Cookbooks today, like cable television and the Internet, reflect narrowcasting in the extreme. However esoteric your tastes, it's likely you can find the right tome to guide you along. So, the typical home cook might question the wisdom of dropping $70 for a 1,200-page culinary textbook that features recipes for ten or more diners and weighs as much as an adolescent Saint Bernard.
Nevertheless, the eighth edition of The Professional Chef
compiled by the staff of the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York, has plenty to offer the serious home cook. Like a big box of crayons, the authoritative text contains options that you might never use, but it's nice to know they're there. Though the book is intended as a straightforward driver's manual for the hungry scholars who slice and sear their way through the nation's best-known culinary school, it can also serve as an excellent primer on some of the bedrock principles of preparing, cooking, and serving food for those of us who don't plan to wear the toque.