Cookbooks: How to Cook Like a Top Chef foreword by Rick Bayliss

Though the recipes included in this companion book to the Bravo series could stand on their own, those that don’t watch Top Chef are unlikely to really care. Let’s face it: who but Top Chef fanboys and girls are likely to care much about John Besh’s Frozen Cauliflower Blintz or Nild Noren’s Salmon with Napa Cabbage and Chorizo and, honestly? Andrew’s Squid Ceviche with Yuzu-Mint Glacier looks so astonishingly unappealing, it’s difficult to imagine anyone would care about it at all.

So those who haven’t been following Top Chef the television series will likely want to give How to Cook Like a Top Chef (Chronicle Books) a miss. But Top Chef is one of the top-rated cooking shows of all time so there’s a chance you have been watching and, if you have, well, despite its sometimes silly asides and somewhat gratuitous bios, How to Cook Like a Top Chef is quite an excellent cookbook. And in addition to some very well-described and illustrated recipes -- many for foods you will have seen prepared on the show -- How to Cook Like a Top Chef takes its title seriously enough to share basic knife and other kitchen skills in a well-illustrated section.

All in all, How to Cook Like a Top Chef is an interesting and useful cookbook. If you have never watched the show you will not care about that and, in all truth, there are cookbooks that would be more interesting and enlightening than this one. For fans of the show, however, this is the real deal: all of television’s glitz and glamour packed in a brightly designed and well-illustrated book.