Improve your confidence and add joy to your home cooking with this beautiful, practical, full-color cookbook filled with information, techniques, and more than 100 recipes from the Food Network favorite and critically acclaimed chef of New York's Empire Diner restaurant. Amanda Freitag is a master at knocking out fabulous meals in her restaurant kitchen and on the set of Food Network's Chopped and Iron Chef America. But until recently, she was totally intimidated to cook at home in her tiny apartment kitchen, relating to the fears of many home cooks. She realized she wasn't alone! She set out to help other home cooks and created a list of restaurant-quality recipes that shine in the home kitchen. The Chef Next Door teaches home cooks a wide range of confidence-instilling skills, tricks, and tips that Amanda has picked up working in professional kitchens and cooking competitively on television. In her bright, lively voice, she helps you master the basic techniques that are the foundation of good, flavorful cooking. She also teaches you how to think like a chef-to consider seasonality, balancing flavors, understanding the steps, and learning how to improvise-to create a menu and execute dishes with pro techniques, as if she were right there in the kitchen with you. You'll find everything from the basics-sauces, marinades, stocks, and rubs-to first impressions, salads, and easy dinner recipes, and will even become skilled in making "The Scary Stuff"-recipes that may seem out of reach but are not. With The Chef Next Door, you'll be able to dazzle friends and family with a diverse range of dishes, such as Spinach Feta Pies, Kale and Farro Salad with Aged Goat Cheese, Lusty Lemon Chicken, Pop's Beer-Braised Bold Beef Stew, Mediterranean Potato Salad, Marinated Artichokes, Cocoa Carrot Cake, and more. Filled with beautiful color photographs that show how achievable good food really is, The Chef Next Door makes confident home cooking a breeze.