To toss in some of my favorite Canadian/North American cookbooks along the same lines, I highly recommend Canadian Living's Make It Tonight, which is aimed at cooks and would-be cooks with limited time. It's organized thematically - but the themes are things like "30-minute meals" and "20-minute meals" and "5-ingredient meals", with a few sections of things that are easy but impressive, and liberally interspersed with basic cooking instructions, and perhaps most usefully, advice about setting up a kitchen - what ingredients are most useful to have on hand, what kitchen equipment (pots, pans, knives, etc.) is necessary for basic functionality.
Also, if you don't mind religiously-inflected musings on food security and social justice and the importance of culturally-appropriate food, the Mennonite Central Committee's Simply in Season is a great introduction to both the slow food movement and to seasonal eating, arranged around seasonal produce. The recipes are relatively culturally diverse (although often collected in a missionary context), but usually simple, with basic ingredients that are easily available and relatively inexpensive in North America. It presumes basic cooking skills, but when I started cooking for myself, it was the bridge between my existing skills and really enjoying cooking and being interested in the ethics of food (I've since become a vegetarian, and I still use it for some of its baking recipes, as well as its vegetarian ones).
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branchandroot
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Date: 2012-02-03 12:18 pm (UTC)Also, if you don't mind religiously-inflected musings on food security and social justice and the importance of culturally-appropriate food, the Mennonite Central Committee's Simply in Season is a great introduction to both the slow food movement and to seasonal eating, arranged around seasonal produce. The recipes are relatively culturally diverse (although often collected in a missionary context), but usually simple, with basic ingredients that are easily available and relatively inexpensive in North America. It presumes basic cooking skills, but when I started cooking for myself, it was the bridge between my existing skills and really enjoying cooking and being interested in the ethics of food (I've since become a vegetarian, and I still use it for some of its baking recipes, as well as its vegetarian ones).