After dinner yesterday, I started browsing through the paperback edition of Ultimate Cookbook (William Morrow, 2011) by Bruce Weinstein and Mark Scarbrough.
Counting 900 new recipes (with custom options) it could be the only book that a rookie cook wants to get started for meals from dawn to dusk.
Don't expect 'food porn' here. It's all recipes and ingredients, no photos or illustrations.
They make you comfortable from the get go by breaking information into digestable bites.
Since it's summer, you could do worse than start with chapter on Salads (page 95 to 127).
They open with a Green Primer which covers all lettuces and micro-greens and concludes with a How to mix and Match Greens table.
In the Butterhead Lettuce family, i expanded my knowledge 2 degrees by learning of the existence of 2 exotic varietals, Tennis Ball first and one that spoke to the Frenchman in me, Grosse Blonde Paresseuse (Fat Lazy Blonde).
Having never seen a 'fat lazy blonde' in a salad bowl before, I was saved from my ignorance on Grosse Blonde Paresseuse by Matt a British food blogger/ TV Personality and his Seed Saddos: Grosse Blonde Paresseuse (Fort on Food, June 2011). He calls it "a lovely, floppy French butterhead variety from about 1859."
I will get back to 'Ultimate Cookbook' soon. Hopefully I can get a couple recipes (it will be hard to choose) to share with you.
(* Photo of 'Grosse Blonde' by Matt of Fort on Food)