At her North Williams cooking school, passionate cook Monika Reti encourages culinary novices to not fear the knife and to relinquish their reliance on recipes, and she aims to do the same for legions of home cooks with her new cookbook Hipcooks: Around the World in 12 Dinner Parties (152 pages; $19.95).

Reti also operates Hipcooks outlets in Seattle, San Diego, and Los Angeles, but made PDX her home when she opened her North Portland space in 2009.

Like her irreverent classes, the Hipcooks cookbook draws inspiration from far beyond Reti's new Northwest home, diving into the cuisines of her Argentine father, German mother, family in Iran, education in England, and travels via sailboat around the Spice Islands, sharing her globetrotting pantry and toolkit along the way.

The book is broken down into full-meal menus—from Ragin' Cajun and My Big Fat Greek Dinner Party to Turning Japanese and A Night in Casablanca—complete with cocktails, appetizers, entrees, dessert, and "make-ahead notes" for breaking down your dinner party into two days of stress-free prep.

Want to give the recipes a whirl? We're giving away a copy of Reti's self-published book to one of our lucky readers, and entering to win couldn't be easier:

Click here to enter to win a copy of Monika Reti's Hipcooks (a $19.95 value). Contest is closed.

The contest will be open until noon on Tuesday, November 6th.

To find out more about Hipcooks classes in PDX, including class schedule, newsletters, and cookbook orders, check out the Hipcooks website.