[.ca] The Complete Canadian Living Cookbook: 350 Inspired ... (ISBN 0679311173)

Amazon.ca:
Compiled by Elizabeth Baird, food and nutrition editor for Canadian Living magazine, along with her coterie of cooks from the CL test kitchen, this comprehensive soup-to-sweets collection of thrice-“tested-till-perfect” recipes includes step-by-step staff favourites as well as tasty contributions from some of Canada's pre-eminent food professionals. Whether it's basic Lentil Soup starring Saskatchewan's lauded legume or salt-rubbed Beef Tenderloin marinated in Worcestershire and scotch, each recipe is highlighted with informative icons (“Quick,” “Make Ahead,” “Budget-wise,” etc.). The dishes can be both provocative (“Cornish Hens with Tuscan Touches”) and enlightened (even old-school Liver and Onions gets a Continental kick using sage leaves and balsamico), and the pages offer up sidebars full of advice and ideas for substitutions, variations, and presentation. (One suggestion: cut a letter or number into a piece of cardboard; then hold it over a bowl of soup while sprinkling chopped herbs through this stencil). It's a very handsome volume, though readers may wish the 25 colour photos appeared beside their respective recipes rather than bunched together in two mid-book “galleries.” One wishes, too, that the abbreviation for “tablespoon” used an uppercase “t” to differentiate it from that for “teaspoon.” These are minor cavils with a kitchen-friendly reference. The Salad chapter will have cooks utilizing everything from “the needlessly out-of-fashion iceberg lettuce” to sushi rice; its Dessert pages will take bakers from Panforte to Pandowdy (while teaching them how to “dowdy”). And as one might expect from something called The Complete Canadian Living Cookbook, there's plenty of good eating in between. --Tony Mason

Favorite Favorite Favorite Favorite Cookbook!:
This is the cookbook that I go to the most (and I collect cookbooks, so I've got a million of them). Every time the recipes are perfect. It's quite like Mark Bittman's How to cook everything, but I seem to go to this one quite a bit more then the Bittmans. I use it so much that it's filthy with spilled sauce stains! No pictures, but the best basic 'how to cook anything' book.

One of the Best Cookbooks Ever:
I am another person who absolutely loves this cookbook. I recommend it to everyone that I know. It has a diverse range of recipes and I like the way that there are tips in the margins and also variations on the recipes. I also have a large number of cookbooks and I usually reach for this one first when I am looking for a recipe. This would make an excellent gift for a wedding shower!

Another great cookbook from the Canadian Living team!:
This is not a standard reference cookbook but a broad range of recipes with easy-to-follow instructions and test-kitchen-tested to be virtually goof-proof. I wish I'd bought it when it was still out in hard cover because my paperback is so heavily used it will need replacing. The perogies and lemon squares are worth the price alone as classic Canadian recipes.