Gisselen's book starts out with explaining the difference between home cooking and restaurant cooking and then showing how home cooks can be more efficient in their methods and more confident in their preparations by incorporating the skills of the professional chef. The second chapter deals with basic cooking methods but could have been more exhaustive. The following nine chapters present basic suggestions for preparing different types of food: soups and sauces, fish and seafood, salads, pastas,and other first courses, beef, lamb, pork, and veal, etc. In those chapters are also recipes serving either 4 or 16 people (with both English and metric measurements) so you can prepare for either a family or a party setting. In the few days that I have owned this book I have found it of great value.

Of particular value are the appendices. Appendix 1 contains basic recipes such as basic white, brown, and fish stocks; béchamel, velouté, tomato, brown, Hollandaise, and Béarnaise sauces, etc. The second appendix gives units of measurements. Included is a good breakdown of metric measurements and an approximate weight-volume equivalent measurements of various foods. ( )