To my delight, yesterday afternoon the mailman brought me this : The New Making of a Cook: The Art, Techniques and Science of Good Cooking. The revamping of her classic book from 1971, The Making of a Cook. A gift from the goddess of cooking I would daresay. The title grabbed me, the cover grabbed me, the outright significant weight of the book itself grabbed me- and then the first 60 pages…
Let me just say that at the time of it’s arrival, I was cooking a whole chicken to go with a pan of dressing (I’m sure it’s called ‘stuffing’ by other folks) made on the spur of the moment in response to 2 slightly-stale half loaves of bread in the box and a can of cream o’ celery soup outta the hurrican stash - my instinct was then justified when I read this sentence:
Some of my former students may remember how I answered their question, “Should I throw it away?” My answer was always, “Think it out first; can you salvage it?”
I applauded the lack of color photographs. In the one cookbook I own, “Italy: The Beautiful Cookbook”, the photographs are almost 3 feet high, and the food actually appears rather unappetizing in most of the pictures, as it does when you finish trying to prepare something from it without the half-dozen expensive and/or unattainable ingredients included in each one of them. But lofty dated cookbooks have only been one hurdle in my race to learn how to cook. As with many of the other guestbloggers who have ‘come out’ so far- I think that we all have tortuous relationships with our food in some way. About to turn 31, I am just now learning how to cook. My father was the one in my family who did the cooking for the most part, while drinking heavily for the most part. “If it’s brown it’s cooking, if it’s black- it’s done” was the only kernel of advice I remember clearly. Meat, potatoes- salt, and of course, butter, lots of butter. And at this point I utter a completely unheard unnoticed, ‘wow’ at reading there are two, 2 different ways to cook butter alone. Although I’m sure that if I even tried to say ‘noisette’ in front of my father I’d be summarily dismissed as ‘just stoned’.
Further into the book I find that my inherent avoidance of those decorative vinegar and oil bottles is dead on, and the clinical name for it is Clostridium botilinum. The history and chemistry put in understandable words, along with Kamman’s personal observations and experience- is a magical combination. Although I have such a respect for books that I usually do not leave them in places where they risk being damaged in any way; I expect to have this one open on my kitchen counter for some time. And high hopes are sneaking into my heart on the cooking front. I can see that this is one of those things that I’m going to have to teach myself, as- after spending 3 hours in the kitchen chopping green and yellow peppers and onion, mixing, sauteeing (?), baking, frying, seasoning- breaking my damned back (not to put to fine a point on it eh?)- oldman is fast asleep. He will eat his microwaved, and I do not protest this development much as I sit down and finally enjoy a hot plate of my own food.
Love,
Goliard