My wife Dara and I did some recipe testing early last year. It was for Linda Carucci, whom we'd both taken cooking classes from at Sur La Table in SF when we lived there (she used the classes to recruit guinea pigs for her recipes). Linda is a highly accomplished chef and, most importantly, a great teacher. If you ever get the opportunity to take a class she's teaching, take it. She has these little tips & secrets that are the difference between a dish that tastes good, and one that is great. As an example, one of her salad recipes calls for celery. The secret here is to use a vegetable peeler to peel the first couple of layers off the celery before chopping it up. This gets rid of the stringy stuff that can ruin an otherwise enjoyable bit of salad. Well, Linda has turned these insider tips into a book called: Cooking School Secrets for Real World Cooks, which I recommend for those wanting insight into the little things that make all of the difference. I haven't yet read it but I'm sure it will be worth it -- ours is on order and I can't to see if the recipes we'd tested (Salad, Split Pea Soup, Risotto with Baby Clams) made it in the book!
While I'm recommending cookbooks that I haven't yet read, my friend Jessie has just published her own titlted Not On Love Alone: A Year of Delicious Dinners and More for Newlyweds. She is a great cook and her book is about how, with modern life so hectic, a couple should cook at least 1 dinner each month together. The hardcover book has funny stories and watercolors by Jessie, and should make a good gift for a newly engaged or married couple.
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