Melissa, the gifted food stylist and chef whose new book "Canal House Cooking (Volume N° 1)" was a nominee for Food52.com's spirited Piglet Award, was the food editor at Saveur magazine at the time; I was a kitchen intern. She was classy in a brash, confident way that always came off as clumsy, unbridled sassiness when I tried it.

She swooped into the kitchen each morning, her rumply blond hair pulled back, her casual clothes coolly stylish. She cursed like a line cook and said "gilding the lily" a lot. For that matter, she gilded the lily a lot, unafraid to make even indulgent dishes more decadent.

We were both strong-willed behind the stove, but only one of us had earned the right to be so. Melissa asked question after question about how and why I did things and scolded my cooking school techniques. My sauces weren't silky, my garlic never chopped finely enough. Her chidings took my breath away. I nodded wildly, pretending to recognize the worldly ingredients she talked about. At home each night, I studied hard to keep up.

It was Melissa who later interviewed me for the position of kitchen director at Saveur, and she who offered me the job in 2005. I nervously jumped at the chance to learn from her again. As fate would have it, a few weeks after I started the gig, Melissa resigned to take on her biggest project yet.

In 2007, Melissa and her longtime friend Christopher Hirsheimer, one of the founders of Saveur and a glorious photographer, abandoned magazine mastheads to open their own studio in the airy loft of a redbrick warehouse in Lambertville, N.J.

Christopher Hirsheimer (left) and Melissa Hamilton (right)

But Melissa and Christopher's most promising project is "Canal House Cooking," the handsome, seasonal recipe collections they plan to self-publish three times a year. The first two volumes -- Summer and Fall & Holiday -- are out. In them, the women don't mince words about their preferred role: "We write, photograph, design, and paint, but in our hearts we both think of ourselves as cooks first."

Melissa and Christopher's cooking lessons range from as regal as how to make a crown roast of pork with cornbread stuffing or how to create pumpkin soup for 20 (cooked inside an enormous pumpkin) to as simple and necessary to good eating as how to properly cook an egg, use anchovies in a vinaigrette or chill down a Negroni.

With recipes such as "Two Steaks Feed Four," instructions as loose as "make as many as you have the patience to peel" and fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants ingredients such as "whatever you want to fry" or "any kind, as long as it's ripe," the books are a study in both storytelling and solid cooking techniques.

Learning from these gals is a treat, their voices so direct that it seems as if they're reaching in to stir my pot themselves. So much so, that after turning out scrumptious versions of the roasted tomatoes studded with garlic and plum galette from "Summer" for friends, I fumbled with taking any credit at all for the melted tomatoes and rustic, bubbling dessert on my supper table.

Forgive Melissa and Christopher if they have an affinity for certain ingredients from time to time. Preserved lemons and "little toasts" appear in Vol. 1 no less than about 10 times each and then manage to pop up again in Vol. 2. I find it refreshing -- and very realistic -- to be able to use the same ingredients to make several different recipes. But clearly, if you're not one for preserved lemons, you might be out of luck.

As for the photographs in the series, they are quietly relatable and stunning. Forgoing overly propped settings and hipster stand-ins, much of the food appears to have been shot on the same lovely dishes again and again, just the way we all serve food at home.

Melissa and Christopher are sincerely satisfied with their road less traveled. "We had worked with each other as food editors in the magazine world. It was great and exciting," they write. "But our work took us both away from our families, our homes, and our gardens, away from what really matters, after all."

With these books, Melissa and Christopher have finally come home to roost. In the kitchen -- and in their lives, I suspect -- they're no longer afraid of much. Thanks to the lessons they still teach, neither am I.

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Canal House Cooking, Volume N° 1 (Summer)

Melissa Hamilton carrying a crown roast of pork with corn bread stuffing

The proper Negroni (left) and Jack Manhattan (right)

Roasted tomatoes studded with garlic

Hamilton and Hirsheimer's beloved preserved lemons

Two steaks feed four (bone-in ribeyes with parsleyed butter)

A plum galette

Canal House Cooking, Volume N° 1 (Summer)

Melissa Hamilton carrying a crown roast of pork with corn bread stuffing

The proper Negroni (left) and Jack Manhattan (right)

Roasted tomatoes studded with garlic

Hamilton and Hirsheimer's beloved preserved lemons

Two steaks feed four (bone-in ribeyes with parsleyed butter)

A plum galette

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