(Serious) New Cook: Recipes, Tips, and Techniques

Inexperienced cooks are often faced with choosing between beginner books teaching mundane recipes or standard cookbooks that are more enticing but also overwhelming for newcomers. Into the mix comes this book written by chefs who are sisters, based on the food they learned to cook in their mother’s multicultural kitchen, with recipes designed to teach and inspire. The opening chapter is a cooking class in itself. It offers definitions of ingredients, processes, and equipment with excellent informative pictures illustrating things like stiff peaks vs. soft peaks in egg whites, colors and kinds of Asian hot sauces, and types of salt. The recipes themselves are grouped in threes: a core recipe and two variations with invitations for making versions of one’s own. The content is not overwhelming, and starters, mains, and sweets cover the standard meal. The cookbook has a definite Asian influence, but the dishes are wide-ranging: chicken potpie sits next to a sushi party; arepas coexist with egg drop soup and vinaigrettes.