John Ash: Cooking One on One: Private Lessons in Simple, Contemporary Food from a Master Teacher [Hardcover]

John T. Ash (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 23, 2004

You love good food. You prefer fresh ingredients, you appreciate lively flavors, you try to eat healthy. So what's keeping you out of the kitchen? Fear? Boredom with making the same old things? In this book, renowned cooking teacher and innovative California chef John Ash says, "Let's get back in there."

Those lucky enough to have learned in the classroom alongside John Ash know that he is an extraordinarily gifted teacher who empowers beginning cooks and kitchen veterans alike to reach new culinary heights. In his celebrated classes, Ash takes the fear out of creative cooking by demonstrating the basics, then encouraging students to dive right in and experiment with the endless possibilities. Now, home cooks can reap the benefits of a private course with John Ash in this enlightening guide to cooking essentials and beyond.

John Ash: Cooking One on One features lessons that focus on specific techniques, ingredients, or flavor-makers--vinaigrettes, pestos, and other building blocks that turn ordinary dishes into something special. With each lesson, Ash presents a handful of recipes--variations on a theme that start simply, then progress to reveal more complex combinations. With clear-cut instructions and a dash of charm, Ash helps cooks build confidence in the kitchen and proves that any dish, no matter how intricate, is based on a handful of simple techniques and troubleshooting know-how.

This unique new collection of recipes--his first since the IACP Cookbook of the Year From the Earth to the Table--offers savory soups, satisfying main course salads, comforting vegetarian and nonvegetarian entrées, and delectable desserts for every occasion. Pan-Seared Sea Bass with Pineapple Melon Salsa. Mojo-Marinated Skewered Beef. Warm Spinach Salad with Bacon, Apple Cider Dressing, and Oven-Dried Grapes. Mushroom-Ginger Soup with Roasted Garlic Custards. Orange Ricotta Cake with Strawberries. Discover an irresistible assortment of extraordinary recipes prepared with global accents and a light touch. As one of the guiding forces behind California cuisine, Ash uses fats judiciously and encourages cooking with seasonal produce. His final lesson, an introduction to wine, rounds out this groundbreaking cookbook.

An unprecedented blend of instruction and inspiration, John Ash: Cooking One on One swings open the kitchen door, stocks the pantry, and invites cooks of all skill levels to dish up fresh, flavorful food at home.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

For John Ash, author of the award-winning From the Earth to the Table: John Ash's Wine Country Cuisine, the lines that separate chef from teacher from cookbook writer from consultant blur and fade into insignificance. In the end, it's about ingredients and flavor and the meal at hand. "After twenty-five years of teaching," Ash writes in the forward to John Ash: Cooking One on One, "I know that you don't have to perfect all the basic kitchen skills in order to make great food." What John Ash likes to see coming his way is a good eater, because there's a person who as likely as not will want to taste and eat at home what he or she has tried out on the town.

The trouble, of course, is time. Or you are single and aren't cooking for more than yourself. It's all so daunting: eating light, eating well, eating responsibly. And ordering take-out is so easy. Cooking One on One, in chapters constructed like lessons, dispels all that. Part One is devoted to flavor-makers--salsas, vinaigrettes, pestos, world marinades, and simple, savory sauces. Learn to make the cucumber and mint salsa, Ash instructs, then use it to maximum advantage with grilled lamb chops. No muss, no fuss.

That which begins at a simple level grows more complex as you master technique and ingredient and apply layers of flavor. Ash leads the way with flair and confidence. Part Two covers basic cooking techniques--learning about soups, learning about oven-drying ingredients like tomatoes or cauliflower for maximum effect, learning about braising, grilling, creating soufflés (they can be assembled and frozen ahead of time!), learning about pasta in the West and the East. Part Three covers lessons in main ingredients: chicken, dried beans, mushrooms, salmon, shrimp, soy foods, desserts. The straightforward recipes reflect the nature of the lessons, the ingredients, the flavor profiles. This is a California chef with deep respect for culinary roots, whether they reach back to the Colorado barnyard or the French farm.

