Book Review: An Everlasting Meal by Tamar Adler

I didn't have to read far to know that I would like An Everlasting Meal by Tamar Adler. I just had to get to the subtitle, "Cooking with Economy and Grace" and I was already ready to tell people about it. Because truly, if we could all learn to cook with economy and grace this world would be a better, happier, more peaceful place. As it is we're often cooking with McConomy and Rat Race (yup, it took me a whole minute to come up with that). Even if we haven't descended to the depths of McConomy, we're often cooking with either economy or grace, and struggling to combine the two. Adler argues (though she would never use such a word) that the two go hand in hand. In fact, in her way she seems to argue that economy cannot thrive well without grace and visa versa. I would have to agree. To a large extent, to cook without economy is to cook with lots of waste or to cook as a vehicle to show off our excess, neither of which is extremely graceful. And to cook cheaply without a little grace can be summed up in one word: shortening, or two words: industrial farming, or maybe three words: boxed mac & cheese. Anyway, you get the idea.

Adler's book combines philosophy, memory, prose, and cooking. Her philosophy on cooking (and if I had to pin this book down to a genre, I think philosophy might just be it) is that one meal should run seamlessly into the next: today's chicken will be tomorrow's fried rice will be the next day's soup. It was all terribly romantic. 

In fact, if I was to choose my largest criticism of the book, that romanticism might be it. The prose was perfumed, her descriptions of using leftovers might as well have swept the sea breeze through my hair. Yet there was little humor and not so much as a nod toward those days when you're rushing home and everyone's tired and whining and the last thing anyone's in the graceful mood for is a nice hearty appetizer of bean broth (with or without a generous dose of good olive oil and a squeeze of lemon). You know those days. Don't we all? So it would have been nice to at least have a hat tipped to them occasionally.

I had three other problems with the book. The first is a little personal. Adler has no kids and as near as I can ascertain no husband either. That's okay; I'm not saying she must have a family to offer valuable food advice. However, it meant that the only thing you get about cooking for a group (or cooking around other individuals' tastes, for that matter) was a wee bit about hosting dinner parties. Also, it meant no comforting jokes about your husband's pickiness, which is something I always appreciate in a book about food (yeah, I might have to be the one to write that one). 

My second problem with the book is a cross between a critique and praise. There was so much good advice that it was tough to take it all in. It was quite poetic and although she offers a fair number of recipes, they don't come to us in the neat categorical way they would in a typical cookbook. This isn't inherently a problem--at least it's not a problem I'm sure has a simple solution in a book like this--but it did make it a little hard to find a recipe you wanted when you wanted it. 

My final problem was that for every cooking woe, she pronounced a good drizzle of olive oil and a squirt of lemon. I like olive oil and lemon as much as the next guy and truly there's a lot that a little fat or a little acid really can cure, but I thought it was a little over-prescribed. 

Now on to what I liked best about this book: Despite my skepticism about a few of Adler's methods (she begins the book by suggesting that to begin dinner, you get a pot of water on to boil and then scrounge around and find some things to put in it--vegetables, meat, "ends" and that all these things will surely come together into a marvelous whole--see I told you, romantic).. yes, anyway, despite my skepticism I decided to give several of them a whirl. They worked really beautifully. I took some of her advice on "striding ahead" and prepared nearly a week's worth of vegetables from what I had languishing in my refrigerator. They tasted delicious hot that first day, but were also very good on sandwiches throughout the rest of the week or as snacks. This is just as Adler promised it would be and I'll be darned if she wasn't right on. The boiling water method of dinner preparation is still waiting for me to try (though in all fairness, the months I spent living in The Netherlands, there was plenty of vegetable boiling on the natives' part and it always came out perfectly delicious and flavorful and not a bit like the boiled vegetables we tend to remember our great aunts pushing on us), but she also has great ideas on how to eat food we normally expect to be hot cold or with a different sort of spin. She was masterful at taking things you'd normally throw out and adding them to bread, rice, or carb of choice and producing dinner or lunch. 

The part I was most excited about was her chapter on "ends." Ends are the bits of food we normally discard--the ends of vegetables, the green vegetable tops (as in carrot tops), the stems of herbs, bones, etc. Adler has many ideas for how to use them and I have to admit that they are perfectly graceful (and by nature terribly economic). You end up feeling that you will never discard a parsley stem again (though you probably will, but maybe not quite as many).

She also has a chapter on salvaging the foods you messed up. In addition to that, she dedicates an entire appendix to the fixing of burned/mushed/undercooked/oversalted foods that would otherwise end up in your trash compactor. That's economy, of course. And if the redemption of imperfect food doesn't equal grace, I don't know what does.

In short, it was a great read on food, economy, and grace. I've bookmarked a booty load of recipes and plan to dedicate a couple of posts this week to a few of the things I gleaned from her wisdom.

