Customer Reviews

Intuitive Cooking: From the School of Natural Cookery

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Joanne Saltzman (author of "Amazing Grains" and "Romancing the Bean") is the founder of the School of Natural Cookery in Boulder, Colorado. If you are not lucky enough to be able to attend the school, her new book "Intuitive Cooking" is the next best thing. This book is a complete course in using your senses to create a dish rather than relying on a recipe.

This is not an easy read. There are no pictures. This book is really like taking a cooking course and requires attention and study. As Saltzman says in the introduction, "This book is designed for those who want to study cooking more deeply than what is typically offered in culinary cookbooks."

I have studied natural foods cooking and I found this book an excellent review - reminding me of why I do things in the order I do and what I acheive by certain processes. I learned the reasons for things I do naturally and found some new techniques that I am eager to try, like steeping vegetables.

The book is divided into 3 sections.

Chapter One talks about the language of cooking. Saltzman has her own language and uses many terms I haven't heard before but they really describe perfectly what she is trying to say. She explains how to design a dish and compose a meal. Vegetable cutting techniques are also illustrated.

Chapter Two goes through the cooking methods. This is the crucial part of the book because if you can master these, you can make anything. She talks about pretreatments like soaking and dry-roasting, first stage cooking methods like boiling, baking, roasting, steeping, fermenting, steaming, braising pickling, stir-frying, etc.; and second stage methods like refrying.

Chapter Three gives almost 400 recipe sketches for vegetables, grains, and proteins (all vegan). They may seem a bit daunting until you are comfortable with the cooking methods from Chapter Two - but once you get them down, you will find that these sketches give you lots of room to be creative and free you from the confines of traditional recipes.

More than just another collection of recipes, Joanne Saltzman (Founder and Director of the Natural School of Cookery, Boulder, Colorado) wants the readers of Intuitive Cooking to learn about the underlying principles of flavor and texture that underpin successful improvisational cooking. Readers will learn the basics necessary to cook and season a variety of foods without precise measuring and complicated instructions. The almost four hundred reicpe 'sketches' of vegetables, grains, and plant-based proteins help to illustrate and demonstrate that with a few basic techniques and ratios, even the most novice of kitchen cooks can increase their culinary versatility and the meal-time success of their personal recipe innovations. With specific chapters dedicated to 'The Alphabet and Grammar of Cooking', 'Cooking Methods', and 'Primary Elements and Recipe Sketches', and enhanced with the inclusion of a glossary and a number of culinary preparation tables, "Intuitive Cooking" is a welcome addition to any kitchen cookbook collection -- and a recommended acquisition for inclusion in a school's cooking class curriculum reference and instructional materials collections.

I bought this book after taking a cooking class based on curriculum developed by the Natural School Cookery in Boulder. The class was phenomenal; it provided a solid foundation for cooking with whole foods, health-consciously, simply, holistically, intuitively, and even cooking for healing purposes. Since I bypassed acquiring any culinary/kitchen skills growing up, coming up with healthful, fulfilling meals that work for my own individual needs has always been a challenge. The Natural School of Cookery in Boulder and their cooking philosophies and techniques have served to provide the missing link in the kitchen for me. This book, Intuitive Cooking, is the full course curriculum for the cooking class mentioned above. It goes over everything from which cooking oils to use and store, to the usage of herbs and spice, to the various cooking methods available; covering whole grains, vegetables, and beans. The underlying concepts focus on cooking holistically and with intuition (i.e. forget about following overwhelming, 15+ ingredient, time-consuming recipes, the underlying philosophies emphasize a simplified approach to cooking). The content of this book has helped me prepare healthful, satisfying, tasty, time-friendly, simple meals. I recommend this book in a heartbeat, as well as their cooking classes if they are offered in your area (in Seattle they are offered through PCC Cooks, called the Main Course Series).

Having read a review of this book, I was open to knowing more about this approach to cooking and nutrition. I was put off by the book's cult-ish tone. The previous reviewers are already adherents to this "religion" and are very positive. I'll try again to dip into it, but, after 56 years of cooking, I'm not looking to convert and if I can't pick up some useful information without memorizing the catechism, I'll be passing along to someone who is more open to it.