In "The Elements of Cooking, New York Times "bestselling author Michael Ruhlman deconstructs the essential knowledge of the kitchen to reveal what professional chefs know only after years of training and experience. With alphabetically ordered entries and eight beautifully written essays, Ruhlman outlines what it takes to cook well: understanding heat, using the right tools, cooking with eggs, making stock, making sauce, salting food, what a cook should read, and exploring the most important skill to have in the kitchen, finesse. "The Elements of Cooking "gives everyone the tools they need to go from being a good cook to a great one.

Michael Ruhlman's groundbreaking "New York Times" bestseller takes us to the very "truth" of cooking: it is not about recipes but rather about basic ratios and fundamental techniques that makes all food come together, simply.
When you know a culinary ratio, it's not like knowing a single recipe, it's instantly knowing a thousand.
Why spend time sorting through the millions of cookie recipes available in books, magazines, and on the Internet? Isn't it easier just to remember 1-2-3? That's the ratio of ingredients that always make a basic, delicious cookie dough: 1 part sugar, 2 parts fat, and 3 parts flour. From there, add anything you want--chocolate, lemon and orange zest, nuts, poppy seeds, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, almond extract, or peanut butter, to name a few favorite additions. Replace white sugar with brown for a darker, chewier cookie. Add baking powder and/or eggs for a lighter, airier texture.
Ratios are the starting point from which a thousand variations begin.
Ratios are the simple proportions of one ingredient to another. Biscuit dough is 3:1:2--or 3 parts flour, 1 part fat, and 2 parts liquid. This ratio is the beginning of many variations, and because the biscuit takes sweet and savory flavors with equal grace, you can top it with whipped cream and strawberries or sausage gravy. Vinaigrette is 3:1, or 3 parts oil to 1 part vinegar, and is one of the most useful sauces imaginable, giving everything from grilled meats and fish to steamed vegetables or lettuces intense flavor.
Cooking with ratios will unchain you from recipes and set you free. With thirty-three ratios and suggestions for enticing variations, "Ratio" is the truth of cooking: basic preparations that teach us how the fundamental ingredients of the kitchen--water, flour, butter and oils, milk and cream, and eggs--work. Change the ratio and bread dough becomes pasta dough, cakes become muffins become popovers become crepes.
As the culinary world fills up with overly complicated recipes and never-ending ingredient lists, Michael Ruhlman blasts through the surplus of information and delivers this innovative, straightforward book that cuts to the core of cooking. "Ratio" provides one of the greatest kitchen lessons there is--and it makes the cooking easier and more satisfying than ever.

Michael Ruhlman's groundbreaking "New York Times" bestseller takes us to the very "truth" of cooking: it is not about recipes but rather about basic ratios and fundamental techniques that makes all food come together, simply.
When you know a culinary ratio, it's not like knowing a single recipe, it's instantly knowing a thousand.
Why spend time sorting through the millions of cookie recipes available in books, magazines, and on the Internet? Isn't it easier just to remember 1-2-3? That's the ratio of ingredients that always make a basic, delicious cookie dough: 1 part sugar, 2 parts fat, and 3 parts flour. From there, add anything you want--chocolate, lemon and orange zest, nuts, poppy seeds, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, almond extract, or peanut butter, to name a few favorite additions. Replace white sugar with brown for a darker, chewier cookie. Add baking powder and/or eggs for a lighter, airier texture.
Ratios are the starting point from which a thousand variations begin.
Ratios are the simple proportions of one ingredient to another. Biscuit dough is 3:1:2--or 3 parts flour, 1 part fat, and 2 parts liquid. This ratio is the beginning of many variations, and because the biscuit takes sweet and savory flavors with equal grace, you can top it with whipped cream and strawberries or sausage gravy. Vinaigrette is 3:1, or 3 parts oil to 1 part vinegar, and is one of the most useful sauces imaginable, giving everything from grilled meats and fish to steamed vegetables or lettuces intense flavor.
Cooking with ratios will unchain you from recipes and set you free. With thirty-three ratios and suggestions for enticing variations, "Ratio" is the truth of cooking: basic preparations that teach us how the fundamental ingredients of the kitchen--water, flour, butter and oils, milk and cream, and eggs--work. Change the ratio and bread dough becomes pasta dough, cakes become muffins become popovers become crepes.
As the culinary world fills up with overly complicated recipes and never-ending ingredient lists, Michael Ruhlman blasts through the surplus of information and delivers this innovative, straightforward book that cuts to the core of cooking. "Ratio" provides one of the greatest kitchen lessons there is--and it makes the cooking easier and more satisfying than ever.

