Paper Palate

In Zorba the Greek, Zorba says that he can tell what kind of person you are by what you do with the food you eat. I think a person’s favorite cookbook can be just as revealing.

My favorite cookbook is Shirley Corriher’s Cookwise. If you read my biography, you know that I am a lawyer who does research and writing for other lawyers. (See my blog at researchandwritinglawblog). Maybe that is why cooking is so much more enjoyable for me when I understand the cooking process. Cookwise not only has great recipes, but it also empowers its readers to be daring and confident in the kitchen.

I first used Cookwise when I was trying to make caramel sauce. No matter how hard I tried to follow the instructions in another recipe book, the sugar and water balled up and became a huge mess that I had to throw away. Corrhier explains in Cookwise, however, that crystals form because the sugar-water mixture is pure and you can disrupt the crystallization by adding some other kind of sugar that has a different molecular composition than table sugar. Glucose in corn syrup, for example, acts as an “impurity” that prevents the crystals from forming. Alternatively, you can add a few drops of acids, such as lemon juice, vinegar or cream of tartar. The acids break down the sugar into two molecules, glucose and fructose, that also prevent crystallization. Isn’t that fascinating – and it works! After gloating over my marvelous caramel sauce, I have since wondered why every recipe does not include this simple trick. With Cookwise, I know the trick and caramel sauce will never intimidate me again.

The same goes for chocolate chip cookies. How many cookie recipes have I tried over time, always being surprised how they came out of the oven. Because I am an empowered Cookwise cook, however, I will not be surprised again. Corriher includes a basic chocolate chip cookie recipe and then shows the modifications (in column format) that transform that basic cookie into a thin cookie, a puffed cookie or an in-between cookie. These recipes will soon be the subject of a separate article by me (complete with photos), but here is the skinny. You can increase the spread of a cookie by using all butter rather than shortening, by using less liquid or sugar or by using room-temperature ingredients. You can get more color in the cookies by substituting some corn syrup for sugar, by using an egg for liquid or by using unbleached flour rather than cake flour. Now the chocolate chip cookie recipe does not control me, but I know how to control it to get the kind of cookie that I want.

Cookwise is divided into categories that are unique to cookbooks. Rather than appetizers, soups, salads, etc., Cookwise has chapters that address bread, fat, eggs, sauces, fruits and vegetables, meat-seafood-fowl, and then sweets. There is also a table of contents of recipes arranged by the traditional categories, which is very useful.

In most cookbooks, I usually try no more than ten to twenty percent of the recipes. Cookwise is different and I believe that I have tried at least half of the recipes. Many of the recipes are now in my standard repertoire – Fettucine with Mozzarella, Mushrooms and Tomatoes; Hot Thai Curried Chicken with Coconut Milk and Avacados; Juicy Pork Tenderloins with Spicy Chinese Sauce; Crusty French-Type Bread; and Fresh Fruit with Ginger. In my experience, the recipes produce delicious food and are generally quite simple to prepare. I have used my copy of the book so much that it is falling apart and some of the pages stick together because I am not a tidy cook.

To be fair, I will tell you some things that I do not like about Cookwise. I did not like the Mellow, Moist Low-Fat Chocolate Cake, perhaps because I knew it contained sweet potato puree and I could not get past that. I wish the book had more pictures or some diagrams of techniques. Although the discussion section about cooking meat is helpful, I have not and will not try the recipe for Whole Roasted Tenderloin because I think that it seems too complicated, namely because it requires freezing the tenderloin for two days before cooking. Although I am certain that the resulting tenderloin is fabulous, this is one of the few recipes that I thought was unnecessarily difficult or time-consuming.

In case there is any doubt, I love Cookwise, I am a better cook because of Cookwise and I highly recommend that it be included in any/every cook’s library.