 | On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen by Harold McGee
Buy new: $26.40 / Used from: $17.00 THE SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT KITCHEN REFERENCE BOOK by virtue of it's ability to answer so many questions (most of which you never thought of).
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 | The French Laundry Cookbook by Thomas Keller
Buy new: $30.00 / Used from: $22.99 The gold standard of restaurant cookbooks. It teaches and inspires and entertains.
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 | Sauces: Classical and Contemporary Sauce Making by James Peterson
Buy used from: $7.68 Much, much more than the ultimate resource on sauces. Peterson also includes inumerable hints and suggestions that are wonderfully applicable to all facets of cooking. Things like balancing flavors, wine pairings, and ordering of courses. And the specific info on sauces is encyclopedic.
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 | Culinary Artistry by Andrew Dornenburg
Buy new: $19.77 / Used from: $15.77 For the creative cook looking for ideas to create new recipes, new flavor combinations, or ideas on menu planning, there is nothing better. A unique format, with lists of flavor combinations taking precedence over recipes.
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 | Amuse-Bouche: Little Bites Of Delight Before the Meal Begins by Rick Tramonto
Buy new: $23.10 / Used from: $10.99 Pretty and inspiring in a similar way to The French Laundry Cookbook but with simpler recipes. Nice intro to foams and herbed fruit juices and how to plate food attractively.
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 | Simple to Spectacular: How to Take One Basic Recipe to Four Levels of Sophistication by Jean-Georges Vongerichten
Buy new: $29.70 / Used from: $8.80 I love the organization...4 or 5 increasingly sophisticated recipes on a particular theme, like salmon in foil or poached pears...and the recipes are top-notch and fairly easily executed by the home cook. There is a lot here, and almost all of it is very usable, unlike most other elite-chef cookbooks.
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 | Larousse Gastronomique by Larousse Gastronomique
Buy new: $53.55 / Used from: $35.00 Info-rich compendium that must be in every serious cook's arsenal.
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 | The 1997 Joy of Cooking by Marion Rombauer Becker
Buy new: $28.88 / Used from: $8.00 Joy is necessary. I have the 70's version and the '97 version, but not the 2006. Perhaps it's the best one. I don't know. I DO know, though, that I couldn't live with at least one of these bboks on my kitchen shelf. My most used source of basic recipe information.
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 | Thai Food by David Thompson
Buy new: $26.40 / Used from: $20.00 If only all ethnic cuisine cookbooks could be this well-written and informative! Definitive and inspiring.
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 | Bread: A Baker's Book of Techniques and Recipes by Jeffrey Hamelman
Buy new: $25.20 / Used from: $23.36 Admittedly an advanced book, but I love the wealth of practical insider's information that can only come from someone who lives, eats and breathes bread. If I were starting a bread baking business, this would be my Bible.
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 | The Elements of Taste by Gray Kunz
Buy used from: $37.95 OK, I'm less certian of this one. I include it because of the ambitiousness of its intended purpose--to identify and conceptualize tastes in broad categories and then to try to invent a calculus through which tastes can be used to create specific effects in food. Love the idea, but admittedly it doesn't always succeed. Still, its Gray Kunz's food!
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