cookbook. Very approachable and good advice for anyone who's ever had a recipe attempt not turn out as well as they'd hoped. I bookmarked several of the poultry, meat, and veggie dishes to try (immediately!) and in general found the content to be very useful as various techniques are explained and demonstrated through the recipes. ( )

Simply fantastic and quite entertaining. Cowin, the editor-in-chief of Food & Wine Magazine, outs herself as "Irma", a hapless cook whose tales of disasters and pleas for help regularly appeared in the magazine. I would've bought this book for the anecdotes alone, because they're utterly hilarious (I can still imagine her running away from the poor lobster trying to claw its way out of the pot of boiling water she just dropped it into). But instead of doing a memoir, she has incorporated these stories into a book of over 100 recipes that she has managed to learn with assistance from an all-star roster of chefs. The recipes themselves look tasty and are described very clearly, and the chefs have provided explanations of techniques, suggested variations, and lots of other advice. Above all, this gives me hope that I too can learn my way around a kitchen if I can just keep at it and get the right help! ( )