The Art Of Simple Food
In Mouth Wide Open, John Thorne admits that he often reviews cookbooks without testing the recipes. Heresy, he says. So many cookbooks don’t have reliable recipes; shouldn’t you check a few before suggesting the book?
Probably. But taking a page from Thorne, I find myself willing to recommend Alice Waters’ The Art of Simple Food despite the fact that I have yet to explicitly make one recipe in it. I’ve come closest with the winter version of minestrone soup and the grapefruit-avocado salad — less a recipe than a shopping list to begin with — but in each of those cases I put my own spin on the dishes.
But the book keeps resurfacing in my weekly meal planning sessions. I flip through it and think, “Hm. Soufflés. That sounds good.” I scribble soufflé on my list and assemble one on the right night. Or a bean dish catches my eye, or a meat dish, and I make that, more or less. I know how to make soufflés, soups, salads, and the other dishes she includes: The book just reminds me that those dishes are out there, waiting to be made. Often, they use ingredients that pique my interest, though few will surprise devotees of California cuisine: goat cheese, chard, salt-packed anchovies, Meyer lemons, fennel, and arugula (Waters prefers the term rocket).
If you don’t have a casual knowledge of these dishes, you’ll quickly gain it. Waters has aimed the book at the unconfident cook, laying out recipes à la The Joy of Cooking: List an ingredient or three, add a paragraph about what you’re supposed to do with them, list the next ingredients and their steps. She also includes solid explanations of cooking equipment and ingredients. Use this book enough, and you’ll find yourself with a good grounding in cooking basics.
You’ll also have no doubt about Waters’ position on sustainable, organic, local, and ethical foods. She trumpets them at every possible moment in a focused beam of Watersness that can become oppressive as it repeats, page after page. I say this despite sharing her stance. Will the average reader tire of it even more quickly?
Perhaps. But they won’t tire of the straightforward, delicious dishes that appear on the dining room table, reminders that sometimes simple food is just fine.
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