Customer Reviews

Cook Food: A Manualfesto for Easy, Healthy, Local Eating

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Slow food, fast read. What a completely delightful book. Lisa Jervis takes the best of what's out there (by Michael Pollan and others) and digests it for us, so we can follow in her localvore footsteps... or not. As Jervis reminds us, she's not a guru. But she is a wise and supportive friend who might be just a step or two ahead of us on the journey. If you are interested in eating and cooking more sustainably, if you are wondering what all the fuss is about, or if you are already a vegan or vegetarian, you will find lots of support, inspiration and easy, affordable tips and recipes in Cook Food. And you will have fun along the way.

I was a little skeptical when I first opened this book. I had already read Michael Pollan, et al., and I was already a decent and mildly experienced cook. I wasn't a vegan, or even a vegetarian (though I rarely cook meat at home). I've also been known to go on a rant from time to time when faced with a lecture about how you have to be vegan or vegetarian in order to maintain a healthy, green/local lifestyle--it's not true, of course, I know many an unhealthy, un-green vegan, and many a healthy, green omnivore.

I got this book, then, because I like Jervis' other work and because some of the recipes looked pretty interesting. I skimmed the first part, figuring that I new all that stuff already, and went straight for the oatmeal dried-fruit cookie recipe. This is a great recipe to start with because a) the result is wonderful, and b) it's a nice introduction to Jervis' style of recipe-writing. This recipe is chock full of information about the ingredients and suggestions of ways to alter the recipe to your tastes. It's written so that anyone can understand it, not just a seasoned baker. Bakers, however, will still find the information and advice incredibly interesting and useful.

From there, I realized that it might be useful to read the first half of the book instead of only using this for recipes (shocking, no?!). I was so impressed with all of the information and advice in the first half--I felt like I had just taken a full course in cooking conscientiously. The tone of the book is informative and very accessible--but not dumbed-down in any way (I think I was worried it would be, hence why I was reluctant to pay attention to the first half in the beginning). If you are completely new to cooking, Jervis walks you through the process; if you've been cooking all your life, you'll find a ton of great ideas and helpful hints in this book. Jervis teaches you what she knows, but she also gives you the room, knowledge, and encouragement to do what you want. Most of the not-so-great cooks I know are those who want to make substitutions to make the recipe their own, but don't know enough about how or why the ingredients work together to make the right substitutions. Jervis explains what kinds of substitutions work, and what kind don't, and why--that's actually a hard thing to find in a lot of cookbooks.

Beyond that, Jervis is explicit about what you should stock in your fridge or pantry, and even how long it will last. She explains what kind of equipment you need in your kitchen and why. This is another topic that's often overlooked in a lot of cookbooks. Overall, the book makes you feel like you really can cook anything you want, with or without a recipe, and even if it doesn't work the first time, you'll get it eventually.

After I went back and read the first part of the book, I tried the spice rub on sweet potatoes using the roasting veggies how-to from the book. This is another treasure trove of information. Just last night I made the lentils with wine, and everyone who ate them was so impressed.

Even if this book were twice the price, I would already feel like I had gotten my money's worth.

Buy (and read) this book. You won't be disappointed.

I was lucky enough to be a test taster/test reader for this book, and all I can say is "DIY scrumptious."

Lisa's recipes are waaay easy to follow, leave room for a little creativity, and don't require a bunch of esoteric ingredients. More importantly, the end result is crunchy-salty-savory goodness.

This is in stark contrast to those monk monastery cookbooks out there that equate health with cold watery tofu. Or the equally annoying "add a teaspoon of low-fat bottled dressing, mix with plain nonfat yogurt" cookbooks that may as well be titled Weight Loss and Heart Disease Recovery for the Stereotypical American. But I digress.

This book works equally well for those who don't know how to cook, those who only know how to cook stuff they would no longer be caught dead eating, and those who cook all the time but want some new, interesting, and fast recipes.

As well as those who just can't resist anything called a manualfesto.

The kindle edition of this book lacks editing. For instance, take this quote:

"Speaking of which, tomato paste is great for building richness of flavor, so you may want to consider putting it in soups, stews, stir-fries, tomato products such as tomato paste, crushed tomatoes, or fresh tomatoes. flavor, so you may want to consider putting it in soups, stews, stir-fries, and the like even when you aren't planning for them to be particularly tomato-ey."

I mean, really, would one expect to find such nonsense in the printed version of this book? Why must we put up with it in the ebook edition?