John Ash teaches cooking here, not recipe recreation. He creates good cooks out of good eaters. --Schuyler Ingle

From Publishers Weekly

"Home cooking is not an all-or-nothing proposition," urges Fetzer Vineyards culinary director Ash in this persuasive appeal to home chefs to incorporate a few new flavors and basic methods into their repertoires. Ash's chatty, straightforward subject lessons on techniques, ingredients and "flavor-makers" (as he refers to sauces like pestos and vinaigrettes) elucidate recipes that are unusual and appealing, like flatbread cooked on the grill, brisket braised in coffee and a salad of oven-dried vegetables to top fried risotto or polenta. As in his previous books, From the Earth to the Table and American Game Cooking, Ash supplements typical Mediterranean-inspired California cuisine with refreshingly global fare, drawing on Asian, Caribbean and Latin sources. While these recipes' wide range of flavors and cultures will appeal to sophisticated eaters, many readers will find Ash's clear introduction to unfamiliar methods and ingredients useful. Ash also suggests fat- and time-saving variations for most recipes, asserting that delicious results can be achieved even if cooks skimp on a few steps or ingredients. Designated for bookstores' "natural foods" shelves because of its emphasis on local produce and pasture-raised meat, the book discusses American agricultural practices and how they immediately affect our food choices, which should be eye-opening for those encountering these issues for the first time. But that discussion is too cursory for readers eager for a serious, mainstream cookbook to incorporate considerations of sustainable agriculture into everyday cooking.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Clarkson Potter; 1 edition (March 23, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 060960967X
• ISBN-13: 978-0609609675
• Product Dimensions: 10.4 x 7.8 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #578,316 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

52 of 52 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Culinary Building Blocks, April 22, 2004

By 

rodboomboom (Dearborn, Michigan United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: John Ash: Cooking One on One: Private Lessons in Simple, Contemporary Food from a Master Teacher (Hardcover)

This is marvelous new approach to teaching culinary techniques. It is very similar to Ming Tsai's new book: "Simply Ming" in that they both provide a new technique, e.g. how to make a marinade, a vinagerette, a sauce, souffle, braising, etc., then provide recipes which use and build and modify this basic.

While Ming is into East-West fusion, here Ash is into inspiring even the one who feels they are not very good in the kitchen to delve into the fun world of great cuisine. Ash is a proficient educator who truly believes in dialogue as a prominent learning tool. Here he aptly anticipates questions and answers them.

His selection of topics is contemporary and popular, as evidenced by his starting point: salsas. This is topped off by a wonderful "Fresh Cranberry and Tangerine Salsa." I really appreciate that each topic provides "VARIATIONS", which stimulate each of us to consider taking off in varying directions depending on our taste likes and ingredient leanings.

Try some of these, which are not difficult once you've began mastering the technique: "Roasted Eggplant Salad with Charred Tomato Vinaigrette;" "Cold Cream of Red Bell Pepper Soup from the juicer"; "Couscous Risotto with Oven-Dried Mushrooms and Tomatoes and Pecorino Cheese"; "Herb and Pistachio-Stuffed Veal Pot Roast"; "Twice-Baked Goat Cheese Souffles with Watercress and Oven-Dried Tomatoes"; "Poached Chicken Breast Salad with Curry Buttermilk, Apples, and Pecans";

There is also a section on Tofu (not one of my favorites) and Simple, Sophisticated Desserts. A wonderful, informative brief section on wine, both for cooking and for matching up with food is well done, as well as a Glossary and Pantry. Only thing missing here is Sources.

The writing is superb as is the color photography. A cookbook to start with, improve with and cook with for a long time.

61 of 63 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Master Classes on Culinary Techniques. Highly Recommended, April 13, 2004

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B. Marold "Bruce W. Marold" (Bethlehem, PA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: John Ash: Cooking One on One: Private Lessons in Simple, Contemporary Food from a Master Teacher (Hardcover)

Author John Ash's rare combination of a professional chef's experience combined with a teacher's ability to communicate has produced this remarkable and welcome tutorial on how to execute various cooking tasks. The book lives up to the many blurbs from culinary luminaries headlined by a quotable from Emeril Lagasse on the front cover. The book is so good, it enhances my opinion of the commending writers for having the foresight to endorse the book.

On a very glib level, the book is a cross between Alton Brown's knack for explaining with Tom Colicchio's depth of culinary insight. The first stroke of genius is the organization of the chapters into a section on `flavor makers', a second section on techniques, and a third section on important ingredients. Learning about cooking has often struck me to be very similar to learning about chess. For the millions of combinations of ingredients (moves) there are really just a few simple rules one can learn with hundreds of variations posed by the moves of your opponent. One simply cannot learn chess by studying. You can only learn by playing (cooking) and by slowly gaining first hand experience with ingredients and the results of applying techniques. The author has accommodated this analogy by dividing cooking into three areas of discourse, loosely comparable to the opening (ingredients), middle game (techniques) and ending (flavor makers). I am sure this analogy will not bear too much analytical weight. It succeeds if it highlights the fact that you must learn cooking by actually working with foods and experiencing its behavior, smell, and taste.

