Well, this is the Common Cookbook, and I chose the name advisedly. It's a common book of cooking, in that it's shared; but it's also a book of common cooking -- cooking for plain folks, cooking for plain kitchens. Common cookery is founded upon available ingredients, accessible techniques, and ordinary tools. It's the kind of recipe you can take across the ocean and still have what you need to make it, or something like it; the kind that you can serve as an ordinary lunch or a fancy-schmancy dinner; to be frank, the kind you can whomp up in a student apartment using utensils from the thrift store even after your roommates have dropped and broken your ancient electric mixer and sliced the Teflon on each of your nonstick pans. Not that I would know anything about that.

There are, in this world, decent recipes that don't discuss substitutions, alternate techniques, and flat-out, shameless workarounds; but until they do, they are not common cookery. There are also delicious recipes that have to be followed letter-perfect, with precisely calibrated heat and with peculiar cooking utensils that cost a lot and aren't really useful for anything else; but those are definitely out. Professionals can do what they like, but my object in the Common Cookbook is to make delicious, wholesome food available to people who may have demands on their time, money, and attention apart from cooking. I hope you enjoy it.