How to Break an Egg: 1,453 Kitchen Tips, Food Fixes, Emergency Substitutions and Handy Techniques by Editors of Fine Cooking; 2005. Hardcover. (F&C)

Need a cool way to handle hot chiles? Looking to cut down on kitchen clean-up? Let the readers, contributors, and editors of "Fine Cooking" magazine show you the way. "How to Break an Egg" is a one-of-a-kind resource of more than 1,400 kitchen-tested tips, shortcuts, and ingenious solutions to culinary emergencies, all organized in an easy-to-access format for quick reference or more leisurely reading. Look under Basil in the Ingredients chapter and you'll find tips for drying it, keeping its bright green color, and making your pesto go further. Look under Cookies in the Cooking chapter for clever ways to roll out cookie dough without it sticking, or to form perfectly shaped cookies, or to get just the right texture you want in your chocolate chip. You'll also discover tips on cookware and utensils, serving, storage, clean-up, and kitchen safety.

If disaster strikes, flip immediately to When Things Go Wrong, an invaluable chapter of troubleshooting charts, whether your souffle is falling, your cheese sauce is curdling, or you've just discovered you don't have the right size pan for the cake you're in the middle of mixing up. In Handy Kitchen Techniques, you'll find 42 basic prep techniques, from trussing a chicken to clarifying butter, illustrated step-by-step in full color.