I have a love/hate relationship with the cookbooks that television chefs write. On the one hand, you have the glorious cookbooks that Ina Garten and Martha Stewart continue to create. However, on the other you find Rachael Ray's many books that contain nearly-identical recipes from edition to another. So, when Without Reservations, written by former Food Network host Joey Altman, landed in my mailbox, I did indeed have my own set of reservations.

However, as I started to read the book, I quickly laid aside my skepticism. Altman (and his co-author Jennie Schacht) have done a remarkable job of creating an easy-to-read cookbook that actually does what it proposes - namely offer recipes that will help you make food that it just as good as the stuff you eat in the restaurants. For a glossy hardback, there is a surprising amount of text in this book. The introduction is extensive and helpful and every single recipe appears with one to three introductory paragraphs that ease you into the preparation.

I especially like the section in the introduction that tries to get you to think like a chef. He talks about bold flavors, the layering of flavors to create depth and the need to balance sweetness, saltiness and acidity. Most cookbooks don't begin with such a holistic approach to cooking and so this is a refreshing and instructional way to begin. My one complaint with this book is in the length of many of his ingredient lists. A big reason so many of us go out to restaurants to eat is the number of ingredients (and level of effort) it requires to make those dishes at home. A cookbook that wants us to cook at home and get restaurant-like tastes should have done a little bit more to try to reduce the steps and ingredients required to pull off the dishes. However, for those times when you want to impress friends or family, a couple of Joey Altman recipes might be just the thing to pull out of your back pocket.