Basics with Babish is an -interactive- cooking guide with recipes and info curated by Andrew Rea. Released 24th Oct 2023 by Simon & Schuster on their Simon Element imprint, it's 464 pages and is available in hardcover and ebook formats.
This is a useful and warmly written guide with lots of recipes, but it's also a learning guide/cookery course which aims to help readers acquire useful skills and develop their cooking repertoire. There's a very "trouble-shooting" vibe to the recipes which will help readers understand where things might've gone differently from their goal and how to improve results next time.
There's a logical layout and chapters are grouped roughly thematically: bread, pizza, pasta, eggs, vegetables, seafood, poultry, pork, beef, and desserts. Each of the recipes include a title and introduction, ingredients in a bullet list, and step-by-step prep instructions. Ingredients will mostly be readily available from any moderately well stocked grocery store. Measurements are given in metric SI units (yay!); so a kitchen scale is a must.
Recipes are accompanied by many (many) process photos as well as styled finished shots of the dish. Serving suggestions are attractive and appropriate. Nutritional info is not included. The author has included many alternate preparations/forms (loaves, muffins, individual servings, and pull apart loaves, for example) for most of the dishes.
The standout for this volume is the author's exploration of why individual recipes have gone wrong, a troubleshooting discussion, and techniques for improving results.
There's a lot of personal detail here, and for current fans of the author's work on youtube, etc, the background makes for entertaining reading.
Four and a half stars. This is a really useful and beautiful book. Highly recommended for public library acquisition, home use, and gifting.
Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.
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