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.

The Love and Lemons Cookbook: An Apple-to-Zucchini Celebration of Impromptu Cooking


Jeanine Donofrio - 2016
    The Love & Lemons Cookbook features more than one hundred simple recipes that help you turn your farmers market finds into delicious meals.    The beloved Love & Lemons blog has attracted buzz from everyone from bestselling author Heidi Swanson to Saveur Magazine, who awarded the blog Best Cooking Blog of 2014.    Organized by ingredient, The Love & Lemons Cookbook teaches readers how to make beautiful food with what’s on hand, whether it’s a bunch of rainbow-colored heirloom carrots from the farmers market or a four-pound cauliflower that just shows up in a CSA box. The book also features resources to show readers how to stock their pantry, gluten-free and vegan options for many of the recipes, as well as ideas on mixing and matching ingredients, so that readers always have something new to try.Stunningly designed and efficiently organized, The Love & Lemons Cookbook is a resource that you will use again and again.

How to Cook Everything: The Basics: Simple Recipes Anyone Can Cook


Mark Bittman - 2003
    Mark Bittman, the bestselling, award-winning author of How to Cook Everything , shows you how to make a good burger or delicious pasta for everyday meals as well as chicken soup on a cold day, lasagne because you love it, and prime rib for company. Not only will you make some of the best food you ve ever eaten, you ll save money and eat more healthfully, too.Anyone can cookSimple, satisfying recipes with easy-to-follow directionsTips to help you shop for, prepare, and cook the recipesRecipe variations and lists of ideas to adapt dishes to your tasteStep-by-step illustrations for tricky techniques like mincing garlicSimple. Straightforward.Just what you need to cook well."

Ruhlman's Twenty: The Ideas and Techniques that Will Make You a Better Cook


Michael Ruhlman - 2011
    And rare is the author who can do so with the ease and expertise of acclaimed writer and culinary authority Michael Ruhlman. Twenty distills Ruhlman s decades of cooking, writing, and working with the world s greatest chefs into twenty essential ideas from ingredients to processes to attitude that are guaranteed to make every cook more accomplished. Whether cooking a multi-course meal, the juiciest roast chicken, or just some really good scrambled eggs, Ruhlman reveals how a cook s success boils down to the same twenty concepts. With the illuminating expertise that has made him one of the most esteemed food journalists, Ruhlman explains the hows and whys of each concept and reinforces those discoveries through 100 recipes for everything from soups to desserts, all detailed in over 300 photographs. Cooks of all levels will revel in Ruhlman s game-changing Twenty.

Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking


Marcella Hazan - 1992
    Designed as a basic manual for cooks of all levels of expertise—from beginners to accomplished professionals—it offers both an accessible and comprehensive guide to techniques and ingredients and a collection of the most delicious recipes from the Italian repertoire. As home cooks who have used Marcella’s classic books for years (and whose copies are now splattered and worn) know, there is no one more gifted at teaching us just what we need to know about the taste and texture of a dish and how to achieve it, and there is no one more passionate and inspiring about authentic Italian food.

Appetites: A Cookbook


Anthony Bourdain - 2016
    And for many years, first as a chef, later as a world-traveling chronicler of food and culture on his CNN series Parts Unknown, he has made a profession of understanding the appetites of others. These days, however, if he’s cooking, it’s for family and friends.Appetites, his first cookbook in more than ten years, boils down forty-plus years of professional cooking and globe-trotting to a tight repertoire of personal favorites—dishes that everyone should (at least in Mr. Bourdain’s opinion) know how to cook. Once the supposed "bad boy" of cooking, Mr. Bourdain has, in recent years, become the father of a little girl—a role he has embraced with enthusiasm. After years of traveling more than 200 days a year, he now enjoys entertaining at home. Years of prep lists and the hyper-organization necessary for a restaurant kitchen, however, have caused him, in his words, to have "morphed into a psychotic, anally retentive, bad-tempered Ina Garten."The result is a home-cooking, home-entertaining cookbook like no other, with personal favorites from his own kitchen and from his travels, translated into an effective battle plan that will help you terrify your guests with your breathtaking efficiency.

Food in Jars: Preserving in Small Batches Year-Round


Marisa McClellan - 2011
     Popular food blogger and doyenne of canning, Marisa McClellan, is using small batches and inventive flavors to make preserving easy enough for any novice to tackle. If you grew up eating home-preserved jams and pickles, or even if you're new to putting up, you'll find recipes to savor. Sample any of the 100 seasonal recipes:In the spring: Apricot Jam and Rhubarb SyrupIn the summer: Blueberry Butter and Peach SalsaIn the fall: Dilly Beans and Spicy Pickled CauliflowerIn the winter: Three-Citrus Marmalade and Cranberry KetchupMarisa's confident, practical voice answers questions and quells any fears of accidental canning mistakes, and the book is written for cooks of any skill level. Stories of wild blackberry jam and California Meyer lemon marmalade from McClellan's childhood make for a read as pleasurable as it is delicious; her home-canned food-learned from generations of the original "foodies"-feeds the soul as well as the body.

Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams at Home


Jeni Britton Bauer - 2011
    Unique flavors, prepared from top-quality ingredients combined with minimally processed milk from grass-fed cows, transformed Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams, a small artisanal scoopery in Columbus, Ohio, into a nationally acclaimed (and beloved) brand.Now with her debut cookbook, Jeni Britton Bauer is on a mission to help foodies create perfect ice creams, yogurts, and sorbets—ones that are every bit as perfect as hers—in their own kitchens. Frustrated by icy and crumbly homemade ice cream, Bauer invested in a $59 ice cream maker and proceeded to test and retest recipes until she devised a formula to make creamy, sturdy, lickable ice cream at home. Her recipe for a milk-based American-style ice cream contains no eggs, which allows her amazing flavor combinations to shine. Filled with irresistible color photographs, this cone-tastic book contains 100 of Jeni’s signature recipes—from her Goat Cheese with Roasted Cherries to her Salty Caramel to her Bourbon with Toasted Buttered Pecans. Fans of easy-to-prepare desserts with star quality will scoop this book up. How cool is that?

The Science of Good Cooking: Master 50 Simple Concepts to Enjoy a Lifetime of Success in the Kitchen


Cook's Illustrated - 2012
    Unlike other food science books, we make a direct and practical connection between the science and the cooking. We divide the book into 50 core principles, support them through detailed yet friendly explanations, bring them alive with color illustrations and inventive experiments, and reinforce them through recipes that put the principle to work. At Cook's Illustrated, we've been asking why in the kitchen for over 20 years and often find our answers in science. We believe good science makes great food and that understanding basic science will make you a great cook.

Half Baked Harvest Super Simple: More Than 125 Recipes for Instant, Overnight, Meal-Prepped, and Easy Comfort Foods: A Cookbook


Tieghan Gerard - 2019
    With Half Baked Harvest Super Simple, Tieghan Gerard has solved that problem.On her blog and in her debut cookbook, Tieghan is beloved for her freshly sourced, comfort-food-forward recipes that taste even better than they look. Half Baked Harvest Super Simple takes what fans loved most about Half Baked Harvest Cookbook and distills it into quicker, more manageable dishes, including options for one-pot meals, night-before meal prep, and even some Instant Pot(R) or slow cooker recipes. Using the most important cooking basics, you'll whip up everyday dishes like Cardamom Apple Fritters, Spinach and Artichoke Mac and Cheese, and Lobster Tacos to share with your family, or plan stress-free dinner parties with options like Slow Roasted Moroccan Salmon and Fresh Corn and Zucchini Summer Lasagna.Especially for home cooks who are pressed for time or just starting out, Half Baked Harvest Super Simple is your go-to for hassle-free meals that never sacrifice taste.

The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Food from My Frontier


Ree Drummond - 2011
    A strapping, rugged, chaps-wearing cowboy. Then I married him, moved to his ranch, had his babies . . . and wound up loving it. Except the manure. Living in the country for more than fifteen years has taught me a handful of eternal truths: every new day is a blessing, every drop of rain is a gift . . . and nothing tastes more delicious than food you cook yourself.The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Food from My Frontier is a mouthwatering collection of the simple-but-scrumptious recipes that rotate through my kitchen on a regular basis, including Perfect Pancakes, Cowgirl Quiche, Sloppy Joes, Italian Meatball Soup, White Chicken Enchiladas, and a spicy Carnitas Pizza that'll win you over for life. There are also some elegant offerings for more special occasions at your house: Osso Buco, Honey-Plum-Soy Chicken, and Rib-Eye Steak with an irresistible Onion-Blue Cheese Sauce. And the decadent assortment of desserts, including Blackberry Chip Ice Cream, Apple Dumplings, and Coffee Cream Cake, will make your heart go pitter-pat in the most wonderful way.In addition to detailed step-by-step photographs, all the recipes in this book have one other important quality in common: They're guaranteed to make your kids, sweetheart, dinner guests, in-laws, friends, cousins, or resident cowboys smile, sigh, and beg for seconds. (And hug you and kiss you and be devoted to you for life.)I hope you enjoy, devour, and love this book.I sure did love making it for you.

Every Grain of Rice: Simple Chinese Home Cooking


Fuchsia Dunlop - 2013
    Following her two seminal volumes on Sichuan and Hunan cooking, Every Grain of Rice is inspired by the vibrant everyday cooking of southern China, in which vegetables play the starring role, with small portions of meat and fish.Try your hand at stir-fried potato slivers with chili pepper, vegetarian "Gong Bao Chicken," sour-and-hot mushroom soup, or, if you’re ever in need of a quick fix, Fuchsia’s emergency late-night noodles. Many of the recipes require few ingredients and are ridiculously easy to make. Fuchsia also includes a comprehensive introduction to the key seasonings and techniques of the Chinese kitchen. With stunning photography and clear instructions, this is an essential cookbook for everyone, beginner and connoisseur alike, eager to introduce Chinese dishes into their daily cooking repertoire.

Falastin: A Cookbook


Sami Tamimi - 2020
    As each region has its own distinct identity and tale to tell, there are endless new flavour combinations to discover.The food is the perfect mix of traditional and contemporary, with recipes that have been handed down through the generations and reworked for a modern home kitchen, alongside dishes that have been inspired by Sami and Tara's collaborations with producers and farmers throughout Palestine.With stunning food and travel photography plus stories from unheard Palestinian voices, this innovative cookbook will transport you to this rich and complex land.So get ready to laden your table with the most delicious of foods – from abundant salads, soups and wholesome grains to fluffy breads, easy one-pot dishes and perfumed sweet treats – here are simple feasts to be shared and everyday meals to be enjoyed. These are stunning Palestinian-inspired dishes that you will want to cook, eat, fall in love with and make your own.

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.

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.