The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook

Perelman's superpower is making you feel like cooking is a normal, doable thing rather than a performance. Every recipe is rigorously tested in her famously tiny apartment kitchen, which means if she says it works, it works in your kitchen too. Jim has made her dimply plum cake nineteen times and counting. Apartment-sized cooking with restaurant-sized flavor. What sets this apart from the cookbook industrial complex is voice. Perelman writes like a friend — funny, candid about failures, generous with shortcuts — and her headnotes are some of the best in the genre. The "I tried this seven ways and here's what works" energy carries through every recipe. The mushroom bourguignon, the pancetta white beans, the brownie roll-out cookies — these are recipes you'll cook every year for a decade. This is the book Jim recommends to anyone who lives in an apartment, anyone who feels intimidated by the cookbooks above, and anyone who just wants to cook delicious food without losing their mind. Five worms. Pair it with a glass of wine and a fall afternoon.