ina also lets readers in on her time-tested secrets for cooking and entertaining. Get the inside scoop on everything from what Ina considers when she's designing a kitchen to menu-planning basics and how to make a dinner party fun (here's a hint: it doesn't involve making complicated food!).Along with beautiful photographs of Ina's dishes, her home, and the East Hampton she loves, this book is filled with signature recipes that strike the perfect balance between elegance and casual comfort. With her most indispensable collection yet, Ina Garten proves beyond a shadow of doubt that there truly is no place like home.

Start Simple: Eleven Everyday Ingredients for Countless Weeknight Meals


Lukas Volger - 2020
    His methods aren’t about subscribing to a specific dietary regimen; they are about simply recognizing and embracing the way people cook and eat today. Creating weekly meal plans based on intricate recipes sounds good, but it can be difficult to execute. Having a well-stocked pantry paired with a choose-you-own adventure guide to creating simple yet inventive meals is more practical for your average home cook.

Better Homes and Gardens New Cook Book


Better Homes and Gardens - 1953
    Features: Over 900 new recipes -- 1,200 in all-reflect current eating habits and lifestyles; 500 new photographs -- over 700 in all-including 60 percent more of finished food than the last edition; Dozens of new recipes offer ethnic flavours, fresh ingredients, or vegetarian appeal; Many recipes feature make-ahead directions or quick-to-the-table meals; New chapter provides recipes for crockery cookers; Efficient, easy-to-read format, with recipes categorised into 21 chapters, each thoroughly indexed for easy reference; Expanded chapter on cooking basics includes advice on food safety, menu planning, table setting, and make-ahead cooking, plus a thorough glossary on ingredients and techniques; Appliance-friendly recipes help cooks save time and creatively use new kitchen tools; Nutrition information with each recipe, plus diabetic exchanges; Contemporary food photography attracts browsers and helps cooks discover new recipes to make; Icons identify low-fat, no-fat, fast, and best-loved recipes; Every recipe tested and perfected by the Better Homes and Gardens Test Kitchen; Revised and updated cooking charts, ingredient photos, emergency substitutions, and equivalents; Respected, reliable kitchen reference with hundreds of cooking terms, tips, and techniques.

Small Victories: Recipes, Advice + Hundreds of Ideas for Home Cooking Triumphs


Julia Turshen - 2016
    The process of truly great home cooking is demystified via more than a hundred lessons called out as "small victories" in the funny, encouraging headnotes; these are lessons learned by Julia through a lifetime of cooking thousands of meals. This beautifully curated, deeply personal collection of what Chef April Bloomfield calls "simple, achievable recipes" emphasizes bold-flavored, honest food for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and dessert. More than 160 mouth-watering photographs from acclaimed photographers Gentl + Hyers provide beautiful instruction and inspiration elevate this entertaining and essential kitchen resource for both beginners and accomplished home cooks.

Dinner: Changing the Game: A Cookbook


Melissa Clark - 2017
    With more than 200 all-new recipes, Dinner is about options: inherently simple recipes that you can make any night of the week.Each recipe in this book is meant to be dinner--one fantastic dish that is so satisfying and flavor-forward it can stand alone--maybe with a little salad or some bread on the side. This is what Melissa Clark means by changing the game. Organized by main ingredient--chicken, meat, fish and seafood, eggs, pasta and noodles, tofu, vegetable dinners, grains, pizza, soups, and salads that mean it--Dinner covers an astonishing breadth of ideas about just what dinner can be. There is something for every mood, season, and the amount of time you have: sheet pan chicken laced with spicy harissa, burgers amped with chorizo, curried lentils with poached eggs, to name just a few dishes in this indispensable collection. Here, too, are easy flourishes that make dinner exceptional: stir charred lemon into pasta, toss creamy Caesar-like dressing on a grain bowl.Melissa Clark's mission is to help anyone, whether a novice or an experienced home cook, figure out what to have for dinner without ever settling on fallbacks.

The Inspired Vegan: Seasonal Ingredients, Creative Recipes, Mouthwatering Menus


Bryant Terry - 2012
    Marking his 10-year anniversary working to create a healthy, just, and sustainable food system, Bryant Terry offers more than just a collection of recipes. In the spirit of jazz jam sessions and hip hop ciphers, The Inspired Vegan presents a collage of food, storytelling, music, and art. Bryant shares his favorite preparation / cooking techniques and simple recipes -- basics to help strengthen your foundation for home cooking and equip you with tools for culinary improvisation and kitchen creativity. He also invites you to his table to enjoy seasonal menus inspired by family memories, social movements, unsung radical heroes, and visions for the future. Ultimately, The Inspired Vegan will help you become proficient in creating satisfying meals that use whole, fresh, seasonal ingredients and are nutritionally balanced -- and full of surprising, mouthwatering flavor combinations.

Forgotten Skills of Cooking: The Lost Art of Creating Delicious Home Produce, with Over 600 Recipes


Darina Allen - 2009
    The book is divided into chapters such as Dairy, Poultry and Eggs, Bread, and Preserving, and forgotten processes such as smoking mackerel, curing bacon, and making yogurt and butter are explained in the simplest terms. The delicious recipes show you how to use your homemade bounty to its best, and include ideas for using forgotten cuts of meat, baking bread and cakes, and even eating food from the wild. The Vegetables and Herbs chapter is stuffed with growing tips to satisfy even those with the smallest garden plot or window box, and there are plenty of suggestions for using gluts of vegetables. You'll even discover how to keep a few chickens in your backyard. With over 700 recipes, this is the definitive modern guide to traditional cooking skills.

Food52 Vegan: 60 Vegetable-Driven Recipes for Any Kitchen


Gena Hamshaw - 2015
    If those recipes happen to be healthful, nourishing, and friendly to vegetarians and vegans, even better.With her wildly popular New Veganism column on Food52, Gena Hamshaw has inspired home cooks  to incorporate plant-based recipes into their everyday routine—and even gained some nutritional yeast and cashew cheese converts. This vibrant collection of all-new recipes plus beloved favorites from the column—along with exquisite photography and helpful tips throughout—will show all of us innovative ways to cook with fresh produce and whole foods. From Savory Breakfast Polenta to Cauliflower and Oyster Mushroom Tacos to Ginger Roasted Pears with Vanilla Cream, these recipes are delicious, dependable, and deeply satisfying. Cook from this book just a couple of times and you’ll soon find yourself stocking up on coconut oil, blending your own nut milks, seeking the sweetest tomatoes at the market, and looking at plant-based dishes in a whole new way.