I have occasionally been disappointed by such promising titles such as Tom Colicchio's `How to Think Like a Chef', but my disappointment has been part of the lesson and not a failure of Colicchio's book. He gives lots of recipes and very few general principles. Ash's book is no different in that there are only a few general principles and plenty of recipes, although the genius of Ash's presentation makes the book satisfying all the way through. While Colicchio and Charlie Trotter and Eric Rippert, great chefs all, have written inspired books about cooking in general, Ash is a professional educator as well as being a talented chef.

One way of viewing Ash's book is to see it as a visit from the Snap-On tool supply truck. Reading the book furnishes your mental toolchest with eighteen (18) tools that can be used in a broad range of applications. My favorite example is the lesson called `Vinaigrettes: Not Just for Salads'. As the title indicates, vinaigrette is one of those `Swiss Army Knife' preparations like a marinara sauce. It can easily be used in a lot of different situations with great results. Ash doesn't limit himself to the olive oil / vinegar / mustard / shallot / salt and pepper classic and it's applications. He brings in citrus as the acid, stocks as part of the liquid, honey, miso, soy sauce, ginger, cilantro, and dried fruits. He extends the lesson to advice on how to pair vinaigrette to the composition of other elements in a dish or a meal. I also welcome his mentioning of a brand of corn oil prepared in a way which calls up the picture of artisinal olive oil production. The oil, he claims, actually tastes like corn. What a concept!

The lessons on the other four `flavor makers', Salsas, Pestos, Marinades, and Sauces all follow the same pattern of broadening our understanding of these preparations. The greatest contribution of all these chapters is not that they show you how to make these specific eight or ten or twelve recipes. The contribution is that they show you how to improvise with these ingredients. I can still remember the revelation I experienced when I realized that pesto / pistu is not just for pasta. I was amazed when for the first time I saw it being used as a garnish to soup. There is a lot of this kind of horizon expanding exposition going on in these pages.

The selection of topics for techniques and for ingredients is equally inspired. In a sense, there is even more illumination in these sections than in `flavor makers' since both sections contain at least one surprising topic. Techniques gives us a lesson on oven drying, a method which I have seen used here and there, now and then, and highlighted as a general tool only in books covering Raw Foods techniques. Ash brings the technique into the main stream as a routine tool for the home cook. The ingredients section includes a chapter on soy foods which has a distinction between Chinese and Japanese tofu, the first time I've seen this distinction made. This section also discusses miso, relatively new to American culinary vocabularies, and Tempeh, which may be quite new to most Americans.

I do not know much about wine, but I welcome it in all sorts of cooking applications. Therefore, I was delighted to find that the final essay was a concise, excellent discussion of wines as they are used in cooking. True to the end, the book's food facts are accurate in it's addressing the question of whether cooking drives off the alcohol. The book's discussion of the issue is deeper than any other I have seen, in that it gives estimates of how much alcohol remains after various cooking techniques heat the added alcoholic ingredient. The discussion is crowned by a clear explanation of what alcohol adds to dishes in language that makes sense to educated lay cooks. There is none of the meaningless statements that alcohol is `a conductor of flavor'.

This book is not a complete text on cooking methods. For that, see, for example, Madeleine Kamman's `The New Education of a Cook' But, this is an exceptional cookbook which really should be read from cover to cover.

Very highly recommended. Intermediate to advanced recipes, but good advice for novices.

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wish I had found it earlier, February 8, 2006

By 

Stepone (TX) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: John Ash: Cooking One on One: Private Lessons in Simple, Contemporary Food from a Master Teacher (Hardcover)

I looked for a long time in all the wrong places for a book that would teach me how to cook, not just by piling up recipes, but by showing me basic adaptable techniques and how to approach different main ingredients. My search was so frustrating that I gave up on my other condition, that the book feature modern, interesting food. This book does exactly that.

He shows you, for example, different types of sauces, then shows you how they are related and how they can be used to build your dish.

The reason I give this an edge over volumes like How to Cook Everything or the All-New Joy of Cooking is that Ash gives his lessons concisely--it's a far slimmer book than those two--and with beautifully motivating illustrations. This book will take you very far in relatively few pages.

Amazon is at this moment offering this book with Molly Stevens' All About Braising. This is a brilliant combination, as Stevens' book goes into great depth on this elemental technique, and both give you a perfect balance of classics and new and/or exotic flavours.