I have to say that I really like this book. Once I received an early copy of The Cook You Want to Be, I dove right in and found a wide variety of recipes. And these aren't the sort of recipes that are overly fancy or technically complex. These are dishes you can add to your weeknight repertoire but taste so good that you' can serve them to guests as well. To support my claim, I took the time to test a few of the recipes myself. The roasted artichokes were a win (the sauce!) as were the kale salad and tangy mustard dressing. The pictures were well done, ingredient lists were full of common ingredients/staples that are easy to access, and instructions were thorough. The dessert section was a little sparse and only contained fruit based recipes (I wanted to see something chocolate!), but I'm not docking a star here, as the author clearly states that he's a savory kinda guy and the sweet section would be deliberately short. Overall, this book gets two thumbs up from me, and I highly recommend it to any home cook.

I received a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed are entirely my own.

Thank you to Net Galley and Clarkson Potter for giving me an eARC copy of this cookbook in exchange for an honest review.

Having followed Any since his days at Bon Appetit, I was exited to read his first cookbook, and learn more about the inspiration and process behind his cooking.

The Cook You Want To Be offers a variety of different recipes, from simple sauces, to pastas, and even a short chapter of sweets/desserts. With clear instructions, and beautiful photos this cookbook is sure to help boost your confidence in the kitchen, helping you to become the cook you want to be!!

Andy Baraghani does a great job explaining and giving great tips to help the beginner cook to expand their confidence in preparing good meals. The recipes may sound fancy and difficult, but are fairly easy to make. The ingredients can be found at most larger grocery stores. It is a good mix of different ethnic recipes that can be made as instructed and as your confidence in the kitchen grows easy to put your own twist, and switch up some of the ingredients. A good cookbook for those ready for the next step.
I received this book as an Advanced Reader's Copy from NetGalley.

Veterans of Chez Panisse and Bon Appetit never let me down when I’m looking for a new cookbook to add to my collection. The Cook You Want to Be is aptly named; the Persian-inspired, never too lemony recipes are bursting with flavor without being overly involved or fussy. The Salt-and-Pepper Crispy Rice with Garlic-Fried Eggs is already on regular rotation at my house and I’ll be turning to this book on a regular basis this summer.

I’m hoping there will be more photos in the final print edition, but this book is a winner!

Thank you to NetGalley and Clarkson Potter/Ten Speed for this ARC.

I received a copy of this long=awaited cookbook as an ARC and loved every minute I spent with it. Andy's stories of growing up, his fascination with Chez Panissa, and his fresh, bold, beautiful flavors - all make for a stellar book. From a new way to roast a chicken to perfectly composed citrus salads, this book deserves a place on your shelf, and Andy Baraghani's recipes deserve a place at your table. This writer is destined for greatness, and I cannot wait to see what he does next. I'll be over here with my big bowl of ricotta dumplings, cheering him on.

This is a great cookbook! I am not a huge cookbook collector, and these recipes seemed "too fancy" for me, but I was interested in the essays and the author and it would fulfill a reading challenge this year. I ended up enjoying it a lot more than I thought! I've been branching out more with my cooking and I found these recipes aren't as hard as they seemed (if you see the word "harissa" and get scared off, just know that it's actually just a spice and you can do it!).

This was a great cookbook for inspiring a cook to experiment and also includes some great recipes. I made the Masoor Daal with Salty Yogurt and thought the recipe was explained well and the taste was great. Interestingly the author mentions Cal Peternell who I also admire as a cookbook writer and I own two of his. The Cook You Want to Be is an interesting read. Also made an avocado citrus recipe with toasted walnuts while reading this book. A cookbook that inspires adlib cooking is a real winner.

What a beautiful cookbook!
I've tried a smattering of recipes from this book and I have to say, I really am enjoying them.
The pomegranate walnut chicken is a new serious weeknight/weekend favorite for me! I really appreciate how this cookbook brought me new flavors that I wouldn't otherwise make which is what I love to get from a great cookbook.

The Cook You Want to Be is an interesting and inspirational guide with recipes by Andy Baraghani. Due out 24th May 2022 from Crown Publishing on their Loreena Jones imprint, it's a substantial 336 pages and will be available in hardcover and ebook formats.

The author has such a chatty, engaging, and friendly style of writing that I found myself reading this cookbook/memoir/masterclass cover to cover, more like a novel than a cookbook. He has worthwhile things to say about cooking and food, about the nature of hospitality and culture, and about eating and how our lives and experiences inform our growth as cooks.

The recipes are arranged thematically and built up systematically - from partial recipes, sauces, ingredients, breadcrumbs, etc through eggs, snacks, salad, veg, grains, soup, fish, meat, and sweets. Throughout the text, between and in the recipes, Mr. Baraghani gives tips, observations (buy new ingredients, explore, try), and encourages readers to stretch their own boundaries.

The recipes are written with an introduction and tips for serving, followed by ingredients in a bullet list (measurements are given in imperial - US measures), and step by step cooking instructions. Nutritional information is not provided. Many of the recipes contain photos. The photography is clear and many photos are in color. Serving suggestions are attractive and appropriate. Most of the recipe ingredients will be familiar to North American cooks. Some few will require access to a larger metropolitan area or a well stocked international market.

Five stars. This would be a good choice for public library acquisition, and for the home cook's library.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

Not only is The Cook You Want to be absolutely beautiful, it’s approachable. I can’t wait to dive in and try a few recipes asap!

First off, I loved the way this author wrote his intros. He doesn’t suggest you need to buy all these fancy tools to be a great home cook.

