From renowned cooking expert and author of The Elements of Cooking, a groundbreaking book that explains the very essential "truth" of cooking--which has nothing to do with recipes.

As the world fills up with ever more complicated recipes with never-ending ingredient lists, Michael Ruhlman blasts through the noise and takes us back to what is real: simple ratios that are the very "truth" of cooking--pie dough is 3-2-1 or three parts flour to two parts fat to one part water. Cookies are 1-2-3 or one part sugar, two parts fat, and three parts flour. Hollandaise sauce is 1 to 6: one pound butter to six egg yolks.

Distilling dishes to their essence--a few basic techniques and even fewer ingredients--is what every cook needs to know, professional or amatuer--to create the cornerstone dishes of Western cooking.

Broken down into 26 basic ratios, Ruhlman will teach us, for example, the basic craft of a hollandaise sauce (remember the 1 to 6 above?) and then show us that with a little vinegar and cracked pepper, it goes from craft to art....ALL without a recipe.