Kitchen Rescue

We’ve all been there with recipes; suddenly they look like math problems we stumbled over in trig class because we didn’t get the symbols. It can be the same with a cooking technique. Well on the way to making a fabulous meal, you stand numbly before a cookbook directing you to de-glaze a pan or truss a chicken, without any explanation. Uh, teacher?

It’s that sense of frustration that James Peterson wants to fight in his new book “Essentials of Cooking” (Artisan, $40). Peterson, whose record includes three award-winning cookbooks, illustrates cooking techniques from zesting a lemon to readying a roast with more than 1,000 photos. Once you understand the fundamentals (as with sine and cosine), he says, you’ll be cooking confidently.

The idea of basics couldn’t come at a better time, as there are fewer people who know how to cook prompting the need for help when they do--and people who do like to cook getting more elaborate on weekends. Certainly this is a book to keep handy.

But it could use a bit more spunk in its design, a bit more of the demanding, confident presence Peterson wants us to have. When you open a page, little headline type blends with body type, and you’re not sure where to look first. Tips boxes and directives to other pages can make learning a bit of a page-flipper. If you give yourself time to study, the book will inspire. But if you’re in a panic, it may frustrate. Of course, if you’d read the recipe through first. . . .