Cookbook Profile: The Good Cook

The Good Cook
70 Essential Techniques, 250 Step-by-Step Photographs, and 350 Easy Recipes

by Anne Willan

The Good Cook
Internationally renowned as the founder of École de Cuisine La Varenne, Anne Willan has published many best-selling cookbooks. Her La Varenne Pratique has become an indispensable text for professional chefs, while the Look and Cook series and subsequent public television program brought European cuisine to a mainstream American audience. In The Good Cook: 70 Essential Techniques, 250 Step-by-Step Photographs, and 350 Easy Recipes, the award-winning author offers her expertise to a new market, outlining 70-plus techniques and hundreds of accompanying recipes for the kitchen novice. The quick and easy dishes will appeal to both beginner and seasoned cooks.

Categorized by main ingredient, the ten chapters address every subject of import to home cooks, including essential flavors and sauces; fish, meat, and poultry; vegetables and eggs; pasta and pastry. Step-by-step photographs illustrate the techniques, which are followed by recipes that utilize them. Readers will learn, for example, the best way to chop and chiffonade herbs, dice an onion, and peel a tomato, then apply these skills to the preparation of Tomato, Mozzarella, and Basil Salad, Real French Onion Soup, and other dishes. Techniques and tips also include specifics on how to open oysters, roll and tie a roast, and the best way to combine milk, butter, and eggs to create a classic white sauce.

The Good Cook covers all the techniques a home cook could ever need. Willan's techniques, accompanied by step-by-step photographs by Alison Harris, give readers the knowledge they need for a lifetime of home cooking. Harris's credits as a photographer include The New Provençal Cuisine, Enchanted Liguria, and Cooking the Roman Way. Perfect for everyday use, this richly illustrated volume will be to amateurs what La Varenne Pratique is to pros: the last word, a book they'll turn to again and again.

About the Author

Anne Willan is the author of more than two dozen cookbooks, several of which have been nominated or won IACP or James Beard awards. She has 40 years of culinary experience as an author, columnist, and teacher. She has written widely praised, authoritative books on food, whether about techniques, ingredients, culinary history, home entertaining, or the country cooking of France. After studying and teaching cooking in London and Paris, she made her name in the United States as a food editor and writer. She founded École de Cuisine La Varenne in Paris in 1975 and since 1991 has directed its programs at the Château du Fey in Burgundy and at The Greenbrier in West Virginia. Willan has served as President of the IACP and is a trustee of COPIA (The American Center for Food, Wine & the Arts) in Napa, California.

Buy the Book!

The Good Cook
70 Essential Techniques, 250 Step-by-Step Photographs, and 350 Easy Recipes
by Anne Willan
Stewart, Tabori & Chang
$40.00/Hardcover ($60.00 Canada)
250 full-color photographs by Alison Harris
ISBN: 1-58479-328-7
Information provided by the publisher.