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Summary: Best Cook Book I Own
Review: This is by far the best cook book I own. It has detailed instructions on how to make delicious basic recipes and Julia tells you how to expand on the basics to make really good food. Her chicken pot pie is divine, and her pie crust is delicious. I highly recommend this cook book to novice as well as experienced cooks. It is fantastic!
C. Haug
North Carolina
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Summary: Don't be afraid-even if you are a beginner
Review: This was the first cookbook I ever bought, and it was a wonderful introduction to cooking for someone who could barely boil water. She goes through every dish step by step, with plenty of pictures and instructions. If you've never cooked before, obviously, you will want to start with the easier items - just read through the recipe before you begin and see if it is something you can handle. I guess the best praise I can give to this book is that 10 years later I am sill learning from it - and I have yet to find a recipe in this book that doesn't turn out well!!!
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Summary: A kitchen bible
Review: We use The Way to Cook religiously in my small restaurant. It has also become one of my favorite gifts to give. Interestingly, everyone I know who uses (and therefore loves) this cookbook refers to it as "Julia". That affectionate title says it all: it is not merely a cookbook, but an extension of Ms. Child and her extraordinary teaching skills.The Way to Cook will be most appreciated by those who are willing to spend a little time in the kitchen. The recipes are quite traditional, and don't ask for hard-to-find ingredients. You will find many variations to expand on the basic recipes. Ms. Child's French Bread recipe is the best I've come across--so tasty, simple and foolproof that it makes the ideal "first bread" attempt. If you are only going to invest in one major reference cookbook, this one should be it. The Way to Cook is so brillaint and thorough, it deserves to be purchased in hardback.
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Summary: WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU DON'T THIS YET?
Review: What are you kidding? Yes, I too called myself a weekend chef, but I was NOTHING until I got this bible. There are so many perfect colorful pictures and easy directions and useful tips that you will be reaching for this one more often than paper towels in your kitchen!
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Summary: This is the best all-around contemporary cookbook today.
Review: Whether you're a novice or an experienced cook, this book has plenty of interesting and thoroughly useful information and recipes. It's like a scholarship at a great cooking school, offering classics as well as the best of new cuisine -- and providing thoroughly up-to-date, reliable, and clear instructions for efficiently and successfully producing a variety of superb dishes in your home kitchen.
You owe it to yourself, your family, and your dinner guests to check this out!
Rating: 
Summary: A bible?
Review: Yes, it's the bible of cooking. Its like a degree at the culinary institute. However, its not an easy book to cook from. Most recipes refer to several parts of the book for details on how to prepare different parts of the recipe. So you contstantly have to page back and forth in the book. Its intimidating for the novice who just wants to cook, but if you really want to learn about cooking then its THE book to have.
Rating:
Summary: A bible?
Review: Yes, it's the bible of cooking. Its like a degree at the culinary institute. However, its not an easy book to cook from. Most recipes refer to several parts of the book for details on how to prepare different parts of the recipe. So you contstantly have to page back and forth in the book. Its intimidating for the novice who just wants to cook, but if you really want to learn about cooking then its THE book to have.
Rating:
Summary: Julia Child for Everyday Cooking. Excellent Teaching Source
Review: `The Way to Cook' was written by Julia Child and published by Knopf about 27 years after the first publication of `Mastering the Art of French Cooking' which established Child's reputation. So, it was published when Julia Child was a household name for over two decades. It was meant to be her most important culinary work. It has never replaced Child's first book in the hearts and minds of America's foodies, in spite of the fact that the book opens with a statement that the book means to address Americans' new health consciousness and their diminishing time available to cook. This is still a very, very good book. Unlike the more famous `French Cooking', this book is much more concerned with teaching the art of cooking. In fact, Ms. Child originates an idea here that has reached its fullest fruition in the style of Rachael Ray's 30-Minute Meal rubric. Ray succeeds in putting out fast meals not by using a lot of processed supermarket preparations, but by using knowledge of cooking to make the best of basic ingredients. This is not to say Ms. Child is doing fast cooking. Many recipes are pretty involved. I can still remember doing Julia's take on a barbecue recipe which involved making both a sauce and a rub from a goodly number of ingredients and a substantial amount of time required to slow cook the ribs. I got pretty hungary by the time I was finally finished. Teaching is so important to the object of this book that it is one of the very few books I know which could easily serve as a good textbook for a course on cooking. The only other book I know in this category would be Madeline Kammen's `The New Making of a Cook'. It is important to distinguish both of these books from the `how to cook everything' titles such as the `Joy of Cooking', `James Beard's American Cookery' or Mark Bittman's `How to Cook Everything'. The purpose of these books is to give detailed coverage to a wide range of methods rather than simply be a repository of a large number of recipes. The most distinctive feature in this book which supports it's object to teach cooking is the notion of the master recipe. A classic example of this approach is the master recipe for `Ragout of Chicken and Onions in Red Wine'. If this dish doesn't sound familiar to experienced cooks, it should be, because the very famous French recipe `Coq au Vin' is a variation of this master recipe. The classic simply adds lardons, mushrooms, and brandy and replaces sliced onions with `brown braized white onions'. In addition to master recipes and variations, there is a wealth of notes on techniques to improve your results. In discussing the use of lardons, there is a note which recommends blanching bacon and salt pork before adding it to a recipe to remove salt and smoky flavor. I am certain this is an optional step, but it is welcome to me as I often avoid recipes using salt pork to avoid the somewhat noisome smell of smoked fatty tissue which may come from cooking smoked pork. Another feature of the book which fits the master recipe model is that variations on the ragout master recipe are not limited to recipes for chicken. Rather, the same section includes ragouts of turkey and rabbit. The same principle is used throughout the book where foods are grouped by method of preparation rather than by source (pig, cow, lamb, calf, fowl). Still, the chapters are true to a fairly classic organization, with some topics you may not find in the usual work. The chapters are: Soups, Breads, Eggs, Fin Fish & Shellfish, Poultry, Meat, Vegetables, Salads, Pastry Doughs, Desserts, Cakes & Cookies. The chapter on Breads covers just four master recipes, but it will give you a thorough and satisfying experience which will tell you if you have the kind of love for baking which warrents exploring specialized works by such experts as Peter Reinhart or Nancy Silverton. The chapter on Pastry Doughs also just covers four master recipes, Pate Brisee, Puff Pastry, Pate a Choux, and Crepes. I may not be willing to take on puff pastry any time soon, but I would expect that the other three master recipes should be enticing enough to remove a cooks fears about making pies, crepes, and eclairs. Crepes especially should be an entertainer's best friend in that the batter can be made well in advance and, if necessary, the crepes themselves can be made in advance and reheated. If you want them fresh, it takes but a minute or two to cook a crepe, and it makes great kitchen theater, especially if you master the technique of flipping the crepe. I suspect the must useful chapter may be the one on eggs. Knowing ones way around egg cookery will take you a goodly distance toward being able to prepare really great dishes from standard pantry. I find that an author's discussion of how to make an omelette is often a good test of the quality of their book as a whole. I can say that Julia comes through for me by citing an omelette technique I have seen nowhere else. That is, the warning to limit oneself to two eggs when you have only a typical household burner available. As the book is published by Knopf, the layout, editing, and photography are first rate. I was just a little surprised when I could not find `barbecue' in the index, yet there is clearly a master recipe for barbecue in the chapter on meats. The very best feature of the book is Julia's very familiar voice and attitude which carries you on with reassurances that you can do it and these techniques will do you great service in your life. Very highly recommended. Lots of French recipes and lots of modern appliances put to good use.
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