Cook 1.0

For the beginner cook, cookbooks are often overwhelming, loaded with complex recipes, extensive lists of exotic ingredients, and long preparation times. Heidi Swanson-photographer, designer, and passionate home cook-understands. In Cook 1.0, she combines her love of fresh, simple vegetarian fare with her creative know-how to create full-flavored recipes that take less than an hour to make.

Completely original in its approach to the kitchen, Cook 1.0 features 40 basic recipes for breakfast, lunch, and dinner dishes, sides, desserts, and drinks, and then provides easy-to-read tables to show delicious, inventive ways to build on them. The scrumptious variations include Pumpkin, Mint, and Ricotta Pizza; Creamy Mushroom Pot Pie; Apricot Summer Tart with Macadamia Shortbread Crust; and Ice-Cold Blueberry Lemonade. These delicious, flavorful recipes will appeal to vegetarians and non-vegetarians alike. Swanson's unique mix-and-match strategy allows the home cook to personalize recipes according to family preferences, seasonal produce, and, perhaps most important, available time. Cook 1.0 also features gorgeous food photography taken by the author. For the modern kitchen novice, it's the perfect operating system. AUTHOR BIO: HEIDI SWANSON founded ChickClick.com in 1997. The site became one of the most trafficked female networks on the Internet; as a result, Swanson was profiled in such national publications as USA Today, Fast Company, Entertainment Weekly, and The Wall Street Journal. Swanson is an enthusiastic, self-taught home cook with a fresh, contemporary perspective on how to approach basic vegetarian cooking.

ART SMITH is the personal chef to Oprah Winfrey and author of the best-selling Back to the Table. He contributes frequently to O magazine.