Remember your mother's favorite cookbook? The one dog-eared to the hamburger with canned soup recipe? This isn't that cookbook. And what about the one your too-perfect friend has? Where all the recipes are about stacking things on top of each other garnished with a hard-to-find leaf? This isn't that cookbook either.

Pierre Lamielle's Kitchen Scraps is full of comforting recipes that don't come from a can. And anyone and everyone can make them--with minimal amounts of swearing. Accompanied by hilarious illustrations, the recipes in Kitchen Scraps are easy to follow and are written with Pierre's irreverent wit. It's a cookbook for people who don't want to take cooking so seriously but still want to surprise and impress their friends. And it has exactly the sorts of recipes a young cook needs: lots of everyday dishes, a few fancier things for dinner parties, and a really incredible macaroni and cheese recipe. Complete with pictures of babushka-clad grandmothers, provocative chickens, and rootin' tootin' cowboys.

Some of the recipes in Kitchen Scraps:

• Puttanesca Pastitute
• Mussels Make the Man
• El Fajita Flamante
• Piña Colada Panna Cotta
• The Bastard Child of Mr. Croque