Essentials of Cooking

Water damage, pages stuck together. Not the quality I paid for!

I find this cookbook to be very USEFUL for the beginner cook. I work in a library and several new books go through my hands every day. This book is not a traditional cookbook where you follow a recipe; it shows you, with step-by-step color photographs, how to perform the basic and advanced techniques involved in cooking. How DO you prepare an artichoke, a chicken for roasting, etc.? Recipes too often tell you to DO something that you don't know how to do, and this book is a great reference tool for the novice and expert cook. After all, I can borrow this book any time but I am buying it for myself...what does that tell you?

Peterson's book is an important contribution to cooking literature because it focuses on techniques. Through detailed pictures and explanation, Peterson does an excellent job of conveying the concept that cooking is a craft. Once you master the basic techniques of this craft, you can buy whatever is fresh in the market and prepare it without a recipe. I have taken years of cooking lessons, and feel this is the finest example I've seen of a book that makes cooking instruction readily accessible to non-professionals.

I buy cookbooks for fun. This book will develop cooking skills as opposed to cooking following the many creative recipes from the numerous cookbooks we all own and freqently use. Peterson's goal is to have you cooking without the crutch and the burden of following someone else's game plan. This book will help your confindence in the kitchen without resorting to books. (The pictures are quite helpful.) If you are a really good cook already, this book isn't for you. If you are a reasonably competent cook, but not a chef, you will find this book valuable. Peterson is top flight, and he wrote this one for all of us who have a life outside the kitchen but hold a passion for cooking nonetheless.

Few cookbooks can boast of over 1100 color photos providing a step-by-step coverage of techniques and recipes in progress: this covers all the basics needed to prepare food for cooking, from how to dice an onion to producing broths, sauces and dressings. The result is a fine comprehensive guide which is a one-step cooking course for beginners, with over two hundred core techniques and recipes. Highly recommended.