Martha Stewart's Cooking School: Lessons for the Home Cook by Martha Stewart

From the Publisher

Imagine having Martha Stewart at your side in the kitchen, teaching you how to hold a chef’s knife, select the very best ingredients, truss a chicken, make a perfect pot roast, prepare every vegetable, bake a flawless pie crust, and much more.

In Martha Stewart’s Cooking School, you get just that: a culinary master class from Martha herself, with lessons for home cooks of all levels.

Never before has Martha written a book quite like this one. Arranged by cooking technique, it’s aimed at teaching you how to cook, not simply what to cook. Delve in and soon you’ll be roasting, broiling, braising, stewing, sautéing, steaming, and poaching with confidence and competence. In addition to the techniques, you’ll find more than 200 sumptuous, all-new recipes that put the lessons to work, along with invaluable step-by-step photographs to take the guesswork out of cooking. You’ll also gain valuable insight into equipment, ingredients, and every other aspect of the kitchen to round out your culinary education.

Featuring more than 500 gorgeous color photographs, Martha Stewart’s Cooking School is the new gold standard for everyone who truly wants to know his or her way around the kitchen.

Publishers Weekly

Stewart's trademark ability to simplify everything that seems complex or overwhelming in domestic life serves her well in this excellent foundation course in cooking techniques. Like Stewart herself, its pages exude authority along with accessibility, with numerous helpful checklists, charts and boxed tips artfully arranged throughout the numbered lessons that build from essentials such as roasting chicken perfectly or wilting leafy greens just so to more involved, less frequently used methods featured as "extra credit," such as grinding and binding meat into paté or producing a peerless vegetable puree. Each technique is illustrated by numerous stylish yet instructive photos, and accompanied by a few carefully selected recipes and variations that successfully aim to familiarize cooks with a basic procedure without inundating them with the full range of possibilities right away. They will also appreciate Stewart's concise but enlightening introductions to each chapter and the lessons within, For new cooks looking to establish a core set of kitchen skills as well as for those just looking to brush up or to have a ready reference to cooking fundamentals, this impressive volume will be an ideal choice. Color photos not seen by PW. (Oct.)

Judith Sutton - Library Journal

This huge new cookbook is the result of what Stewart refers to as her "mission to teach the methods of home cooking." Chapters are organized by technique, from "How To Make White Stock" to "How To Make Pâte à Choux." Master recipes are followed by others that build on them, and there are hundreds of color photographs, including many step by steps for essential techniques. The illustrated "Basics" section that opens the book covers equipment, knife skills, herbs and spices, "the onion family," and citrus fruits. Charts, buying guides, and sidebars are featured throughout, along with dozens of tips on ingredients, special techniques, and more. The "Dessert" chapter, at slightly fewer than 60 pages, seems a bit skimpy, but most libraries should already have Martha Stewart's Baking Handbook. Highly recommended.

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