Anthony Bourdain was man of many appetites. And for many years, first as a chef, later as a world-traveling chronicler of food and culture on his CNN series Parts Unknown, he made a profession of understanding the appetites of others.

Appetites, his first cookbook in more than ten years, boils down forty-plus years of professional cooking and globe-trotting to a tight repertoire of personal favorites—dishes that everyone should (at least in Mr. Bourdain’s opinion) know how to cook. Once the supposed “bad boy” of cooking, Mr. Bourdain became the father of a little girl—a role he embraced with enthusiasm. After years of traveling more than 200 days a year, he later enjoyed entertaining at home. Years of prep lists and the hyper-organization necessary for a restaurant kitchen, however, caused him, in his words, to have “morphed into a psychotic, anally retentive, bad-tempered Ina Garten.”

The result is a home-cooking, home-entertaining cookbook like no other, with personal favorites from his own kitchen and from his travels, translated into an effective battle plan that will help you terrify your guests with your breathtaking efficiency.