There’s a lot of information, but Ruhlman’s prose is eminently and entertainingly readable. As important a component of the book as the writing is the gorgeous and helpful step-by-step pictures taken by Ruhlman’s professional photographer wife, Donna Turner Ruhlman.

As the Food Network’s Alton Brown says in his back-of-the-jacket endorsement: “I’m not sure if Michael Ruhlman is a great writer who cooks or a great cook who writes, but either way he always manages to make my favorite thing: good sense. With Ruhlman’s Twenty he makes sense of just about anything and everything that can happen in a kitchen.”

Contact Julianne Glatz at [email protected].