Cooking by Hand
So many cookbooks today cater to our hectic lives and offer meals which can be assembled in short periods of time. Or they offer glittering photos of dishes beyond the reach of most home chefs, food porn which is meant to impress rather than satisfy (I say this despite my love for cookbooks of the latter ilk).
Paul Bertolli's Cooking by Hand, due out in mid-August, falls into neither camp. The introduction is titled "Cooking is Trouble" and in it he puts forth the theme which carries through the book: to make good food takes time. Period. Of course, many recipes from one of my favorite cookbooks, The French Laundry Cookbook take time as well. But Bertolli, whose restaurant Oliveto's is a destination restaurant in Oakland, isn't necessarily talking about the time it takes to brunoise a carrot. Instead, it's the time it takes to appreciate your ingredient. To really understand what needs to be done with it. Or to wait for your ingredient to be at its prime.
Bertolli's goal, it seems to me, is to give the reader the inclination to take this time him or herself. And he succeeds at this, though I don't think many readers will cure their own prosciutto, despite the detailed instructions. Reading his essay on capturing the perfect moment of a pear's ripeness, or his various sample menus, designed to enhance and contrast particular aspects of the various courses makes one realize that even for those of us with an obsession for food, it is too easy to not think about these things, to instead rush through the preparation, to our own detriment. Even a topic as seemingly trite as pasta is given new light as Bertolli offers up several pages about different kinds of flours one can use, and what characteristics they give to the pasta and what kinds of sauces work best with the final product. The section which will probably get the most attention, however, aside from the chapter on curing various kinds of meats, is the long treatise on tomatoes. "Twelve Ways of Looking at Tomatoes" gave me very pleasant dreams as I read it just before bed. None of the items are particulary surprising (unless you've never had tomato sorbet), but the section is so thorough that you'll be flush with ideas the next time you're at the farmer's market.
The book does falter at points. I was looking forward to the section on food and wine, imagining another deeply considered essay that would offer a new perspective on this always fascinating topic. Instead I got an imagined conversation between an anthropomorphized bottle of wine and plate of food which is almost embarassing in its silliness. And non-sentimentalists will find his letter to his son about the acetaia Bertolli started to make his own traditional balsamic vinegar to be sappy. Sentimental types will find it sappy, too, but we won't mind it as much.
Nonetheless, this is a book which belongs on every serious food appreciater's shelf. I say food appreciater because I don't think of this book as a cookbook, despite its recipes. It is a reminder to all of us to stop and think about what we are eating. To really appreciate how good food happens, even from the very beginning of its life. True enjoyment can only come from true appreciation, and the effort is worth it. No matter how much trouble.
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