CookImprov: Fresh Foundations

Great meals follow patterns. Learn them, and you can cook with confidence, adapt to what's in your kitchen, and create dishes that are entirely your own.
 
CookImprov: Fresh Foundations reimagines the cookbook, replacing rigid recipes with visual frameworks that give you the freedom to cook with whatever's on hand.

Award-winning author Tucker Herbert shows you how vegetables, proteins, oils, acids, and seasonings work together and why certain combinations sing. Once the principles click, familiar dishes become starting points for variation and invention.
 
What You'll Learn

• Level up the dishes you already know. Salads, smoothies, sandwiches, and grain bowls become foundations you can build on.
• Substitute fluidly. Learn the role an ingredient plays and a missing one becomes an opportunity to experiment.
• Improv with what you have. Build a meal from your pantry or a quick grocery run.
• Balance by instinct. Get a feel for what it needs until it tastes right.
• Prep smarter. Turn one afternoon of cooking into a week of meals with real variety.
• Invent your own combinations. The frameworks show you what's fixed and what's flexible.

Whether you're cooking for a crowd or just for yourself, you move from following recipes to inventing your own.

Original full-color illustrations by Lou Baker Smith set the stage for every dish, leaving the details for you to improvise.

Covers breakfast, brunch, lunch, and meal prep. Made for newcomers and experienced cooks who want more improvisational range. An ideal gift for anyone looking to cook with freedom.

Earned a starred Kirkus review, an IBPA Award, and a BookLife/Publishers Weekly Editor's Pick.
 
Cook Freely. Improvise Boldly.

Tucker Herbert has spent decades blending strategy, creativity, and experimentation, whether in the business world or the kitchen. With a background in consulting and tech startups, he loves distilling complex concepts into clear, flexible frameworks. After studying across four continents and earning degrees from Stanford and UCLA Anderson, Tucker developed a deep appreciation for global flavor. CookImprov invites you to embrace that same spirit of exploration, discover new possibilities in the kitchen, and add your voice to the evolving story of global cuisine.