Cook With Me: 150 Recipes for the Home Cook

Eating at the home of someone who unabashedly loves good food offers exuberant pleasures that don't depend on whether the food is familiar to you. All that matters is that the cook has the skills to cook well and the desire to put something in front of you that you'll enjoy.

Alex Guarnaschelli's third cookbook makes it pretty clear that her home is just like that. The food here is inspired both by her experience growing up with passionately food loving parents and by her professional kitchen experiences that led her to open her own restaurant, Butter, and become a popular figure on Food Network shows such as Chopped and Iron Chef.

There are many Italian notes, some in homage to her father and his Neapolitan roots. There are dishes inspired by her mother's recipe testing (Mom edited some of the most famous cookbooks of a generation, including Classic Indian Cooking) And there are ideas born of Alex's time training in France, all the years she's lived in NYC, and all the questions her daughter asks. In this way, it's a family cookbook.

Cook with Me is not a weeknight, dinner-on-the-table-in-20-minutes cookbook. It's a book for cooks who like the act of cooking, who appreciate a little flair, and who like hearing informed opinions from someone who cares as much as they do about good food.

Hardcover. Color photographs throughout.