Where Cooking Begins: Uncomplicated Recipes to Make You a Great Cook

Music, food director and columnist at Bon Appétit magazine, shares her inventive take on food shopping and cooking in this exciting and inviting collection. A gifted writer with a passion for cooking and a reverence for maintaining the integrity of ingredients, Music inspires readers to try her approach of in-person shopping for star ingredients to center meals around (shop small and often, she advises) while using online sources for shelf-stable staples to keep on hand. Each recipe includes two lists, one for items to buy in-person, and the other for items to buy online. Recipes are grouped by main ingredient with such playful chapter headings as Starring Produce; Egg-Centric; and Chicken Lots of Ways, and a Duck. She shares a recipe for rack-roasted chicken with gravy potatoes, where the whole bird cooks right on the oven rack with a tray of potatoes below to catch the drippings, and one for a mouth-watering, versatile dish of fresh figs with Manchego cheese and wet walnuts (buy the cheese and figs in the market, the walnuts online). Herbaceous grilled lamb chops, Caprese mac and cheese, and coffee crème caramel round out a wide range of tasty, simple dishes readers will surely embrace. Home cooks looking to expand their repertoire with vibrant and easy meals need look no further than this remarkable, flavorsome new collection. [em](Mar.) [/em]