One great cookbook: 'The Zuni Café Cookbook' by Judy Rodgers

A tome that teaches you to both recreate recipes and think like a cook

Book cover of 'The Zuni Cafe Cookbook' by Judy Rodgers
This is the kind of book that will forever shape how you cook
(Image credit: ‎W. W. Norton & Company)

Some cookbooks are bicycles with training wheels. They teach you how to cook, mitigating with masterful guidance your fears of toppling. Soon, your confidence develops. The training wheels come off, and you carve your own autonomous cooking path.

"The Zuni Café Cookbook," published in 2002, is that bike. Over the course of its 500-plus pages, its author, Judy Rodgers, wheedles and emboldens the reader with recipes that spare no verbiage in describing how to think like a cook and, in time, act like one — with no one's guidance but your own honed kitchen faculties.

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Scott Hocker, The Week US

Scott Hocker is an award-winning freelance writer and editor at The Week Digital. He has written food, travel, culture and lifestyle stories for local, national and international publications for more than 20 years. Scott also has more than 15 years of experience creating, implementing and managing content initiatives while working across departments to grow companies. His most recent editorial post was as editor-in-chief of Liquor.com. Previously, he was the editor-in-chief of Tasting Table and a senior editor at San Francisco magazine.