Sohla El-Waylly

Ammu

Ethiopia

Africana

Chicken and Charcoal

The Outdoor Kitchen

Charred

Mi Cocina

Persiana

Bavel

Cook This Book

Diasporican

Foodheim

Home Style Cookery 

In Bibi's Kitchen

An Invitation to Indian Cooking

Mezcla

Mission Vegan

Momofuku

Motherland

Night + Market

Ottolenghi Simple

A Super Upsetting Cookbook About Sandwiches

Win Son Presents: A Taiwanese American Cookbook

The Family Meal

The Food of Sichuan

The Modern Larder

The Woks of Life

The Tucci Cookbook

Turkey and the Wolf

Xi'an Famous Foods

A Good Bake

All Under Heaven

Veg-Table

Start Here

This is a hefty book with lots of pictures, bold text, and super nerdy, science-y know-how. On top of that, it's split evenly between savory and desserts so you'll learn a lot of basic techniques in both worlds. 

But the real question is, "would a beginner benefit from this book?" Personally, I think that as a first-time cook, you’d basically need to cook through the book sequentially, repeating recipes often, to feel like you really understand what’s happening. 

That being said, I do think if you’re an elementary home cook today: meaning you already know what could happen if you leave milk heating on a stove unattended, but want a college level cooking 101 course to up your game and cook with the big dogs, then Start Here is a great book to add to your shelf.

This book takes more work to use than a lot of cookbooks. But that's because learning something is harder than just getting *a* meal to the table.

Sohla admirably goes out of her way to really teach home cooks as much as could reasonably be packed into a single volume (TWICE the size of a typical cookbook) about the WHY of cooking and not just the HOW of a meal.

My only concern is if the sometimes underwhelming flavors will put off home cooks who just invested way more time than would be typical for many books to get a meal out.

Yoshihiro

Amazon

Cookin' Cut Synthetic Rubber Cutting board 

Hinoki Cutting Board

R01 Maple Edge Grain Cutting Board

Cutting Board

Chopping Block

FRK20 Soft Cutting Board

Aptitlig

Finfordela Flexible Chopping Board

Proppmatt Beechwood Cutting Board

Skogsta Acacia Cutting Board

reBoard Recycled Plastic Cutting Board

Edge Grain Cutting Board

Hi-Soft Cutting Board

This cutting board has ruined other cutting boards for me. It's super gentle on knives, it doesn't slip around on your counter, it's relatively light, and it's easy to resurface with a little sandpaper if it gets too marked up or stained.

The only gripes I have are that it's an ugly color that stains easily and that handle cutout is pretty useless.

It's worth noting that there are a couple other LDPE (note: Yoshihiro claims it's made of "Soft PVA", but their manufacturer states that it's actually LDPE) models on the market, but as of writing they're significantly more expensive.

Though on the expensive end of cutting boards, I absolutely love this thing. It is a super nice texture that doesn't slide around. It does stain and the handle is way to small for my hands, but I use this everyday and don't like using any other cutting board now.

Truly a joy to use. It's not cheap but so much better than any and all synthetic cutting boards I've ever used.

A side note for those living outside the US where this might be hard to source, these boards seem to be sourced from Japan and they might be easier to order from there through the usual online retailers ("high soft" is the term that worked for me).

Aioli

Aioli

yield

time

ingredients

steps

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