Alex Guarnaschelli has undisputable culinary royalty in her blood: Her mother edited the seminal 1997 edition of The Joy of Cooking, the book that designed the way an entire generation cooked for their families. When she was growing up, her parents would pull regularly from their vast shelf of cookbooks for classics like lasagna and chicken cacciatore. She learned to love this stable of Italian-American dishes—but found herself updating some recipes to suit modern tastes and the growing availability of exotic ingredients. The result of many years of this tweaking is The Home Cook, a collection of nearly 300 dishes that Guarnaschelli turns to time and time again when she wants something that’s comforting and easy to make.

In The Home Cook, you’ll find no overly long laundry lists of ingredients or requirements for specialized equipment. Although some of these recipes require planning ahead, they are all designed to be easily memorized so they can be made again and again—and you’ll want to make them again and again. There’s a classic yellow layer cake recipe (that’s made more interesting by the addition of some brandied cherries), and there’s Chicken Marbella 2.0—a dish taken and interpreted from The Silver Palate Cookbook.