A complete illustrated volume of home-cooking lessons and recipes.

The Culinary Institute of America is the place where many of America's leading chefs have learned and refined their cooking skills, and its methods are widely revered as the gold standard among culinary insiders around the world.

Now everyone can learn from the best, with Cooking at Home with The Culinary Institute of America. This complete-and completely approachable-illustrated guide gives home cooks an outstanding course in the essentials of cooking along with a wealth of irresistible recipes. Drawing on the CIA's extensive expertise, it shares all the basic information on equipment, ingredients, and techniques needed to become a great cook, from proper knife skills to cooking methods such as braising, grilling, saut?ing, and stewing. Readers learn the techniques step by step, with detailed instructions and extensive color photographs that clearly explain both what to do and how to do it.

Perfect for practicing skills and building a repertoire, the book's 200 stylish recipes are delicious and easy to make, from Beef Satay with Peanut Sauce to Roast Chicken with Pan Gravy, from Shrimp in Chili Sauce to Pasta Primavera with Basil Cream Sauce, French Style Peas, and more.

Generously illustrated with 250 beautiful full-color photographs of techniques and finished dishes, Cooking at Home with The Culinary Institute of America is a complete package of home-cooking lessons and recipes that home cooks can use to master the art of cooking in their own kitchens.

This superbly organized, stripped-down offspring of the CIA's New Professional Chef has the no-nonsense tone that results when dozens of teachers collaborate on a serious project: "Keep the blades of your knives sharp and well honed"; "Don't be tempted to leave the fish in the marinade for longer than 30 minutes." It's a refreshing sobriety amid the current mania for anecdotes in the home-cooking market. Less French than most school-driven texts, the book emphasizes basic techniques, from sautéing and roasting to portioning a chicken and making pasts. The recipe selections were edited with an equally heavy but sure hand: Puree of Split Pea, Roast Chicken with Pan Gravy, Beef Tenderloin with Wild Mushrooms, Gnocchi with Herbs and Butter. Each has an unobtrusive sidebar pointing out the relevant techniques (seeding tomatoes, melting chocolate). Even less familiar or more complex recipes - Roast Goose with Apple-Prune Sauce, Mole Poblano de Pollo, Steamed Cod with Gingered Hoisin Sauce - rely on sure-fire methods. Since pasta is a mainstay of home cooking, the carbonara-primavera-puttanesca trinity puts in an o bligatory appearance, along with various types of ravioli and lasagna. Desserts are mostly of the simple showstopper variety: Chocolate Mousse and several classic cooking-school soufflés. Look elsewhere, however, for game, sweetbreads, bread and pastry. Copiously photographed and filled with impressive-looking tables and charts (including 10 pages of weight/volume equivalents and temperature charts), this makes an ideal book for committed starting cooks, as well as culinary over-achievers who occasionally need reminding of the basics. (Oct.) (Publishers Weekly, July 7, 2003)

The huge textbooks from the Culinary Institute of America (with campuses in Hyde Park, NY. and Greystone, CA) are standard references for professionals; now the well-known school offers the culinary insights and experience of its staff to home cooks in a far more accessible work. An introductory section with dozens of step-by-step photographs covers equipment, basic pantry ingredients, and essential cooking techniques. Each of the recipe chapters opens with more specia1ized techniques related to their subject The 200 recipes, many of them shown in color photographs, include both classic and more contemporary dishes.