Product Description

"The first time I stepped into a Sur La Table store many years ago, it instantly became my favorite kitchenware store, and it still is. Its variety never fails to surprise me. I have always found what I needed or even what I didn't know I needed until I saw it there." --Marcella Hazan, godmother of Italian cooking in America and author of Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking

Things Cooks Love: Implements. Ingredients. Recipes., the first in a series of Andrews McMeel Publishing books by the trusted culinary authority Sur La Table, speaks to the love that cooks of all levels feel for their tools. Whether you're passionate about the gorgeous copper pot you just received as a gift, a rice cooker you have always wanted to try, or your grandmother's well-aged cast-iron skillet, award-winning author Marie Simmons provides inspiration to make the best use of your cookware along with delectable recipes to enhance the experience.

Since the 1972 opening of its flagship store in Seattle's Pike Place Market, Sur La Table has become the destination of choice for iconic chefs from Jacques Pepin and Martha Stewart to Mario Batali. A favorite of culinary connoisseurs and gadget gurus alike, Sur La Table sells the A-to-Z of kitchenware and prides itself on teaching how to properly buy, use, care for, and cook with your newfound kitchen additions.

Things Cooks Love presents more than 100 satisfying recipes along with 125 detailed descriptions of commonly used and more unusual kitchen implements. Simmons focuses on how to choose basic cookware, and then branches out to an international array of essentials for Asian, Mexican, French, Indian, Iberian, and Moroccan kitchens. Each recipe includes preparation and cooking times, serving portions, and implements necessary to prepare the dish. Alternative cookware is offered for kitchens that aren't stocked with the exact cookware or tools.

Unlike any other tool-focused book on the market, this book celebrates the deep connection between cooks and their treasured tools. Things Cooks Love is more than a reference tool or a cookbook--it is a cook's book.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #20011 in Books
• Published on: 2008-04-01
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 352 pages

About the Author
With a successful direct-mail catalog, e-commerce site, cooking class program, and more than sixty stores coast to coast, Sur La Table shares its passion for the tastes of the world with people who love to cook and entertain, enticing aficionados and curious beginners alike with its amazing selection of cookware and tools.

Marie Simmons is an award-winning author of eighteen cookbooks, popular cooking teacher, and established food writer. Her work has appeared in Food and Wine, Cooking Light, and Eating Well, and she has written a fifteen-year monthly column in Bon Appetit and articles for the Los Angeles Times Syndicate. Marie has won two James Beard awards and a Julie Child award. She lives in the Bay Area.

Customer Reviews

A Company Catalog That You Can Pay For!
Why waste your money on this when Williams-Sonoma has already done it much better? This is a nice looking book if you are interested in paying for a Sur La Table catalog. Otherwise, there is nothing here that you can't find elsewhere and much cheaper. Buy this book if you want to see advertisement after advertisement of products that you don't really need and will never use if you buy them. Not to mention that there is very little information offered about the tools they want you to buy. As far as a cooking book goes, this is nothing new, just a way for Sur La Table to make more money by selling their own line of books at the expense of the individual authors they used to support. "Things Cooks Love"? It should be called "Things You Don't Need That Sur La Table Loves To Try To Sell You." Hey, if you want to pay for their advertising be my guest. If you want to contribute to big business and CEO profits at the expense of the independent cooks and authors, that is your choice. But this book is lame... don't say I didn't warn you.

Great book - recommend for all budding cooks
Great book.. I recommend for all budding cooks. If you are a gadget person, this book will point you in the right direction.

Pricey brochure for Sur La Table
This is a very pretty book, and it certainly provides a nice overview of cooks tools--but be forewarned that it looks and feels more like a product catalog than a top-shelf cookbook. Yes, there are sexy pics of the equipment, a little (sometimes very little) informative text about how to use and care for the equipment, and recipes related to the kind of hardware being discussed. And while I appreciated the breadth of the material, the author covers so much ground that depth is seriously lacking. In sum, I found the book to be slight, vaguely corporate in tone (read: the author's voice is indistinct), and generally unsatisfying--especially given the relatively high asking price. This is one of those titles that demand a thorough examination of the "Search Inside" feature at Amazon to decide for yourself if the book is worth the price.

This one gets four stars for ambition, but only two stars for execution.