Customer Reviews

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

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

 

 

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.

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.

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.

This isn't an exhaustive book, with instructions on all culinary techniques. I wouldn't recommend it for beginners. And yet it isn't a high-level work of recipe porn from which you'll never actually prepare anything.

Ash is a Californian, and cooks with an Asian accent and an emphasis on fresh produce. I didn't have trouble finding all the ingredients here on the other side of the country, though I suspect some may need to order a few items online.

Some recipes require many ingredients and look fairly involved, but the techniques are seldom hard. What I like best is the first section, with chapters on salsas, pestos, marinades, sauces and vinaigrette, all of which have myriad uses. Two other chapters you don't see in many books include one one oven drying fruits/vegetables to enhance their flavors, and another on tofu/miso/tempeh.

This book can free you up from being a slave to a recipe to first understanding what you're doing and why and then taking that knowledge over time and applying it to whatever you want to do in the future.

Learn the basics here, keep your pantry stocked, and you'll be able to go to the farmers' market or super market and buy what appeals to you/what's in season and bring it back home and do something stellar with it, instead of mindlessly following a recipe like a zombie (and let's face it, in the era of photogenic celebrity chefs, we've all followed a recipe to the letter only to be let down with the results). This can save you from all that.

The other book you might want to consider if you like this approach to cooking is Essentials of Cooking by James Peterson.

The target audience is people that like modern American healthy food and don't think they have the time to prepare it at home. (This food is very different from the traditional American food, which I am not a fan of. Instead think Mediterranean with some Asian ingredients thrown in.) Even if you like to cook, like I do, you will find ideas and inspiration because of a key feature of the book that I mention in the next paragraph.

Excellent if you want to learn more about cooking as opposed to just having a recipe collection. Technique: Pesto making. The author gives the classic recipe, but then provides a lot of interesting variations through a set of recipes. It shows you how you can go about experimenting yourself. Each chapter use this kind of format to good effect. That is the style of the book and not everything is covered. Just some techniques and some ingredients. That makes it quite joyful to use.

So this book is the perfect gift to somebody who likes this kind of food, but currently doesn't cook. It is a great way to nudge that somebody in the direction of cooking. I would say that this book can be inspirational for this kind of reader. There is no risk of getting overwhelmed by an author who tries to cover everything. And the introductory text is directly targeted to these potential cooks. It is a disgrace that such a marvelous book never seemed to pick up sales.

I recently attended a cooking class that John Ash taught, and bought this cookbook. Both he and the book are wonderful. This is a cookbook that both the novice and expert will be able to enjoy. Read the introduction, it will help you get the most from the rest of the cookbook. The lessons, recipes and pictures are beautiful. The food flavors are amazing.

As someone who has over 370 cook books (it is a sickness, I admit), there are naturally some that I pull off the shelf much more often than the others. This is one that I use regularly, and every time that I have has produced outstanding results, whether cooking for two or for a larger gathering. The processes are thoroughly explained, easy to follow, and generally quite uncomplicated. I love this book!

Not exactly as I had imagined this would be but some good techniques and recipes.

My husband and I have attended two of John Ash's cooking classes in the last several years. If you ever have a chance to go to his class, don't miss it. He teaches with a wonderful sense of humor while passing on all kinds of good information. He usually makes the circuit at the Central Market in Austin, Dallas, Houston and Ft. Worth, TX. We attended in Austin but unfortunately don't live there anymore. His cookbooks are wonderful and are filled with very interesting, different, and excellent recipes. This one is good.