The indispensable recipes and streamlined cooking techniques in Where Cooking Begins are an open invitation to dive into Carla Lalli Music’s laid-back cooking style. The food editor at large at Bon Appétit, her intuitive recipes are inspired by the meals she makes at home for her family and friends and the joy she takes in feeding them. Here, too, is her guide to the six essential cooking methods that will show you how to make everything without over-complicating anything—and every recipe includes suggestions for swaps and substitutions, so you’ll never feel stuck or stymied.

Where Cooking Begins is also the first recent cookbook to connect the way we shop to the way we cook. Music’s modern approach—pick up your fresh ingredients a few times a week, and fill your pantry with staples bought online—will make you want to click on a burner and slide out a cutting board the minute you get home.

The no-fail techniques, textured recipes, and strategies in Where Cooking Begins will make you a great cook.

Praise for Where Cooking Begins

“An ideal tool kit to transform a timid cook into an adventurous and confident improviser.”—Helen Rosner, The New Yorker

“[Carla Lalli Music] is like everyone’s favorite aunt, the one who shows up and makes surprising things happen. Her superpower is that she believes in you as a cook. . . . Where Cooking Begins is her 250-page argument that you should believe in yourself, too.”—Julia Moskin, The New York Times

“Carla Lalli Music knows how to help with ingredients, strategy and technique, but most important of all, she understands how to help you become confident as a cook.”—Nigella Lawson

“A gorgeous new cookbook from Bon Appétit’s former food director Carla Lalli Music, Where Cooking Begins presents a beautiful guide to truly modern cooking. Laid back and built to share, these simple but sophisticated recipes are the kind you accidentally memorize and learn to live by.”—The Chalkboard

“If you loved Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, this is the next book for you.”—PureWow