Jacques Pepin's Complete Techniques features everything the home cook needs to perfect: poach an egg, whisk a perfect hollandaise, knead a crispy baguette, or bake an exquisite meringue with the perfection and efficiency of a professional chef. Featured throughout the book, Pepin's classic recipes offer budding masters the opportunity to put lessons into practice with extraordinary results.

Moving from the basics (holding and sharpening knives, peeling vegetables, separating and poaching eggs, making stocks and sauces, carving meats, even folding napkins) through each food category (fish and shellfish, vegetables, poultry and meat, breads, pastry, and dessert), Jacques Pepin's Complete Techniques is the most comprehensive study of French cooking methods ever collected in one volume. It is sure to become an indispensable part of every home cook's library for many years to come.

When professionals work with ease and rapidity, it is a result of long years of practice and discipline. There are no secrets or tricks; only feats of skill (tours de main) acquired with prolonged effort. Through endless repetition, these techniques will become so much a part of you that you'll never forget them.

"People often tell me that what surprises them most is watching me cook and talk at the same time. This is because my hands are trained to the point where I do not have to think about the processes I use as I make a recipe-it's automatic. Instead of fighting the mechanics of cooking. I can concentrate on thinking about the combination of ingredients, about taste, and about texture. You may be very creative and imaginative in the kitchen, but you cannot take advantage of those qualities if you don't know the basics. A solid background must precede inventiveness." (Jacques Pepin, from the Introduction)

Jacques Pepin is one of America's best-known cookbook authors and cooking teachers, and has appeared regularly on PBS-TV for more than a decade, hosting or co-hosting with Julia Child or his daughter Claudine, more than 300 cooking shows. A former New York Times columnist, he is a contributing editor to Food & Wine magazine and has published nineteen cookbooks. He serves as Dean of Special Programs at The French Culinary Institute in New York City and teaches at Boston University. Born in Borg-en-Bresse, France, he was the personal chef to three French heads of state before moving to the United States in 1959. He now lives in Connecticut.