New York Times bestselling author Michael Ruhlman applies the principles of his innovative book Ratio—about the relationships of ingredients to each other—in this delightful back-to-basics cocktail book, sharing the simple recipes and fundamental techniques that make for delicious and satisfying libations. Did you know that a Gimlet, a Daiquiri, and a Bee’s Knees are the same cocktail? As are a Cosmopolitan, a Margarita, and a Sidecar. When hosting a party wouldn’t you enjoy saying to your guests, “Would you care for a Boulevardier, perhaps, or a Negroni?� These, too, are the same cocktail, substituting one ingredient for another. Or if you’d like to be able to shake up a batch of whiskey sours for a party of eight in fewer than two minutes, then read on. As Michael Ruhlman explains, our most popular cocktails are really ratios—proportions of one ingredient relative to the others. Organized around five of our best-known, beloved, classic families of cocktails, each category follows a simple ratio from which myriad variations can be built: The Manhattan, The Gimlet, The Margarita, The Negroni, and the most debated cocktail ever, The Martini. A practical reference of cocktail classics, a source of inspiration for putting a new spin on the usual gin and tonic, and an affable tribute to the pleasures of the cocktail hour, The Book of Cocktail Ratios shows you how to serve up delectable drinks in no time. Cheers!

Charcuterie exploded onto the scene in 2005 and encouraged an army of home cooks and professional chefs to start curing their own foods. This love song to animal fat and salt has blossomed into a bona fide culinary movement, throughout America and beyond, of curing meats and making sausage, pates, and confits. Charcuterie: Revised and Updated will remain the ultimate and authoritative guide to that movement, spreading the revival of this ancient culinary craft.

Early in his career, food writer Michael Ruhlman had his first taste of duck confit. The experience became a fascination that transformed into a quest to understand the larger world of food preservation, called charcuterie, once a critical factor in human survival. He wondered why its methods and preparations, which used to keep communities alive and allowed for long-distance exploration, had been almost forgotten. Along the way he met Brian Polcyn, who had been surrounded with traditional and modern charcuterie since childhood. My Polish grandma made kielbasa every Christmas and Easter, he told Ruhlman. At the time, Polcyn was teaching butchery at Schoolcraft College outside Detroit.

Ruhlman and Polcyn teamed up to share their passion for cured meats with a wider audience. The rest is culinary history. Charcuterie: Revised and Updated is organized into chapters on key practices: salt-cured meats like pancetta, dry-cured meats like salami and chorizo, forcemeats including pates and terrines, and smoked meats and fish. Readers will find all the classic recipes: duck confit, sausages, prosciutto, bacon, pate de campagne, and knackwurst, among others. Ruhlman and Polcyn also expand on traditional mainstays, offering recipes for hot- and cold-smoked salmon; shrimp, lobster, and leek sausage; and grilled vegetable terrine. All these techniques make for a stunning addition to a contemporary menu.

Thoroughly instructive and fully illustrated, this updated edition includes seventy-five detailed line drawings that guide the reader through all the techniques. With new recipes and revised sections to reflect the best equipment available today, Charcuterie: Revised and Updated remains the undisputed authority on charcuterie."

Born into a coal-business family in Alsace, Jean-Georges Vongerichten left school at fifteen. He didn't enrol at a top culinary programme but he was apprenticed with renowned chefs, opened restaurants across the world and has cemented his legacy in the New York City food scene. In JGV, with passion, humour and heart, Vongerichten tells the story of his mother's goose stew and of his first taste of tom yum kung soup. With recipes, every story is full of wisdom, conveyed with the magnanimity and precision that has made this chef's name. Including old handwritten menus and black-and-white photographs throughout, this is a book for young chefs as well as anyone who has stood at a stove and wondered what might be.

From award-winning chef Gabriel Kreuther, the definitive cookbook on rustic French cooking from Alsace Gabriel Kreuther is the cookbook fans of the James Beard Award-winning chef have long been waiting for. From one of the most respected chefs in the United States, this cookbook showcases the recipes inspired by Kreuther's French-Swiss-German training and refined global style, one that embraces the spirits of both Alsace, his homeland, and of New York City, his adopted home. Sharing his restaurant creations and interpretations of traditional Alsatian dishes, Kreuther will teach the proper techniques for making every dish, whether simple or complex, a success. Recipes include everything from the chef's take on classic Alsatian food like the delicious Flammekueche (or Tarte Flambee) and hearty Baeckeoffe (a type of casserole stew) to modern dishes like the flavorful Roasted Button Mushroom Soup served with Toasted Chorizo Raviolis and the decadent Salmon Roe Beggar's Purse garnished with Gold Leaf. Featuring personal stories from the chef's childhood in France and career in New York as well as stunning photography, Gabriel Kreuther is the definitive resource for Alsatian cooking worthy of fine dining.

Pate, Confit, Rillette will delight chefs and home cooks eager for knowledge of charcuterie. Beginning with the basic principles of how and why these preparations work, Brian Polcyn and Michael Ruhlman include recipes both surprising and delicious, such as a succlent chicken terrine embedded with sauteed mushrooms; moden rillettes of shredded salmon and white fish; classic confits of duck and goose; and a vegetarian layered potato terrine. Part of the charcuterie mandate is using the entire animal and an avoidance of waste so the authors provide the ratios that will allow anyone to create as much or as little of each dish as desired. This is the book for when a cook intends to explore these timeless techniques and create exquisite food.

