The Confident Cook; Salt Fat Acid Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking; Erin Bakes Cake: Make, Bake, Decorate Your Own Cake Adventure; Bravetart: Iconic American Desserts; a set of dishtowels; a pair of wooden spoons, and Mediterranean sea salt.

The Confident Cook:

Anyone who can understand the reasoning behind basic cooking techniques can become a creative, relaxed, and confident cook. Chalmers takes the would-be chef through how the addition or substitution of a few ingredients can transform a simple dish into a culinary masterpiece.

The Confident Cook, invaluable to experienced cooks as well as to beginners, demonstrates that in fact there are only four or five basic methods of cooking food. Once mastered, these basic methods can be used with many different ingredients to create countless dishes. Chalmers shows how beef stew, braised veal, coq au vin, and a vegetable casserole, for example, are similar in their preparation; how a simple beef stew can become a hearty Mulligan, a Belgian carbonnade, a French boeuf bourguingnon, or your own less classic invention. More important, she shows how you can whip up something delectable from whatever supplies you have available without being tied to a recipe with specified ingredients.

About two hundred recipes are given with logical and practical directions, and some seventy-five original line drawings clearly illustrate each technique and some of the finished dishes. But the heart of this book is the information that makes it possible to dispense altogether with recipes and to start experimenting—confidently and successfully—with your own creative cooking ideas.

Salt Fat Acid Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking

Now a Netflix series!

New York Times Bestseller and Winner of the 2018 James Beard Award for Best General Cookbook and multiple IACP Cookbook Awards

Named one of the Best Books of 2017 by: NPR, BuzzFeed, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Rachel Ray Every Day, San Francisco Chronicle, Vice Munchies, Elle.com, Glamour, Eater, Newsday, Minneapolis Star Tribune, The Seattle Times, Tampa Bay Times, Tasting Table, Modern Farmer, Publishers Weekly, and more.

A visionary new master class in cooking that distills decades of professional experience into just four simple elements, from the woman declared “America’s next great cooking teacher” by Alice Waters.

In the tradition of The Joy of Cooking and How to Cook Everything comes Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, an ambitious new approach to cooking by a major new culinary voice. Chef and writer Samin Nosrat has taught everyone from professional chefs to middle school kids to author Michael Pollan to cook using her revolutionary, yet simple, philosophy. Master the use of just four elements—Salt, which enhances flavor; Fat, which delivers flavor and generates texture; Acid, which balances flavor; and Heat, which ultimately determines the texture of food—and anything you cook will be delicious. By explaining the hows and whys of good cooking, Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat will teach and inspire a new generation of cooks how to confidently make better decisions in the kitchen and cook delicious meals with any ingredients, anywhere, at any time.

Echoing Samin’s own journey from culinary novice to award-winning chef, Salt, Fat Acid, Heat immediately bridges the gap between home and professional kitchens. With charming narrative, illustrated walkthroughs, and a lighthearted approach to kitchen science, Samin demystifies the four elements of good cooking for everyone. Refer to the canon of 100 essential recipes—and dozens of variations—to put the lessons into practice and make bright, balanced vinaigrettes, perfectly caramelized roast vegetables, tender braised meats, and light, flaky pastry doughs.

Featuring 150 illustrations and infographics that reveal an atlas to the world of flavor by renowned illustrator Wendy MacNaughton, Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat will be your compass in the kitchen. Destined to be a classic, it just might be the last cookbook you’ll ever need.

Erin Bakes Cake: Make, Bake, Decorate Your Own Cake Adventure

"You have not eaten cake until you have eaten one of Erin's...ERIN BAKES CAKE is a must on your shelf." —Daphne Oz

Learn how to bake easy but elaborately decorated cakes—no fondant needed!

Erin Gardner’s cake recipes share a delicious, time-saving secret: they're all the same. Why play the guessing game of sifting through dozens of recipes when all you need are just a few that contain hundreds of variations—572, to be exact! The cakequations in Erin Bakes Cake teach you how to combine her cake, buttercream, cookie, and candy recipes in endless mouth-watering ways. Erin’s cake recipes aren’t sorcery—they’re science. They all share similar ratios of ingredients that add tenderness, strength, or flavor. You don’t have to be an expert. Everyone can learn to make a great cake!

Erin Bakes Cake provides the building blocks for constructing a great cake, and then offers endless ways those blocks can be reassembled. Erin shares the baking tips she learned as a professional pastry chef and wedding cake baker, what tools to use, how to perfect the cake’s finish, and other tricks of the baking trade. She then shows you how to make gorgeous and intricately decorated cakes by elevating simple, but delicious, ingredients like candy, cookies, and chocolate. Erin’s created cake designs that are festive, chic, and easy to recreate at home without the use of hard-to-deal-with fondant.

And best of all, you can make every recipe your own! The Any Veggie Cake cake can be transformed into a classic carrot cake, zucchini cake, or sweet potato cake. A creamy cake filling isn’t limited to buttercream with the inclusion of recipes for caramel, ganache, marshmallow, and more. A chocolate birthday cake recipe can be reimagined as red velvet or chocolate toffee. Elements of crunch, like peanut brittle, honeycomb candy, or even cookie crumbles, can be sprinkled onto your cake layers for tasty added texture.
About the Author
Erin Gardner is a self-taught pastry chef, Craftsy instructor, creator of ErinBakes.com, and author of Great Cake Decorating. She’s a regular contributor for The Cake Blog and Craftsy’s Cake Decorating Blog. Erin worked as a pastry chef in numerous New England kitchens, including Boston’s legendary Locke Ober, before opening Wild Orchid Baking Co. in 2009. She quickly became the go-to cake designer for premiere events, competing on and winning Food Network’s Sweet Genius. Her work has been featured in Brides, Martha Stewart Weddings, Town & Country, OK Magazine, Huffington Post, HGTV’s DIY Network, and more. She lives with her husband and children in the New Hampshire lakes region.

Bravetart: Iconic American Desserts

A New York Times bestseller and named a Best Baking Book of the Year by the Atlantic, the Wall Street Journal, the Chicago Tribune, Bon App tit, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Mother Jones, the Boston Globe, USA Today, Amazon, and more

"The most groundbreaking book on baking in years. Full stop."--Saveur