Cookbooks are cooler than they use to be. They use to be static, stripped down lists of ingredients and, if you were lucky, a picture of what the final dish should look like. Today, you would rank in Amazon’s basement if you put out a book like that. I just picked up Urban Italian by Andrew Carmellini. Great book. Chock full of all kinds of insight into technique and craft. I think the more a cook understands the underlying principals of what they are creating, the better the final product.