Jamie Oliver believes this should have been his first book: a crash course in the basics of food, shopping, and cooking with great ingredients.

Treating the reader as he would one of the students in his inspirational Fifteen Restaurants, where he transforms ordinary youths into great chefs, Oliver explains it all from the best equipment, to shopping tips, right down to how to recognize and prepare different cuts of meat (essential knowledge, in Oliver's book)! Each chapter covers an essential food category, the building blocks on which to build a respectable repertoire as a burgeoning chef, and is prefaced by a mini-introduction to the category, including tips for getting started. In the chapter on salads, for example, Oliver explains not only the best leaves, vegetables and herbs, but also how to make basic dressings; in the fish chapter, he details different types of fish, and how to be more discerning at the market. Oliver has created a truly important book for anyone, at any stage in life, who just wants to cook better and have fun in the process.  As he says, if you are going to eat three times a day for the rest of your life, you might as well learn to cook properly and enjoy it! More than 175 recipes.