Mmmm!

What you really need, to navigate any and all cookbook recipes with ease, is a cook’s glossary of terms and techniques. As this sort of information doesn’t change, look in used book shops. There are some exhaustive tomes, encyclopedic books that give detailed, illustrated instructions on just about every task you might want to do with food, from curling butter to making radish flowers and, yes, deglazing a pan, the proper technique for sautéing mushrooms and filleting a fish. This type of book isn’t a big seller, so you should be able to pick one up at a reasonable price.

While these books don’t usually contain many recipes, they are jam packed with every cooking technique you’ll run across in a lifetime of cooking. They also usually contain chapters on formal table settings, pairing and serving wines, using seasonings, metric conversions, measuring versus weighing ingredients, pastry tricks and a host of other valuable cook’s information you’ll not find in a standard cookbook.

A reference book of cooking terms and techniques is an invaluable resource for any cook. Never again will you be befuddled when cookbook recipes throw in a technique you’ve never heard. BTW, these books are fun to read as well.

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