Customer Reviews

A Twist of the Wrist: Quick Flavorful Meals with Ingredients from Jars, Cans, Bags, and Boxes

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Nancy Silverton is one of the last chefs in the world I would have expected to write a cookbook that urges you to use prepared foods.

Worse, prepared foods in quality meals.

Even more unlikely: meals you can prepare with the fewest possible steps and the least preparation time.

That's because Nancy Silverton is a Serious Chef. Trained at the Cordon Bleu in London. Apprenticed at Michael's in Santa Monica. In 1989, with her husband and a partner, she opened Campanile restaurant and La Brea Bakery in Los Angeles. Turned them into national brands. Sold the restaurant for a Brea Bakery for major money, sold an 80% stake in the bakery for $56 million.

So she definitely has the time and resources to embrace "slow cooking," homemade dinners, 101% natural ingredients.

And, in fact, Nancy Silverton is famed largely for her hand-crafted, artisanal breads. And for her elaborate sandwiches. Like her BLT: smoky bacon, Boston lettuce, and sun-dried tomatoes on toasted sourdough bread with a spoon of pepper mayonnaise. And for views like this: "If someone asked me to fillet a whole fish, I wouldn't have a clue."

Still, it's a stunner --- even she thinks so --- for her to praise pasta sauce in a jar. Frozen pie crust. And, yikes, leftovers.

To come to these conclusions, she remembered how frenzied she was when she was raising three children and running two businesses. So she shopped for a year. And not just in supermarkets. She trolled gourmet stores. She clicked around the web. And she found that prepared foods had greatly improved since she started avoiding them, all those years ago.

Warning: To recreate her collection of cooking supplies, you'll have to exert some effort. You'll need to visit a high-end gourmet store. And you may need to shop on the Web, where sane prices are undermined by ridiculous shipping charges.

Other modest warnings: You won't find a pre-mixed vinaigrette dressing that's worth serving. (At least, she didn't.) In season, if you want pesto, she favors a mortar and pestle. And commercial salt-by-the-pound won't do. Silverton favors sea salt. And kosher salt. Two bowls, always handy.

Good news for vegetarians: Silverton discovered her love for cooking when she became the vegetarian chef for her college dorm. There are pages and pages of salads and soups that are either animal-free or easily could be.

Unfortunately many people's idea of a "twist of the wrist" recipe involves some sort of cream-of-whatever soup over protein, perhaps with some processed cheese thrown in for good measure. Often cookbooks involving prepared foods result in foods that are marginally tasty at best and rarely healthful.

Silverton's book relies on quality ingredients, some of which just happen to be jarred, canned, bagged, or boxed (as indicated in the title of the cookbook). Spice pastes, roasted vegetables, cured meats, and other products prove very helpful in throwing together a meal in a short amount of time.

These kinds of recipes are an excellent alternative to quantity cooking on the weekend or simply eating out. Many of these recipes would even be suitable to serve to company.

The section on Silverton's preferred brands, products, and sources is also very useful.

Overall a good book to have on hand for those days where a frozen meal or take-out is just too tempting.

If you've ever wondered what to do with pomegranate molasses or piquillo peppers, this book is for you.

For busy people who like to eat well, Silverton has scoured the grocery shelves for gourmet convenience items, like roasted red peppers, the new cartoned soups, jarred curry sauce, and tapenade to come up with dishes like Seared Tuna with Tomato-Olive Salsa, Peppered Skirt Steak with Spicy Tomato-Curry Garbanzo Beans and Tangy Greek Yogurt Sauce, and Chilled Corn Soup with Adobo Swirl.

Most of them take 30 minutes or less and all are designed to be one-dish meals.

There are lots of the usual pantry items too, like canned beans, sardines, capers, anchovies, etc., all used with flair and imagination.

The salad and pasta chapters are especially simple and different with dishes like Orecchiette with Peas, Prosciutto and Crème Fraiche, Pot Sticker and Vegetable Stir-Fry, Spinach Salad with Lentils and Crispy Warm Goat Cheese, and Cumin Shrimp and Garbanzo Bean Salad with Roasted Carrots.

Chicken salads are made with rotisserie chicken and tuna comes from a can (unless it's seared), but all the dressings are homemade, as Silverton cannot abide the commercial ones.

Silverton suggests brands for many items and while most are locally available, she also provides a list of mail-order sources. A fine collection, suitable for enlivening the week night or serving to guests.

Nancy Silverston has put together a great book of recipes that are tasty, attractive, and interesting. Since purchasing the book, I have mail ordered a few ingredients I could not find locally and the rest came from a local grocery store. If you do not like to cook and really are interested in preparations like those of Rachel Ray, this is not a book for you. If you subscribe to Saveur, Gourmet, and similar cooking magazines, you will use this book and made adaptions to what you read. The photographs are a good enhancement for the recipes and the recipes themselves are easy to follow and to use.

