Zen of Cooking

Cooking can be one of the most sensual and transcendent activities we experience--every combination of ingredients yields a new feast for our senses--of taste, touch, smell, sight, and even hearing--to enjoy. The Zen of cooking means entering a creative flow and gaining a complete focus on the activity of cooking. This is the perfect cookbook for anyone who has ever yearned to cook more creatively--adapting a recipe to suit perfectly the requirements of his or her senses--but wasn't quite sure how to go about it without making a mess of things. Here are recipes for appetizers, pastas, main dishes, vegetarian dishes, soups, salads, marinades, salad dressings, and desserts. These basic recipes and the variations presented by the authors--130 in all--are delicious on their own; they are also the starting points for personal and creative cooking. By learning to separate elective from core ingredients, the home chef can personalize Wolfgang Puck's luscious Lobster with Sweet Ginger or the signature recipe of any other great chef.