Thomas Keller, chef/proprieter of Napa Valley's French Laundry, is passionate about bistro cooking. He believes fervently that the real art of cooking lies in elevating to excellence the simplest ingredients; that bistro cooking embodies at once a culinary ethos of generosity, economy, and simplicity; that the techniques at its foundation are profound, and the recipes at its heart have a powerful ability to nourish and please.
So enamored is he of this older, more casual type of cooking that he opened the restaurant Bouchon, right next door to the French Laundry, so he could satisfy a craving for a perfectly made quiche, or a gratineed onion soup, or a simple but irresistible roasted chicken. Now Bouchon, the cookbook, embodies this cuisine in all its sublime simplicity.
But let's begin at the real beginning. For Keller, great cooking is all about the virtue of process and attention to detail. Even in the humblest dish, the extra thought is evident, which is why this food tastes so amazing: The onions for the onion soup are caramelized for five hours; lamb cheeks are used for the navarin; basic but essential refinements every step of the way make for the cleanest flavors, the brightest vegetables, the perfect balance--whether of fat to acid for a vinaigrette, of egg to liquid for a custard, of salt to meat for a duck confit.
Because versatility as a cook is achieved through learning foundations, Keller and Bouchon executive chef Jeff Cerciello illuminate all the key points of technique along the way: how a two-inch ring makes for a perfect quiche; how to recognize the right hazelnut brown for a brown butter sauce; how far to caramelize sugar for different uses.
Butlearning and refinement aside--oh those recipes! Steamed mussels with saffron, bourride, trout grenobloise with its parsley, lemon, and croutons; steak frites, beef bourguignon, chicken in the pot--all exquisitely crafted. And those immortal desserts: the tarte Tatin, the chocolate mousse, the lemon tart, the profiteroles with chocolate sauce. In Bouchon, you get to experience them in impeccably realized form.
This is a book to cherish, with its alluring mix of recipes and the author's knowledge, warmth, and wit: "I find this a hopeful time for the pig," says Keller about our yearning for the flavor that has been bred out of pork. So let your imagination transport you back to the burnished warmth of an old-fashioned French bistro, pull up a stool to the zinc bar or slide into a banquette, and treat yourself to truly great preparations that have not just withstood the vagaries of fashion, but have improved with time. Welcome to Bouchon.

In Grocery, bestselling author Michael Ruhlman offers incisive commentary on America's relationship with its food and investigates the overlooked source of so much of it-the grocery store. In a culture obsessed with food-how it looks, what it tastes like, where it comes from, what is good for us-there are often more questions than answers. Ruhlman proposes that the best practices for consuming wisely could be hiding in plain sight-in the aisles of your local supermarket. Using the human story of the family-run Midwestern chain Heinen's as an anchor to this journalistic narrative, he dives into the mysterious world of supermarkets and the ways in which we produce, consume, and distribute food. Grocery examines how rapidly supermarkets-and our food and culture-have changed since the days of your friendly neighborhood grocer. But rather than waxing nostalgic for the age of mom-and-pop shops, Ruhlman seeks to understand how our food needs have shifted since the mid-twentieth century, and how these needs mirror our cultural ones. A mix of reportage and rant, personal history and social commentary, Grocery is a landmark book from one of our most insightful food writers.

In his second in-depth foray into the world of professional cooking, Michael Ruhlman journeys into the heart of the profession. Observing the rigorous Certified Master Chef exam at the Culinary Institute of America, the most influential cooking school in the country, Ruhlman enters the lives and kitchens of rising star Michael Symon and renowned Thomas Keller of the French Laundry. This fascinating book will satisfy any reader's hunger for knowledge about cooking and food, the secrets of successful chefs, at what point cooking becomes an art form, and more. Like Ruhlman's The Making of a Chef, this is an instant classic in food writing-one of the fastest growing and most popular subjects today.

The author of "The Soul of a Chef" looks at the new role of the chef in contemporary culture
For his previous explorations into the restaurant kitchen and the men and women who call it home, Michael Ruhlman has been described by Anthony Bourdain as athe greatest living writer on the subject of chefsaand on the business of preparing food.a "In The Reach of a Chef," Ruhlman examines the profound shift in American culture that has raised restaurant cooking to the level of performance art and the status of the chef to celebrity CEO. Bibliophiles and foodies alike will savor this intimate meeting with some of the most famous chefs in the kitchens of the hottest restaurants in the world.

Described by one surgeon as "soul-crushing, diamond-making stress," surgery on congenital heart defects is arguably the most difficult of all surgical specialties. Drawing back the hospital curtain for a unique and captivating look at the extraordinary skill and dangerous politics of critical surgery in a pediatric heart center, Michael Ruhlman focuses on the world-renowned Cleveland Clinic, where a team of medical specialists--led by idiosyncratic virtuoso Dr. Roger Mee--work on the edge of disaster on a daily basis. Walk on Water offers a rare and dramatic glimpse into a world where the health of innocent children and the hopes of white-knuckled families rest in the hands of all-too-human doctors.