Finally, a recipe book with huge, beautiful pictures! Everything is visual, including the ingredient list. The dishes all look like they're bursting with flavor and sophistication. Exactly what you would expect from a world-renown chef. My only reservation as an inexperienced cook is that it doesn't have that many pictures of the preparation and cooking steps. ( )

This book is beautiful. The photographs and colors are a treat and I love the way it is organized: recipes in flavor families, others put together in menus. The book also makes a good read, which I really like in a cookbook. I do wish that it was more user friendly, however! Some of the recipes are very time consuming, others have vague measurements or technique descriptions, and many feature ingredients that are difficult to find in most grocery stores. If you don't live in a city with Asian markets or at least a great Whole Foods, good luck! Overall, this is a wonderful book, but only if you have the skills and resources required for the recipes.

This is a beautifully photographed book and each recipe is organized with different flavor combinations.

I've had good luck with two recipes thus far. First, Puffy Duck - a deceptively easy recipe with a big "wow" factor in presentation. The second recipe was a simple recipe for mashed sweet potatoes, but this was Rocco's entire point - that there's very little one needs to do in order to improve on their flavor.

I took 1/2 star off only because the recipes can get a bit vague on measurements. While I often buy coconut milk for curries, the "two cans of coconut milk" were listed just as that. I did my shopping at an Asian market for the greens and green Thai curry paste needed in the recipe and the shop contains many different sizes of coconut milk. I went with the "regular" grocery store size of 13.5 ounces and all was well - but I can see how someone unfamiliar with making curries might not know how much "2 cans" were supposed to be. ( )