In this magnificent new cookbook, illustrated with full color throughout, Julia Child give us her magnum opus–the distillation of a lifetime of cooking. And she has an important message for Americans today. . .

–to the health-conscious: make a habit of good home cooking so that you know you are working with the best and freshest ingredients and you can be in control of what goes into every dish
–to the new generation of cooks who have not grown up in the old traditions: learn the basics and understand what you are doing so cooking can be easier, faster, and more enjoyable
–to the more experienced cook: have fun improvising and creating your own versions of traditional dishes
–and to all of us: above all, enjoy the pleasures of the table.

In this spirit, Julia has conceived her most creative and instructive cookbook, blending classic techniques with free-style American cooking and with added emphasis on lightness, freshness, and simpler preparations. Breaking with conventional organization, she structures the chapters (from Soups to Cakes & Cookies) around master recipes, giving all the reassuring details that she is so good at and grouping the recipes according to method; these are followed–in shorthand form–by innumerable variations that are easily made once the basics are understood.

For example, make her simple but impeccably prepared sauté of chicken, and before long you’re easily whipping up Chicken with Mushrooms and Cream, Chicken Provençale, Chicken Pipérade, or Chicken Marengo. Or master her perfect broiled butterflied chicken, and next time Deviled Rabbit or Split Cornish Game Hens Broiled with Cheese will be on your menu.

In all, there are more than 800 recipes, including the variations–from a treasure trove of poultry and fish recipes and a vast array of fresh vegetables prepared in new ways to bread doughs (that can be turned into pizzas and calzones and hamburger buns) and delicious indulgences, such as Caramel Apple Mountain or a Queen of Sheba Chocolate Almond Cake with Chocolate Leaves. And if you want to know how a finished dish should look or how to angle your knife or to fashion a pretty rosette on that cake, there are more than 600 color photographs to entice and instruct you along the way.

A one-of-a-kind, brilliant, and inspiring book from the incomparable Julia, which is bound to rekindle interest in the satisfactions of good home cooking.With The Way to Cook, Julia Child creates a second culinary classic. Her first, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, introduced a generation of those used to preparing simple fare to what was then considered gourmet food, demystified classic techniques, and raised our culinary consciousness. In The Way to Cook, she also demystifies cooking techniques and does some consciousness-raising. This time, though, she speaks to everyone with little or no experience in the kitchen, which is most people these days. Always in tune with the moment, and ever the gracious realist, Child (although calling her Julia seems reasonable since she treats us with such open informality) explains in The Way to Cook how to boil an egg and stuff it, as well as how to make a perfect omelet and an elegant soufflé.

To help out readers who lack the most basic knowledge, she organizes the book by techniques rather than by ingredients. Soups are first, a relatively unintimidating choice to build confidence through delicious results such as true French Onion Soup and a contemporary Black Bean Gazpacho. Next come breads, updated to use a food processor to cut the kneading time. The fish chapter covers broiling a salmon steak and creating a sophisticated Crown Mousse of Trout. Chapters on poultry, meats, vegetables, and desserts are equally ample and wide-ranging.

When The Way to Cook was published in 1989, it accompanied a television series. A related set of videotapes, the first to teach cooking comprehensively, was offered simultaneously. However, more than 600 color photos in this book make it fully complete on its own.

The Way to Cook is a good reference volume, a useful gift, and a handsome way to follow Julia’s career as she transformed from a French classicist to the ever-evolving, always clear and reliable teacher we have come to adore. –Dana Jacobi