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the experienced cook and some are for those just starting out. For example, there’s a paella for every season, but there are also tips on how to make perfect Scrambled Eggs. There’s a passel of easy chicken or fish sautés, skillet wonders that’ll have dinner on the table in minutes as well as blow-out dinner-party dishes that showcase some of the best of modern American cooking. How about Braised Beef Short Ribs with Cabbage, Port, and Vanilla? Sure, there’s homey chicken pot pie and lots of ways to make just about every good-ol’-American cobbler the market can afford; but there are also international dishes like Jerk Chicken Thighs and Plantains or Vietnamese-Inspired Spiced Pork Soup.

By the way, most of those international dishes are listed as “inspired” (Thai-inspired, Greek-inspired, etc.). The authentic preparation of international dishes often requires obscure ingredients not readily available to home cooks. Anyone for the rind of a Buddha’s hand, a sinewy Malaysian citrus? Our international recipes are reinterpreted with the modern supermarket in mind.

One other thing we should confess up front: we have a preference for food that can be quickly prepared. We shy away from six-hour smoker roasts, triple-raised yeast doughs, and two-day brines. A few are here, but they’re not the norm. Over and over, we’ve asked the same question: how can we get dinner on the table as soon as possible?

The answer, of course, lies in recipes without pitfalls and complicated tricks, recipes that come from two food writers who’ve wandered those supermarket aisles for years, looked at the astounding array of food that’s available, and then tried to come up with a meal that’s satisfying, straightforward, and yet somehow a matter of personal taste.

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Overall Tips for Success

• Read the recipe from start to finish. You’ll understand a dish’s flow, discover any quirks, and find out if there’s an unfamiliar ingredient or term you should look up before you start.

• Read around the recipe. There may be alternative recipes before or after the one you’re looking at. Root Vegetable Soup is followed by Potato and Roasted Chile Soup. Is the second recipe more your speed?

• Choose, then shop. Cookbooks work best as planning guides. Yes, we love to experiment. We’ve walked through Chinatown, seen some unfamiliar vegetable, and tried to make dinner out of it. But that’s the exception, not the rule. It’s better to choose a recipe, then shop for what it requires. Spontaneity is overrated at 6:30 p.m.

• Know your ingredients. For any that are unfamiliar, check the Glossary starting on back matter.

• Know your options. We’re all about variations, but we ask you to be sensible and know what you’re doing. We once had someone write to complain that our piecrust was a disaster; on further questioning, she told us that she’d substituted cornstarch for flour. (“They’re both white,” she wrote.) Simple additions like this vinegar instead of that or one spice substituted for another will probably not affect the final dish, but larger substitutions that change the essential chemistry of the cooking may well compromise the results.

• Prep your ingredients before you cook. Of course, this isn’t a hard-and-fast rule. If you’ve read the recipe through, you might know, for example, that there’s a thirty-minute break between steps 4 and 5. But cooking will go more quickly—and be more fun—if you’re prepared. Would you go to war without a gun?

• Visual cues mean more than temporal ones. Always treat timings as estimates. Your stove may have more BTUs than ours; our flour may be drier than yours; our bread crumbs, moister. There’s no way to account for the variables, so pay close attention to the visual cues—“until soft,” “until slightly thickened,” “until an instant-read meat thermometer registers…”

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Thirty-One Examples of Culinary Shorthand

Although recipes in a cookbook are more expansive than those in a magazine, both are written with culinary chestnuts. If you’re a longtime cook, you know the drill. If not, these verbal ticks