Food for Cooks

Ferguson (Extra Virgin: Cooking with Olive Oil) helps home cooks stock their pantries in this elegantly illustrated handbook to more than 500 preserved gourmet ingredients. While acknowledging that fresh food is important, Ferguson argues that""good larder ingredients will add fluency, freedom and fascination to your cooking and will also help you to produce stylish and relaxed meals."" Most of her book is dedicated to explaining the differences and uses of, say, the 12 different kinds of sugar or the seven different kinds of salt, but even these short descriptions contain cooking suggestions, as well as buying and storing tips. The entry for dried apricots, for example, not only compares the sulfured and un-sulfured varieties, it also suggests that the dried fruit can be turned into a lovely puree with orange flower water. She explains that meringue cookies can be mixed with raspberries and heavy cream to make delicious Eton Mess. The matter-of-fact information is also made more digestible by Munns' full color photos and by the book's clear, simple design. Inspired readers can test what they've learn by making any one of the books 70-plus recipes, many of which were contributed by illustrious chefs such as Jean-Georges Vongerichten and Claudia Roden. Overall, this is an inspiring, and practical, guide to the variety and the pleasures of the cosmopolitan kitchen--a good choice for any adventurous home cook.