Carucci - Cooking School Secrets For Real World Cooks

Praise for the first edition of Cooking School Secrets for Real World Cooks

Linda imparts her invaluable culinary knowledge gently and sensibly, inspiring her readers to lose any anxieties they may have of cooking. One can imagine her peering over their shoulder, helping each one understand the recipe while at the same time enjoying the entire process. She is the consummate teacher, cook, and coach all rolled into one.

Thomas Keller, Thomas Keller Restaurant Group

Carucci has no TV program or series of books to her name. She is, foremost, a teacher who has worked her way through the ranks of culinary AmericaTrained at the California Culinary Academy, she went on to become one of the IACPs Cooking Teachers of the Year. If this first cookbook is any indication, that was a well-deserved honor. Theres much to learn here, and Carucci presents the information clearly without dumbing it down, whether shes addressing the crucial roles of salt and butter or the fact that an enzyme in some peoples saliva makes cilantro taste, to them, like soap. The first 50 pages cover cooking basics and dig into topics like understanding the palate and using knives. Drawings throughout illustrate such feats as slitting squid and butterflying boneless chicken breasts. Of the 100 recipes offered, the best combine Caruccis formal training with her Italian ancestry. There are cinematic mega-dishes like Double-Crusted Timpano with Fusilli, Ricotta, and Tender Little Meatballs; staples like Chicken Cacciatore, and Braised Calamari in Red Sauce; and four different risottos. Adventuresome dishes include Vietnamese-Style Honey-Glazed Pork Skewers, and Turkey Mole, with over two dozen ingredients. Chocolate appears not only in that mole but also in a handful of rich desserts like Devils Food Cake with Dark Chocolate Ganache. However, the greatest pleasures are the scores of tips and secrets alluded to in the title. Beware of scallops that look pure white. Potatoes cook evenly if you start with cold water. Who knew?

Publishers Weekly (starred review)

As a professionally trained chef who teaches others how to cook, Linda Carucci has been sharing insider information for 30 years. Some of her students have gone on to become chefs. But at heart, she is an advocate for everyday cooksCookbooks written by cooking school instructors are nothing new. What separates Caruccisis that it is unusually accessible and well organizedCarucci has a natural gift for instructionshe is precise, but not fussy.

The Washington Post

Now, with Cooking School Secrets for Real World Cooks , you can glean the best tips and insights from a cooking school experience right in your own kitchen. And who better to provide this behind the scenes glimpse than legendary cooking teacher Linda Carucci? What a timely and inspired workcongratulations, Linda, youve hit one out of the park!

Charlie Trotter

The secret is out! Linda Carucci is at her best when she shares her culinary pearls of wisdom with professional chefs and home cooks alike. Each of the 100 recipes in this wonderful book begins with a great tip from Lindasomething she learned from the California Culinary Academy. Now I wish I had taken better notes when I was in cooking school!

Chef Martin Yan, Restaurateur and Host of Yan Can Cook on public television

Anything but a chore, cooking should be simple, easy, convenient and, hopefully, fun. Thats the message one gets [here]Carucci knows her way around the kitchen as shes not only a professional chef but a teacher, culinary consultant and, now, an author [who] wrote her first cookbook because my students asked for a reliable kitchen go-to guide with more than just recipes.

Napa Valley Register

its the next best thing to plunking down several hundred dollars for a comprehensive course. Linda Carucci has more than 20 years experience as a professional cook and teacherand in the book she skillfully combines these two talents, giving her readers their moneys worth and then someCarucciknows the key element of successful teaching: Dont just tell students what to do, but explain to them why they are asked to do itThe amount of information presentedwould be considered respectable in a volume twice its size. And we havent even talked about the recipes yet. There are more than 100, all tested by Caruccis veritable army of home cooks across the country who give her feedback, which, if critical, prompts rethinking and revision. So the recipes are rock-solid and interesting, yet sensibleThis is not a coffee-table book, and it doesnt carry a coffee-table book price tag. Its a kitchen table book, and one of the best I have run across in quite a while.

San Francisco Chronicle

Caruccis chief delight, it seems, is learning and teaching. For her, its a natural continuum. Inhale, exhale. Take in new information, give it to other peopleI was surprised to find that although its packed with tips, illustrations, recipes, advice, anecdotes and explanations, its a convenient-size paperback. This mountain of information is organized for accessibility and offered in reader-friendly proseCooking School Secrets makes a great gift for the recent college graduate setting up a new apartment and facing a kitchen alone for the first time. Its also a great refresher course for experienced cooks. Each recipe is explained so thoroughly that its almost a class in itself. Not surprising, since the book is based on the authors eight years running her own school, Linda Caruccis Kitchen, in Oakland, California. Its a book that begs to be used, and the reward isnt just recipes so tasty you forget theyre instructional. You also have the pleasure of meeting Carucci herself in her writing. Her sense of enjoyment is an invigorating, illuminating force.

Chicago Sun Times

Cooking School
Secrets
for Real World
Cooks

Second Edition

Linda Carucci

AuthorHouse

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.authorhouse.com

Phone: 1 (800) 839-8640

2016 Linda Carucci. All rights reserved.

Second edition text copyright 2016 by Linda Carucci

Front and back cover photographs by Dan Mills Studio

Carucci, Linda.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 06/28/2016

ISBN: 978-1-5049-8362-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5049-8361-7 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016904472

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,
and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Foreword to the Second Edition of Cooking School Secrets for Real World Cooks

Why a second edition?

Heres the story: In 2005 Chronicle Books published the first edition of Cooking School Secrets for Real World Cooks . The book received a starred review in Publishers Weekly (my editor told me they rarely reviewed cookbooks back then), and critical acclaim in the food sections of newspapers across the U.S. In 2006, the book was a finalist for both James Beard and Julia Child First Book Awards, for which I still feel both humbled and exhilarated.