`The Art of Simple Food' by the one and only Alice Waters is a rare treat for foodie readers, and an even rarer treat for those who wish to master the craft of cooking effortlessly. I can think of very, very few cookbooks which succeed as well as this one at teaching good, creative cooking at home. Those very few are the last two books by Jacques Pepin, `Chez Jacques' and `Fast Food, My Way', a few of Nigel Slater's books, especially `The Kitchen Diaries', and Waters' mentor's book, Richard Olney's `Simple French Food'.
As with Pepin's works, my initial reaction to any important culinary figure's producing a `fast' or `easy' cookbook is suspicion that they are trying to cash in on the popularity of Rachael Ray's 30 minute meal mantra or Sandra Lee's `semi-homemade' fast and easy rubrics. And, like Pepin's books, this book is the real deal, giving superb, original insights on SIMPLE cooking at home. One of the very first things to realize, as Olney stated it in his book, `simple' is not the same as `fast' or `easy'. The notion of `simple' food is itself complicated enough to require seven pages in his introduction to thoroughly explain. In a nutshell, it excludes complicated menus, elaborate plating, and fancy sauces. It does include baking bread, making our own pastry, making our own homemade pasta, and making our own stocks and broths. Each of these activities can easily take several hours.
We cook simply not to save time or effort, but to avoid masking the great qualities of our ingredients. So, simplicity in cooking has a symbiotic relation to Ms. Waters' most famous doctrines, of using fresh, organically grown local ingredients, when they are in season. And, if there were anything at all with which to find fault in this book, it is the constant preaching on that topic. This is not entirely Miss Alice's fault, as reading this book is much like reading `Hamlet'. So many lines sound like clichés, not because Shakespeare was a hack, but because `Hamlet' is easily the most often quoted play in the English language.
This book fits exactly into my perennial analogy between learning cooking and learning chess. The rules of chess are quite simple, and yet it is almost impossible to summarize the principles of good chess strategy. So, learning the deeper lessons of chess involves simply replaying the games of the great chess masters, and appreciating how they saw their moves. Similarly, almost everything written about how to cook involves simply reciting recipes. And yet, the very best writing on cooking rises above simply following recipes and reaches that way of thinking one achieves when they are finally able to cook without a book. Paradoxically, Waters begins with some of the very strictest recommendations on how to successfully follow a particular recipe, going far beyond the simple suggestions of reading through it and gathering all your ingredients together. But, like the famous little book on chess by Emanuel Lasker, `Common Sense in Chess', one achieves independent thinking by experiencing the patterns from great games. With Olney and Waters, the great exemplar is the very best home cooking.
The subtitle of the book, `Notes, Lessons, and Recipes from a Delicious Revolution' may have been just a bit more accurate if it had emphasized the `lessons', since these are the soul of the book. Almost half the book is filled with 17 chapters on important cooking techniques that every home cook should really know by heart. These are `Four Essential Sauces', `Salads', `Bread', `Broth and Soup', `Beans, Dried and Fresh', `Pasta and Polenta', `Rice', `Into the Oven (Roasting)', `Out of the Frying Pan', `Slow Cooking', `Simmering', `Over the Coals' (grilling), Omelets and Souffles', `Tarts, Savory and Sweet', `Fruit Desserts', `Custard and Ice Cream', and `Cookies and Cake'. In a very gentle, very motherly way, Miss Alice communicates something like `master recipes', however, they are generally simpler than the famous `Master Recipe' template used so successfully by Julia Child. But then, Alice and Julia are really not doing quite the same thing. The lessons in the first half of the book are so well presented, I would easily recommend this as a superb textbook for a course on home cooking. And, in spite of having read over 400 cookbooks, I still found new insights in this book.
The second half of the book is comprised of recipes which emulate the model Alice creates in the first half of the book. The selection of recipes reminds me of Ted Allen's book title, `The Food You Want to Eat', in that we have great simple recipes for lots of everyone's favorite dishes. The `Salads' chapter, in its 27 recipes, includes `Hearts of Romaine with Creamy Dressing', `Caesar Salad', `Chicken Salad', `Green Bean and Cherry Tomato Salad', `Nicoise Salad', `Coleslaw', `Potato Salad', `Carrot Salad', and `Greek Salad'. Most recipes have multiple variations, except for the real `standards' such as Caesar's salad.
The first chapter on `Getting Started' is as good as or better than most I've seen on basic equipment and techniques. In this area, Ms. Waters really does well as a model for the home cook, as she describes herself as a minimalist, and prefers to work with as few tools as possible. Her lessons here on knife skills are not as complete as Pepin's `Complete Techniques', but that is not what this book is about. It's about common sense cooking at home. The second chapter, `What to Cook' is another lesson in simplicity, with some inspired suggestions on how to get the most out of novel eating venues.
The writing flows so smoothly, I'm surprised at how fast I get through its impressive 405 pages. I'm even more impressed by the fact that it seems Ms. Waters probably contributed more herself to this book than many others where she is listed as the author. Thus, this is a classic foodie treasure, in that reading it gives as much pleasure as cooking from it.
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The recipes are indeed simple. Probably nothing in this book that you can’t just ‘google’. BUT, it is fascinating to learn from someone as in tune with her ingredients as Alice Walters. And remember that simple is not always easy or boring, and sometimes it is nice to read through a cook book that doesn’t try too hard to impress with exotic ingredients and techniques.
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