Cook Like a Pro: Recipes & Tips for Home Cooks

Few authors have done as much to provide American home cooks with reliable, flavorful recipes as Ina Garten. She's always a trustworthy choice and the inspiration she offers shows up in many other cookbooks as well. Cook Like a Pro is, at heart, another comfortable collection of Garten recipes, filled out with an abundance of kitchen tips. These tips are dispensed with the same friendly ease that have made the author so enduringly popular and they are very useful even if, it must be admitted, they're not really derived from professional kitchens. Of course, what people love about Garten isn't that she's a professional: it's that she's a remarkable home cook who helps them be one too. In that sense, this should have been called Cook like Ina and everything might have been a little clearer. Hardcore Garten fans will recognize some updates of previously published favorites popping up here and there, such as her crispy mustard chicken from Barefoot Contessa Foolproof, now tossed with frisée lettuce to make a lively summer dinner. But new material abounds, including plenty of desserts. Which reminds us: Maybe it's time for Ina to leave the general cookbooks behind for a little while and try a baking book. Wouldn't that be something to look forward to? Hardcover. Color photographs throughout. 272 pages.