The Farmer's Wife Harvest Cookbook: Over 300 blue-ribbon recipes! Book

This book has 64 master recipes. Each master recipe has detailed step-by-step instructions with pictures. The beef stew recipe is nine pages long with 5 pictures. There are 8 variations listed for each master recipe. All the recipes are flexible, and the authors give many options for the ingredients. They tell you when it is OK to substitute, and when you need to stick to a particular ingredient. I find that it is easy to customize these recipes to what is in my pantry.

What makes this book special are the very detailed explanations about the how and why of every ingredient and every technique. For example, when a recipe called for heavy cream, I never knew if I could substitute whipping cream, which is what my local market sells. This book answered that question and many others. The recipe on pot roast tells you exactly what cuts of meat work best and why. The book tells you what to say to the butcher to get the cut you need.

When I cook with this book, I feel like I am enrolled in a cooking school. My favorite cook book before this was Julia Child's "The Way to Cook". Julia' book is similar with master recipes and variations, but "Cooking Know-How" has superior presentation and organization. The descriptions of techniques are also more detailed and the use of pictures is very helpful. There are recipes that I felt that I has mastered from Julia's book, but using the "Cooking Know-How" versions I have learned even more.

To say my family is happy I bought this book is an understatement.