simple food, simply marvelous

If I were to own just one cookbook,this would be it. This book teaches you the basics, and like everything of Alice Waters', the food is always authentic. I have cooked many recipes out of this book and they are all excellent. Be sure to try the lamb shank recipe.

[Saturday, December 27, 2008]

Simple, Seasonal: Cooking From The Garden

Apron greens--the dandelion greens and mache--you pluck from the garden, cradle in your apron to the kitchen and toss with a sweet Viennese lemon and honey dressing: seaonal and simple. Alice Water's THE ART OF SIMPLE FOOD almost immediately reminded me of my grandmother's kitchen--the one I try every day to imitate. Locally grown and fresh means a walk out to the kitchen garden and, if there's extra time, a jaunt over to the farm market. Every cook should garden and every gardener should cook--at least a pot or two of small root vegetables and greens and herbs on the stoop: there's a maxim to try to live up to. Cooking should begin with the intimate knowledge of one's ingredients--how to shop for them, how to store them, how to cook them--and, in the perfect world, how to grow them. On the first three of these counts Water's again--as in her previous books on vegetables and fruits--instructs clearly and simply. (The Art of the Simple Book.) One probably can not hear to often that locally-try your own backyard-grown and fresh-picked today ingredients surpass all others. If repetition is a teacher, Waters will get us there. (Let me digress to say the Apple Tart on page 180 was delicious--I substituted the Black Twig apple for the Granny Smith, and the White Bean and Butternut Squash Soup on page 257 was perfectly tasty; actually the two dozen recipes I've tried so far--were all tasty!) I like that this collection of recipes begins with basics and hearkens to the garden. There are cooking from the garden cookbooks that should sit right next to this book: namely any cookbook by Perla Meyers: The Seasonal Kitchen: A Return to Fresh Foods is the gold standard--no longer in print, but still available. Next try Fresh from the Garden: Cooking and Gardening Throughout the Seasons with 250 Recipes, also only available used, and Meyers most recent book How to Peel a Peach: And 1,001 Other Things Every Good Cook Needs to Know. Other garden and farm market cookbooks should be on the cook-gardener-cook's shelf: Andrea Chesman's The Garden-Fresh Vegetable Cookbook and The Garden-Fresh Vegetable Cookbook and collections by Deborah Madison including Local Flavors: Cooking and Eating from America's Farmers' Markets. When it comes to growing what you eat The Kitchen Garden Grower's Guide: A practical vegetable and herb garden encyclopedia and Organic Gardening: The Natural No-Dig Way are great starts to living Alice Water's advice: Eat seasonally. Plant a garden. Cook simply. Eat together.

[Thursday, December 11, 2008]

Better than good.

I went to Pastry & Baking School. I thought about going to the Culinary side and then I found this book. I have no desires to be a professional chef, but this book has taught me that I don't have to be fancy to produce "Wow!" inducing food. I'd recommend everyone learning the important lessons she continually preaches:
1) Ingredients matter. Buy fresh, buy local. If your ingredients are crap, your finished meal will be, as well. I have to be honest, I can't always do this (buy fresh and local), as others have stated. The simple cooking techniques helps bring out the flavor to it's fullest, however.
2) KISS - I like her simplicity. Anyone can make these recipes with a minimal kitchen. When you start getting complex, I wonder what you're hiding?

One reviewer complained that these are the foods we ate prior to refrigerated trucks. I'd argue that that's precisely the appeal of this: Returning to our roots. I'd argue that our current obesity epidemic might be directly traceable to the over-abundance of our current fast-food culture. Maybe it's time to go back to a time when obesity was a rarity. It wasn't because people were starving, but because they had no choice but to eat locally grown, whole foods.

But that's neither here nor there.

This book is a very simple book on basic cooking techniques. She teaches a very simple cooking philosophy that's ingredient centered and describes why things work the way they do and how to play around to get different flavors through substitutions. Work through the recipes and pay attention to the notes. Pretty soon, you'll be able to figure out, on your own, how to substitute things in and out. Come across something new at the store/farmer's market? Chances are, you'll be able to apply one or two simple cooking techniques that will give you a better idea of how to treat it in the future.

I don't know about the rest of the world, but I'm tired of over-wrought, fancy for the sake of fancy food. Sometimes I just want a bowl of simple, well-seasoned soup and a piece of bread. I'm confident that with this as my guide, I'll be able to accomplish this with ease.

[Wednesday, December 10, 2008]

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