I liked cooking from this book because it was FUN. It is not cheap. But I started cooking around the beginning of Marcella Hazan and Alice Waters. Everything was fresh, fresh, fresh. But all these years I have secretly loved canned peas and baby food apricots. Plus some of her techniques do translate to other menus. Silverton has given me a new life with mayo sauces and little sides. I have to say, I think it is so fun that it is the book that I am using more recipes than any other in the last ten years. and am cooking my way through it.

At age 77 we need excellent but simple food but so do my children who have each received a copy from me. Of all my cookbooks, this is the most treasured and I was the owner of Joe Greensleeves in Redlands, Ca, voted amoung the top ten restaurants in S California by the Restaurant Writers.

I'm very disappointed in this book. I enjoy the quick and tasty recipes of the Dinner Doctor and other cookbook authors like her, and I also like the more adventuresome cooking offered by chef-authored writers like Silverton herself in her earlier Campanile cookbook. This book is an annoying blend of the two. The recipes in Twist of the Wrist are complicated; the ingredient lists are long; the canned and jarred items featured are expensive, and for the most part, I cannot find them in the big city grocery stores of the major metropolitan area where I live. I'd rather cook from scratch than mail order ingredients or fruitlessly search for ingredients in stores all over town.

A little background. I like Nancy Silverton's cookbooks. I own her LaBrea's pastry book and it is divine. I am a good, experienced home cook.

The pros: Lovely pictures... drool inducing. Her conversational style and no nonsense straightforwardness lives on in this book.

The cons:
The biggest is that quite a few of the recipes are just not that good. A lot are just not practical for those seeking meals on the fly. That is the audience. Quick, easy and delicious. Maybe all of the ingredients she uses are available near her, but some I had to struggle to find quite a few things even on the net. Some items I just made things myself (like garam masala paste, pickled veggies, infusions...) defeating the purpose, but I was curious.

When I made the recipe my victims sometimes were not all atwitter with delight. The exceptions are the crostini section. LOVED the Crostini with Soft Scramled Egg, Black Olive and Caper Stuffed Anchovy. Made it a meal with a simple salad. But then there is the Roasted Tomato and Red Pepper Soup with Pesto Croutons. Ya know what that is? BUYING the soup boxed up (like you get at costco - adding the croutons that you slather with premade pesto and roasting some super sweet tomatoes. The combo - the tomatoes seemed wrong in the soup. I picked them out. So better just left alone. ICK. And that is NOT a recipe to me. How would you like Campbells cream of mushroom - add tobasco, jarred mushrooms and put some obscure cheese on top? Is that what you would pay for?
Chicken breast seared - slapped on cress and topped with prepared demi glace. Yawn and a little ick. Fried oysters with pickled veggies and chipotle mayo. Wow never seen that before. My husband refused to finish the recipe with white asparagus in brown butter topped with caper and a fried in olive oil egg. Spaghettini with Tuna and V-8 got "What are you doing to me? Have you had a stroke?". Sigh. Love her, the book - not so much.

You get the picture. Who does not love fast and scrumptious? I know I adore it.

This ain't it. I just do not think her heart was in it. Blech!

This cookbook does not deliver on its premise.

Often the only "larder" ingredient is a single box of pasta, can of tuna, or a jar of roasted peppers. The olive oil or mayonnaise may also come from a jar, but that's hardly revolutionary. I would have preferred the book to include classic larder cooking, old family secrets, and novel twists on larder cooking. If you are an experienced cook, and you already know that you can make a dinner out of tuna, capers, and some olives, and this book will provide you with little insight. As in many Nancy Silverton books (I have several), many recipes have a feeling of "I just slapped this together for dinner, and I thought it was good enough to publish."

The book also fails to include any Asian, or specifically Japanese dishes, which are renowned for springing to life from simple ingredients like noodles, miso, nori, etc. Dried ingredients, such as seaweeds, mushrooms, beans, or rice and mung bean noodles are not addressed. Frozen ingredients, a secret to many kitchens, are ignored. Coconut milk and peanut butter, staples of asian and african cooking are neglected.

Mostly, this cookbook provides a suite of FRESH food, with garnishes made from jars, cans, bags and boxes.

As a point of contrast ... An entire restaurant (Quimet i Quimet, a tapas bar) has been based on conserva, or preserved food. Silverton's book does NOT cover conserva, but if you are interested, see article "Canned Heat" by Amanda Hesser, in the New York Times (September 1, 2002).

Chef Nancy Silterson is the original dessert chef at Spago and founder of the La Brea Bakery, but here shifts her attention to compiling a list of favorite products that come in convenience jars, cans, and boxes, along with recipes which need less than 30 minutes to prepare. From a Cream Corn Soup with Bacon and Cheddar Crostini to Seared Lamb Chops with Ratatouille, mouth-watering color photos of finished products accompany tips on how to blend quick ingredients with fresh for optimum home cooking. A 'must' for any public lending library catering to busy - but gourmet - home cooks.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch