Book excerpt: Learn to cook well with this Joy of Cooking for the Instagram generation from James Beard Award-winning cookbook studio Canal House, "the 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue of the food world" (Bon Appetit), with 300 simple recipes to rely on for the rest of your life. Canal House's Melissa Hamilton and Christopher Hirsheimer are home cooks writing about home cooking for other home cooks. From a lifetime of making dinner every single night, they've edited their experience down to the essentials: 300 simple and genius recipes that reveal the building blocks of all good cooking, and are guaranteed to make you a better cook. Each chapter of Cook Something helps you master a key ingredient or powerful technique, moving from simple (a perfect soft-boiled egg, and how to make it uncommonly delicious) to ambitious (a towering chocolate souffle). Recipes for salad dressings, sauces, braises, roasts, meatballs, vegetables, and even perfect snacks and sweets help novice and experienced cooks alike reach for the perfect dish for any occasion. Inside, you'll find: Poached salmon with lemon-butter sauce Fettucine with ragu bolognese Oven-braised chicken with gnocchi French onion soup Canal House's classic vinaigrette Classic Italian meatballs Caramelized apple galette And so much more. Filled with step-by-step photographs and indispensable kitchen wisdom, it is a perfect gift for beginners and an ideal reference for confident cooks. Cook. Cook something. Cook something for yourself. Cook something for others. It will satisfy you more than you know.