I have been wanting to get into cooking -- I was really inspired by "The Omnivore's Dilemma" by Michael Pollan -- and this book is just perfect. Jervis writes in a very approachable style that makes me unafraid to tackle these delicious-sounding recipes. A wonderful, inspiring book that came along at just the right time. Highly recommended to anyone who cares about not only the politics of food, but eating delicious cuisine!!

More than finding a specific recipie, absorbing the way Lisa Jervis thinks about food and its preparation has made reading Cook Food worthwhile. It hasn't meant that I won't make mistakes like not realizing that 6 cardamon pods won't equate to a teaspoon of cardamon seeds. My dish of Indian Greens was overwhelmed by that mistake. However used as compote over white rice brought some balance back to the mixture. This book pushed me into discovering beet tops and stems which I actually like better than the roots.

Even though I have read Michael Pollan and others, the hands on perspective of this "manualfesto" has helped me improve what is served at our table and made me more at ease with my food choices.

I also really enjoyed the conversational and slightly acerbic tone of the author.

This book is a great motivator to begin exploring a more natural diet. Great, simple recipes and ideas. I love that Lisa creates meals without relying on "fakes" and using real-food options. She gives good reasons to change your ways, but is not pushy or overbearing. It's a great book for NYC dwellers due to our local greenmarkets.

"Cook Food" is a wonderful guide for people who are just starting to cook their own meals beyond making scrambled eggs and toast. Jervis's explanations of why she recommends certain products or ways of doing things can be lengthy, and not every reader will care about her precise reasoning, but this is a minor issue. I found most of her explanations thoughtful and helpful and just skimmed the parts I was less interested in. I love the guides to kitchenware and what to stock in your pantry. She makes clear distinctions between essentials and things that only some people might need based on their cooking preferences. This book introduced me to tomato paste in a tube; I'd never heard of it before, but it's so much better than those little cans that often go mostly to waste! This book also taught me how to cook, literally. She very simply explains the basic "bones" of cooking, plus the little secrets I had no clue about such as deglazing, carryover cooking, and "blooming" spices in oil. A great guide for beginners, especially those who want to follow a vegetarian or vegan diet. I have to admit that I haven't used most of the recipes more than once, though, and now that I've learned the valuable lessons in this book, I may pass it on to another beginner so they can get a great start.

This book is great because it is very easy to read and it has quick tips on how to make meals that aren't cooked with processed food. As a veggie who is addicted to processed soy protein this book has made it much easier to make a quick meal without all the extra fun that comes with processed food. easy to read, entertaining.

The vegetarian cookbook genre, to put it bluntly, is a mess -- shot through with asceticism (Francis Moore Lappé), quasi-religious gibbering (Laurel's Kitchen), and outright pseudoscientific idiocy (Christina Pirello, Michio Kushi). In the culinary cacophony, there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of room for people who just want to add to their vegetarian repertoire or eat more responsibly without having to deal with no-compromise nutritionist wannabes or preachers. In times past, there was always Mollie Katzen's Moosewood Cookbook and its spiritual descendants by the later collective, as well as (more recently) entries by people like Mark Bittman.

But we do hit a snag when it comes to actually putting green ethics and meatless cooking together -- this is where we get back into the domain of the Lappés and Pirellos, combined with the stark raving madness that is the ecology section of your local bookstore, where good scientific data is lost between the sort-of-right hard greens and the cynical corporate apologists. "Cook Food" is a quick, inexpensive solution to the problem, a vegan cookbook by someone who isn't even fully vegetarian. It lays out the issues in a straightforward, concise, and non-dogmatic manner; while ethics are a major issue in the book, the fundamental point is solutions, not preaching. Author Jervis even includes an extensive bibliography on subjects such as cooking, sustainability, food production, and the like.

One can't forget the recipes either -- though relatively few in number (only about 20), they're picked specifically to allow vegetables and things like tofu to stand on their own while still being palatable to pretty much anybody (including a recipe for vegan brownies for people to play with baking a bit). Necessities for a vegetarian kitchen are covered in detail, and the book also includes a section of short, not-quite-recipe preparations that the author likes. And for the price, it's very much like The $7 Meals Cookbook -- not only are the recipes cheap to make, the book is cheap too.

Sadly, you won't find this book in many bookstores -- the publisher is a small one with a very diverse but small catalog. But it's definitely worth seeking out and reading, especially if you're interested in helping to deal with the problems of our modern food supply. (Incidentally, I can't claim credit for finding this one on my own; I learned of it in an article by Amanda Marcotte on Pandagon. She does seem to have good taste in books.)