HOW TO BE A BAD COOK

An accessible approach to basic cooking skills for beginners in the kitchen from Finnegan.

The book begins with a brief overview of the history of cooking. From there, the author takes the reader through some staple kitchen ingredients and simple instructions for how they may be generally prepared. She starts with potatoes and continues with more essentials, including proteins, soups, and sauces. The recipes don’t include many specific measurements aside from the sections on baking, which emphasize the ingredients’ ratios to each other. Each section is accompanied by a short history of the primary ingredient being explored. The final chapters break this format—Chapter 9 provides a list of examples of possible accidents that may happen in the kitchen, and Chapter 10 is a collection of thoughts and “rants” related to cooking and modern trends (it also cites some helpful tips from the author’s own mother). The recipes themselves are exactly what the book says they will be: the very basics. Overall, the book has a lighthearted tone, which includes seemingly throwaway comments in the recipes like, “My husband’s favourite, and he was great at cooking it.” The layout of the pages is poor, however, with many of the images being oddly sized, awkwardly placed, and ineptly cropped. The text appears in multiple fonts, colors, varying degrees of boldness, and contains typos. While there’s an appendix dedicated to books that Finnegan recommends, citations would have been helpful for readers who want to learn more about some of the author’s historical material. Additionally, more detail in the recipes would have been appreciated. Sépi, the cookbook’s illustrator, works in a style reminiscent of cartoonist Gary Larson; the illustrations do little to enhance the text, but they don’t detract from the contents. Despite the technical imperfections, the cookbook maintains a cozy charm and casualness that may evoke readers’ memories of cooking with their own parents or grandparents.

Easy recipes delivered with homey appeal.