# James Peterson's "Cooking"



## robenco18 (Oct 26, 2012)

Hi All,

Any strong opinions about this book? As a home cook without any formal training I've just been following recipes and proceeding with techniques as I go, guessing sometimes how best to achieve what the recipe is calling for. I've been looking for a good book to learn some technique, but not one that is for the culinary student/professional like "The Professional Chef."

Peterson's "The Essentials of Cooking" seems to be a book for the complete beginner, which may be great for me, but it seems to be out of print, or at least not sold through Amazon, only 3rd party merchants. Is "Cooking" pretty much an extended "Essentials of Cooking?"

I think "Cooking" might be the Xmas gift I want, as opposed to another outright cook book like The French Laundry (not that I might still not get one of those too, haha).

The review from ChefTalk gives "Cooking" 3 out of 5 stars, but the review is glowing so I'm not sure what the overall opinion is. James Peterson seems to be popular here, but "Cooking" is rarely mentioned when discussing "must have" books.

Thanks for your help!


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## chicagoterry (Apr 3, 2012)

I don't know that particular book well but I've heard great things about it and I think James Peterson is brilliant as a cookbook author. I'd say for learning technique, any Peterson would probably be a better choice than the Thomas Keller. Not that I have anything against Keller, but Peterson's particular genius is as a teacher.


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## phatch (Mar 29, 2002)

I think you're right that Cooking is an expansion of the concepts of Essentials of Cooking.

You can probably get either from your local library system and give it a test run to see what you think of them.


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