One Pot Alfredo Pasta with Vegetables

I have a thing for Alfredo. I have an even bigger thing for Alfredo with a hearty dose of chopped basil. People make Alfredo sauces differently, ranging from the purist's version of cream, Parmesan cheese, and butter to the more Americanized cream cheesy versions or the foodie ones with a dash of nutmeg or whatever else is the seasoning de jour. I like mine pretty pure and I usually make it as a sauce. But this recipe caught my eye because it is just so darn simple, so delightfully one-pot. You finish cooking your noodles in the cream, which really incorporates the cream into your dish (a trick Cook's Illustrated also suggests). It's a well-balanced, one-pot, 25-minute meal that would cost you $15 at Applebees.

It's also a great way to use up random vegetables that you have. Broccoli, cauliflower, spring peas, spinach, asparagus--whatever you've got or a combination thereof. I used spinach and the peas from my garden. In that way it was sort of a celebratory dish as well. I've never gotten enough peas from the garden to satisfy both the garden snackers (me and my girls) and actually have enough leftover to create a dish. It was very exciting. I'll be making it again tonight with the last of my peas. Here's to the exit of spring and the onslaught (which is certainly how it felt this weekend) of summer.

Easy One-Pot Pasta with Alfredo
serves 6-8
adapted from Everyday Food
Prep and cook time: 25-30 minutes
Cost: $3.35
pasta: .75, vegetables: .50-1.00, basil (I'm guessing here; I grow it myself): .50, cream: .35, Parmesan: .75

3/4 lb short pasta (something with swirly parts is nice--it catches the creaminess)
3 garlic cloves, halved
3-4 C vegetables of your choice (peas, spinach, asparagus, broccoli, cauliflower--go with a cool-season vegetable and you'll likely be okay)
1/2 C fresh basil leaves (or several tablespoons of pesto)
1/3 C heavy cream
3/4 C grated Parmesan

In a pot of (preferably salted) boiling water, cook pasta and garlic 2 minutes less than the package instructions. Add vegetables and cook for 1 minutes (Note: I know I'm giving exact times here, but I didn't use exact times--essentially get your pasta almost cooked, throw the veggies in near the end so they get a quick boil--they'll cook a bit more in the cream, so this isn't all the cooking they get, but it gets them started.)

Reserve 1/2 C pasta water (um, I forgot to do that and all was still well) and drain.

Add cream and basil to the pasta in your pot and heat over medium with the pasta. If you need to add some of the reserved cooking water to thin it (I didn't need to). Cook this, stirring, for a couple of minutes. Stir in Parmesan and remaining pasta water if you need to loosen it up a bit (I didn't need to). Season with salt and pepper.

Serve warm.

PRINTABLE RECIPE

Food Essay Friday: Four Cooking Instructions that Keep People From Cooking

I hate it when cooks make cooking seem daunting. It needn't be. At least the type of cooking that gets dinner on the table. Below are a few of my own pet peeves--things chefs sometimes say or do that make cooking seem so mysterious and perfectly undoable for the rest of us mortals.

1. Spoon your ingredients into your measuring cup. I don't know why I hate this instruction so very much. Oh wait, I do know. Because it's tedious and painstaking and--for most good recipes--completely unnecessary. I have been making cookies and cakes for a long time. They are very good. I have never spooned flour into anything and I never intend to. A good recipe can forgive a few extra or less grams of whatever. Dropping ingredients into a measuring cup spoonful by painful spoonful while some child grabs at my legs begging to help sounds like the type of thing the devil forces his minions to do for the rest of eternity (oh, and I and bet they burn their cookies every time too). It's also the type of thing that Yahoo articles love to include in their 'how to cook better' articles. (Why, yes, I am equating Yahoo cooking articles with Satan.) If you need to be intensely accurate in a recipe (and I'm going to maintain that you usually don't if you have a good recipe), buy a kitchen scale and weigh your ingredients.

2. Use 17 bowls. Okay, maybe that's not the exact instruction, but the point is that some recipes just seem to employ an inordinate amount of dishes. I admit that there's a place in life for a really stunning dish that requires several bowls, spoons, measuring implements, etc. But we should definitely save those recipes for the fancier things in life or at least a lazy Saturday afternoon. Chocolate chip cookies, 30 minute meals, and the like should never require that we spend two hours afterwards cleaning up our mess. Also, I'm much more willing to forgive a less-than-perfect dish that only required one bowl or pan than I am one that created a sinkful of dishes.

3. Wash your rice/lentils/beans 3 (or however many) times before cooking. I admit that there's a place for rinsing grains, but to do so over and over in a neurotically prescribed fashion makes me quacky. Rinse them once if need be. Or if you're feeling nice and anal, rinse them until the water runs clear.

4. Giving some oddly specific instruction and not explaining why--like being told to tie up your roast with twine. As though we all have twine just lying about. And why exactly are we tying it up--because it's going to get so tender that it will fall apart or what? There are jillions of mysterious cooking instructions in our cookbooks and on blogs. I don't mind doing something weird, but I'd like to be told why. That way I can decide if the twine (for example) is worth going out to buy or not. Without a wee bit of explanation, we're stuck wondering if our rebellion/laziness/cheapness is going to ruin a perfectly good recipe or not.