Please Judge a Book by Its Cover and Don't Drool on the Pages

Food excites me. Living in one of the food capitals of the world, New York City, has taught me that there are no ingredients out there that cannot be prepared to perfection. You just need to know the recipe. In the spirit of that sentiment, I would like to share my favorite recipes with all of you. This book is a compilation of long-standing Ukrainian family recipes, as well as modern international gourmet dishes. All the recipes are my own creations or my interpretations of famous traditional foods. Most importantly, it provides a very detailed description and a photo for each recipe, allowing easy recreation. In fact the whole thing started because I wanted to be able to recreate my own dishes exactly as I made them before. Sounds easy, right? Not really. Most home cooks do not pay close attention to exact measurements when fixing dinner. It's always a little bit of this with a splash of that. Everything is always to taste or judging by sight. Think about a time when you had thrown together a meal and it came out amazing. Everyone raved about it, making you feel like the Michelangelo of the kitchen. Unfortunately your second batch did not come out as expected. It may have been too salty, too greasy, overdone, underdone -- simply disappointing. Just like that you became a one-dish wonder, a has-been. I hated that. I made sure that the recipes in this book allow me (and you) to perfectly recreate fantastic meals every time. Maybe it will even inspire you to put together a cookbook of your own. Have fun and enjoy.