This cookbook was reviewed by Carol – a non-blogging member from Canada.
I love reading cookbooks! Reading recipes can transport me on an armchair food journey ending in salivating taste buds and is often punctuated with a resounding “YUM.” My tastes have evolved and changed in many facets of my life including cookbook styles. Thankfully, this has been aptly matched by a growing trend in cookbook publishing. No longer are cookbooks simply volumes of recipes interspersed with close-ups of food and a few glossy pictures.
Today’s modern cookbook is evolving into more prose-like missive, complete with explanations as to why the recipe is important to the author or what technique can be honed from a particular preparation. This is one reason why I enjoyed Michael Ruhlman’s Twenty so much as he takes this one step further. In Twenty, Ruhlman puts forth a manifesto of the most essential twenty techniques needed in the kitchen to make you a better cook. This is an educational experience indeed! Even the look and feel of Twenty mimics the size and page weight of scores of textbooks familiar to students all around the world.