I love cooking, but I don’t collect recipes. I don’t really want them because I don’t want to need them. I know top chefs refer to recipes, but they look at recipes differently than most people.
I have a friend who is prolific at playing guitar. So prolific, in fact, that he only needs to hear a tune and he can almost immediately play it in it’s original key, or any other key he wants. That’s because doesn’t just know how to play guitar, he knows music.
To cook like this, it’s important to understand the principles behind the processes. If we only follow recipes, we might learn some things by accident, such as common cooking temperatures for different methods of cooking, but we may never really know why we like a particular dish.
This desire to deconstruct the act of cooking led me on a journey that I want to share with you, beginning with some of the books that have made the most difference in my journey.
The first book I want to share is Ingredienti: Marcella’s Guide to the Market, by Marcella and Victor Hazan.
Nearly every restaurant touts “fresh ingredients,” but do you know what fresh looks like for an onion, asparagus, or rutabaga? Do you know how to keep it once you buy it? Do you know how to prepare it, or the best ways to cook it? Ingredienti takes you from artichokes to zucchini, fruit by fruit, vegetable by vegetable, herb and spice alike, giving you a reference manual to fresh ingredients. I just can’t believe more people don’t know about this little gem of a book.
Cooking isn’t just about putting some ingredients together with seasoning and adding heat, it involves procuring the best and knowing how to prepare and preserve it to get the most out of it. Being a good cook isn’t about fancy techniques, It’s about knowing how to choose the best, and get the best out of it. Here is an excerpt from Ingredienti regarding celery:
“Should you decide to make a Bolognese sauce or a full-scale minestrone or any of scores of dishes that require a vegetable sofrito—a base of sauteed onion and minced carrot—you must absolutely have celery on hand. It keeps a long while so there is no reason not to buy it before you need to use it. The question you might have is whether to get the pre-cut packaged ribs or a whole celery. The packaged celery takes less room, but a whole celery is a better choice. It is fresher, as you can judge from the condition of the leaves, which must be bright green and erect. The leaves, moreover are very useful cooked in a braise or in any dish where you need a stronger celery aroma than the ribs alone can provide. When possible, choose celery whose green color is pale rather than dark, because it is sweeter.” -p. 46
The next book I want to talk about is Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat by Samin Nosrat. Here is an excerpt from the forward to the book written by Michael Pollan:
“Even though it contains plenty of excellent recipes, this is a book concerned foremost with principles. Samin Nosrat has taken the sprawling, daunting, multicultural subject we call cooking and boldly distilled it to four essential elements—or five, if you count the core principle of tasting along the way. Master these principles, she promises, and you will be able to cook delicious food of any kind, in any tradition, whether a salad dressing or braise or a galette. Season food with the proper amount of salt at the proper moment; choose the optimal medium of fat to convey the flavor of your ingredients; balance and animate those ingredients with acid; apply the right type and quantity of heat for the proper amount of time—do all this and you will turn out vibrant and beautiful food, with or without a recipe. It’s a big promise, but if you take her course—i.e. read this book—you will find that Samin delivers. Whether you are new to cooking or have decades of experience under your apron, you will understand how to build striking new layers of flavor in whatever you cook.
I have read this book in one way or another at least three times. What I love about it? It unlocks secrets. Recipes give us step-by-step instructions so we can act like chefs, but unless we know why we’re doing what we’re doing, we’re just blindly following instructions, and if something goes wrong, we’re a bit stranded and the dish won’t come out the way we expect.
But, if we know the secrets…
Then we find that recipes are written in code, and usually there is only one or two things in the recipe that makes it unique. We don’t even really need the recipe for most of the process. We already know how to season (salt) the food, we know how much heat and for how long according to the cooking method prescribed. We know the order in which to put things together, we know how to brown, or caramelize certain ingredients, and then—ahhh, here is the magic that makes this recipe unique—anchovies!
Since reading the book, I look at recipes differently and decode them according to what I’ve learned about the process of cooking itself. If you’re like me, that’s exactly where you want to be.
If you’re looking for tips on grocery shopping, click here.
If you’re looking for tips on seasoning, click here.
Happy Cooking!
