I would recommend The Professional Chef - it provides techniques and how do them, and follows this with recipes that apply them after. As might be expected though, this is a fairly serious book.

https://www.amazon.com/Professional-Chef-Culinary-Institute-...

> The Professional Chef

It's a great book. Most of the recipes do need to be scaled for home purposes (eg. soup recipes are one US gallon, mains are "makes 10 servings").

One of the neat things about the book is that many of the techniques illustrated end with "evaluate the quality of the finished product," which serves as a reminder to check what was done and how it can be improved.

I'd also recommend The science of good cooking by Guy Crosby. I found it to be a more enjoyable read than McGee's. Not as technical which was a boon for me since as a home cook there's a lot more information that can be readily skipped.

For learning to cook: The Professional Chef by the Culinary Institute of America is a great book to learn from. All the recipes will need to be scaled down for home usage which is a bit of a nuisance though.
For the home cook, Essentials Of Cooking, The Elements Of Cooking, or How To Cook Everything: The Basics, are all excellent too. I couldn't decide which was the best, so I listed them all!

For Flavours: The Flavor Bible gives an easy way to look up an ingredient, and see what else would go well with it. Great for creating your own dishes!

The Flavor Thesaurus gives in-depth information about combinations of ingredients, why they work, and how best to use them.
Also recommend the Field guide to herbs and spices which gives more general information about each spice/herb than the Thesaurus. They pair well together.

The Magic Of Spice Blends is a great recipe book of various spice blends, and information about them, along with showing you how to formulate your own concoctions.

Pastries and baking: The Professional Pastry Chef: Fundamentals of Baking and Pastry by Bo Friesberg or Baking And Pastry: Mastering The Art And Craft from The Culinary Institute of America. Either or.

Confections: Chocolates and Confections by Peter Greweling.

Bread: Either Jeffrey Hamelman Bread: A Baker's book of techniques and recipes or Peter Reinhart The Bread Baker's Apprentice.

Reference:
Dictionary Of Flavors. Literally a Dictionary of anything culinary related. Useful on those rare occasions.

5. Things that have helped me be more interested in cooking and be a good cook:

Buy "On Food and Cooking" by Harold McGee.

Listen to Cooking Issues podcast by Dave Arnold (check out blog too)

Watch any cooking show with Julia Child and/or Jacques Pepin, get some of his books to learn techniques. Her books are amazing too.

Buy a few standard cookbooks. I love Joy Of Cooking because it's practically a canonical reference to make anything, and there's lots of info on technique. There are a few Culinary school books that are really good too (the ICC book "Fundamental Techniques of Classical Cooking" and the CIA "The Professional Chef" are good).

Practice, Practice, Practice. Make certain dishes because you want to get good at a technique or skill.

On general recipes: Don't make too many dishes because they were on a blog, sound good, or use a trendy ingredient (beer, bourbon, kale, bacon). Often they are overly complicated and they aren't very diverse. Don't underestimate how delicious basic dishes can be. Don't underestimate how many techniques and skills from classical french cuisine apply to cultures everywhere, and importantly, the ingredients are almost always available. Shy away from dishes with hard-to-source (mostly perishable) ingredients (I'm looking at you, Jerusalem/Ottolenghi).

Two recommendations that I think will be especially suited to the personality type that’s already matched to software development:

1) The Professional Chef - This is the textbook used in culinary schools. It’s advanced but it starts out from first principles assuming no prior knowledge and just methodically walks through literally every concept one could ever encounter. Not for everyone but if you’re the type that likes to just RTFM this is it.

2) Cooked by Michael Pollan - This is basically the opposite of the textbook I recommended, it’s all high level and narrative and conceptual but as someone who was just starting to cook seriously I found it life changing, it did so much to contextualize what I was doing, so it wasn’t just procedural recipies. This helped me a lot in learning how to open up the fridge pick some ingredients and just know what to do next. Also it’s a breezy read.

On blenders, I've never had luck with a < $100 blender and my vitamix would be on my short list of "If you were stuck on an island with 1 kitchen electric ..."

I cook a lot (for a family of 5) and my minimum/essential kitchen items for us are:

- 2 knives (I use Global but I like Victorinox too) + Henckels sharpener

- Cast iron skillet

- Wok

- Small non-stick pan (my wife prefers little/no oils)

- 2 Pots

- 1 steamer basket

- 1 baking sheet

- 1 pizza stone (or some unglazed tiles from Home Depot)

- KitchenAid stand mixer

- Vitamix 5200 blender

- 1 large Rubbermaid tub/lid for rising bread dough

- 1 slow cooker / crock pot (you can get em for as little as $20)

As for books, I've collected a few here and there but the ones I refer to the most are The Professional Chef (referenced in article), The Magnolia Bakery cookbooks, and Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day (amazing bread a pizza dough for busy people).

http://www.amazon.com/Artisan-Bread-Five-Minutes-Revolutioni...

http://www.amazon.com/The-Magnolia-Bakery-Cookbook-Old-Fashi...

http://www.amazon.com/Zwilling-J-A-Henckels-Sharp-Sharpener/...