Paper Palate

When a cookbook tells us to saute onions until golden, some of us ask, “well, define ‘golden’.” Is it like the pale yellow that overcomes a onion after a minute in a hot pan? Is it the deeper yellow with singed edges? Are the singed edges ok? Is it supposed to be smoking? It smells kind of acrid. Oh god, the fire alarm’s going off! This is awful. I’m ordering pizza.

Welcome to Part 2 of a three-part series covering books aimed at beginner cooks. In the previous installment, I wrote about the large, all-encompassing volumes that have been the standby reference sources for the majority of American kitchens. These works were exhaustively comprehensive, but could be overwhelming in their scope. Their dense, text-heavy format with light illustrations can also be daunting for those of us who prefer visual examples.

I actually had a surprisingly difficult time narrowing the field in this category, as it isn’t one that I followed when I learned how to cook. Is it all about the 30-minute meal? How important are photos? What about balance between techniques and recipes? Every beginner has a style that speaks well to them, and what’s instructive for one is useless for another. It’s also relatively tough because the quick-and-easy beginner category is the most crowded segment in this field. Anyone can slap together some glossy photos and mediocre three-step recipes and pass off the lack of quality by saying that it’s a book for beginners. After all, recipes that have deep complex flavors are hard work. If you’re just a beginner, stick to the simple stuff. Who cares if it’s a little bland? Yeah. Right.

Overall, though, you should try your best to acquire books that will grow with you. Cookbooks that hawk simple-minded, quick recipes that treat their readers like timid infants will hobble your confidence in the kitchen and you will never enjoy cooking if you rely on books that remind you of how much you suck at it. You should own a book that respects you and understands you, which leads you through the basics, but also offers greater challenges later on.

Books Covered: Julia Child The Way to Cook, James Peterson’s Essentials of Cooking, Madhur Jaffrey Step-By-Step Cooking

The grand dame of American cooking, Julia Child has probably done more to bring gourmet cooking into the American home than any other food writer living or dead. While her first cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, gets the most frequent name-check as Child’s best work, it is still a book focused on classic French recipes that predate our modern accelerated lifestyles. The recipes can be long, dense and rather labor intensive. Her second book, The Way to Cook eases the neophyte in with accompanying photos that illustrate various steps in her techniques, while also featuring a more streamlined recipe format.

In How To Cook Everything, I mentioned the virtues of having a single master recipe that is accompanied by multiple variations. This encourages improvisation, by giving beginners a few easy variables that they can tweak or change according to their preference. The master recipe format was pioneered by Julia Child, and The Way To Cook showcases this technique to an excellent degree - giving you a base recipe that is then followed by multiple dishes that build upon that foundation.

Contrast this to James Peterson’s Essentials of Cooking. Peterson is mostly known as a classically trained chef/proprietor who wrote a fantastic book on sauces and sauce making with an emphasis on understanding technique over blindly following recipes. The approach is replicated in his Essentials book where he leads the beginner through various staple techniques (glazing vegetables, braising meats, etc.) with a lot of accompanying photos. You get step by step snapshots that show you how onions look when they’re being sauteed and how chickens are trussed for roasting. What you don’t get, though, are ingredient lists and measurements. You’re told how to make risotto, but not how much broth you should keep on hand for adding to the rice. Most quantity amounts are in the vague territory of “some mushrooms”, “a little bit of vermouth” and “a few potatoes”. His instructions for grilling shrimp are, almost literally, “Sprinkle shrimp with salt and grill them until they’re pink. Serve hot.”

And, I mean, yeah, grilling shrimp is kind of simple, but it’s not haiku territory.

If you neurotically obsess over how much is in “a dash” then this isn’t your book. If you come from a household where dinner prep was measured in handfuls then this should be familiar territory. It does seem like it demands a fair bit of experimentation, but all cooking is so. Even the canonical recipes that you find in The Joy of Cookng are seasoned for someone else’s taste buds, and you will still find yourself tweaking those recipes to suit your particular predilections. Eliminating ingredient measurements forces you to pay attention to the role that every ingredient plays in your dish; and ultimately helps you troubleshoot problems in your cooking.

It is, of course, not for every beginner, but if you don’t mind a little risk and ambiguity, then it’s well worth a look, especially for the excellent and copious photography.

These two books will cover most of what you might look for in Western cooking technique. If you’re looking further afield and are curious about Asian cooking, then you could take a look at Madhur Jaffrey’s Step-By-Step Cooking. Her recipes are predominantly South and Southeast Asian in focus, with a large number of Indian, Thai and Vietnamese recipes. Common Japanese dishes such as tonkatsu and miso soup appear, but you’d have to look elsewhere for, say, okonomiyaki or sushi rice. The photos tend towards inspirational rather instructional, but they’re still frequent and useful.

The recipes themselves are clear and concise and make for great scanning. They range from quick dishes that can be prepared in half an hour to longer preparations that require some advance planning. I’ve owned this book for three years, and I still haven’t attempted her biryani recipe, which involves a dozen spices, three different infused liquids and a sequence of steps that looks like it should be loaded into Microsoft Project. On the other hand, I make her shrimp with asparagus dish on a near monthly frequency, and it’s an excellent template for any stir-fry.

The book is a little light on background knowledge. You get a handy step-by-step photo guide towards rolling and frying spring rolls but subjects like building a proper curry and what might separate, say, a Thai and Indian style curry gets pretty short shift. Still, as a survey of South East Asian cuisine, Step-By-Step Cooking is a decent introduction. The illustrated guides help de-mystify tasks like making your own curry paste or deep-frying tempura, and there are helpful ingredient glossaries to assist you with shopping.

In general, you’ll notice that I’ve opted for books that try to make it easier for the reader by providing a ton of visual cues and examples. Those of you looking for quick, 30 minute recipes, probably won’t be well served by these works. They all have simple recipes, but it’s not their focus. The larger references, Bittman’s How To Cook Everything in particular, make more of an effort to provide you with fast, streamlined recipes and would be a better source if you’re continuously strapped for time. These books ease you into the basics, but can ramp up in giving you more complex fare; and so you’ll still find them useful even after you’ve mastered their basic lessons.