How To Cook Without A Book by Pam Anderson describes the basics really well and each chapter goes over the general principles of a kind of dish (like seared meat or steamed veggies) with a general master recipie and then describes variations (like different pan sauces for the different seared meats).

I found a PDF of what looks like the whole book: https://cdn.bookey.app/files/pdf/book/en/how-to-cook-without-a-book.pdf