Cookbook review: Jacques Pepin New Complete Techniques

Master chef Jacques Pepin offers an extensive collection of techniques and accompanying recipes in this new cookbook. The techniques in question range from the expected, or at least common, such as how to carve a turkey, to what many home cooks might consider extreme: how to make rolled head cheese or stuffed pig's feet. Each entry has step-by-step instructions and photos.
The photos are always helpful, but perhaps especially so in the chapter on breads. Given the complex results that can be had from the simple ingredients required, the words alone can't do justice to the artwork one can create using Pepin's techniques.
This title may not appeal to every home cook, but it is an essential volume to those who view themselves as amateur chefs or, at a minimum, GOOD home cooks who take pride in what comes out of their kitchen.