Second, his recipes are elevated beyond the basics but by no means complicated. The ingredients are relatively easy to find. The recipes are well written and easily followed. The pictures that are included are beautiful and made me want to try to recreate them.

A first cookbook is a special thing, and the recipes included paint a picture of the writer- and speaks volumes about the type of cooking they perform. Andy cooks fresh, vegetal, spicy, sour, and deeply savory food. He aims to activate all those taste buds on your tongue and he succeeds. His restaurant experience shines here- you can tell he thinks a great deal about the meal being served, a long simmered braise with his Crispy Herb Salsa Verde. The cookbooks coming out by the alumni of the BA Test Kitchen have been particularly special- such good and creative spins on recipes, such bold and zhoozed up condiments and attention to texture, taste, acid, and sensibilities. This book feels very Carla Lalli Music in style, with a Molly Baz sensibility, if those descriptors help you any. Its very elevated and classy, with just the right amount of a push, but with a Molly-esqe focus on bold, lemony, spicy, and herby flavors- just dialed up to eleven.

Andy’s book has a dinner party vibe- and he espouses the right opinion on a reuben- corned beef with melted swiss. Yum. he also goes through a quart of full fat yogurt every day, so my mothers pushing of no fat greek yogurt be damned! In a weird way I feel like this book is healthy, even though many of the recipes include a glorious amount of olive oil, and that’s in part because of his lemon, Greek yogurt, and herb focused cooking.

Something that I find very special is Andy’s wordsmithery- he has such a way with words that just sound so unctuous, jammy onions, descriptiors like whispy-lacy. Also, Andy has incidentally given me fashion advice- as a Vivienne Westwood pearl necklace is my staple piece of jewelry, and I was just debating buying a pair of matching drop Pearl earrings- to which Andy suggests aren’t more but “diminishing.” Come to think of it, I couldn’t agree more.

My favorite chapter is the dessert chapter, a refreshingly homey chapter where Andy admits he is not a pro-baker by any means, but is however a dessert buyer- as treatised by my favorite essay “I Will Do Dessert.” This book is lovely, and my only complaint is that I wish it had more main dish recipes, even though there are many very, very good looking- and he does have to save something for his second cookbook (fingers crossed).. In sum, this is a lovely first coookbook, and one that I will read for years to come, and yes Andy, I will get it Tumeric stained.

Thanks to NetGalley and Clarkson Potter/Ten Speed for my ARC!

It came as a surprise to me how much I learned from reading his tips and general information. I consider myself to be an adventurous cook and am known for never serving the same meal twice. It will be such fun adding these unique recipes to my "try next" list. Thank you for the opportunity to review this book.

Baraghani is a chef who has had a wide ranging career in the field; however, in his introduction he is modest and you don’t find out until the middle of the book that he worked at Chez Panisse.

Initially I was surprised that a savory chef would produce a cookbook that was so vegetable forward. Also, there were so many recipes I wanted to try. Over the last few weeks, I have tried many of them and they have been uniformly good. For the most part, the author’s recipes do not require readers to know outside knowledge to make these recipes work. One exception might be the flatbread where I needed to add more water because the dough was too dry. (Since I have made bread quite often, I know when a dough might not work.) The flavor of this flatbread was good but note that it doesn’t hold well and so you need to eat the bread within a day after it’s made.

I also like that he included variations so that you know what might work if you wanted to try something different. I made the two nut recipes, one learning towards savory and the other learning towards sweet; the sweet recipe was fantastic (my vegetarian niece loved them). I made the halloumi recipe substituting paneer and the dish was extremely popular. The Persian flavors that wend their way through the cookbook are not aggressive and make the dishes more unique.

A great resource and guide for home cooks. The recipes are all delicious and the book gives a lot of useful tips on how to make them and elevate your cooking. I am very excited to try out these recipes asap.

“Toum is for my garlic lovers, which better be everyone reading this book.”

You had me searching for benriner.

Gonna be honest here, I normally skip the introduction, the tools section, and occasionally the ingredients section. Jumping on quickly to the recipes is my thing. But with this book, I thoroughly enjoyed reading those parts. Now I’m making a list of tools I need, based on the author's recommendations.

For the recipes, I’m excited to try Toum, Borani, Flatbread, Eat-with-everything cucumber salad, buttery nori speckled rice and brown butter fried onion rings. Actually the list is far longer than this one but these are the ones I'm most eager to start with.

This is a great cookbook if you're interested in trying out cuisines from other cultures.

Thank you Net Galley, Adam Baraghani, and the publishers Clarkson Potter/Ten Speed Press, Lorena Jones Books, for granting me access to this ARC.

The Cook You Want to Be is a new essential guide for home cooks everywhere. Combining amazing recipes with insightful tips, Baraghani truly delivers in showing you how to take your recipes to the next level. There are so many recipes that I am excited to try. This book has definitely earned a place on my shelf.

5/5 Stars

Thank you to Netgalley and Clarkson Potter/Ten Speed Press, Lorena Jones Books for providing me with an e-arc of this book in exchange for an honest review.

What a refreshing cookery book. The author is so sensible ,he does not send you off to buy implements he has endorsed or has you hunting for loads of the ingredients you have never heard of (although there were a few). The recipes are delicious and not too complicated on the whole. Great food with a Persian twist.

I enjoyed this cookbook. Plenty of new recipes to try and most are simple if you've been cooking for a while. I particularly can't wait to try some of the sauces recipes! We love different types of sauces in our house.

Super appreciative of receiving an arc copy!

Really excellent cookbook the author has a wonderful style of bringing novice cooks and experienced cooks to a new level.Told in an easy simple direct guide to delicious recipes.This is a perfect gift for everyone’s kitchen.#netgalley #tenspeed