book report by m-c

author:	Alice Waters with Patricia Curtan, Kelsie Kerr, & Fritz Streiff
title:	The Art of Simple Food:
	Notes, Lessons, and Recipes from a Delicious Revolution
publisher:	Clarkson Potter, 2007
illustrations:	drawings by Patricia Curtan
length:	405 pages
page size:	medium (7.3" wide, 9.3" high)

I get a kick out of restaurant cookbooks, especially the ones where a restaurant cook tells us how he cooks at home. Or maybe I should put that expression in scare quotes -- "at home."

His home is so, so different from my home.

His refrigerator has room -- all at one time -- for watermelons, a marinating ham, sixteen tiny quails, a gallon of lavender-scented lemonade, a bushel of salad greens, and ten porcelain cups of chocolate mousse. His home kitchen has a stove-side charcoal pit with its own hood, evacuating twenty cubic yards of smoke per minute, leaving behind only a light barbeque scent; a sixteen-burner stove with four built-in wok stations; a delicatessen slicer; and two prep sinks, one for produce and the other for flowers.

His greengrocer saves aside the choicest alpine strawberries for him, his grocer never looks askance when he insists than saffron should be from Spain and not Morocco, his fishmonger willingly provides him with fishbones, his butcher keeps him supplied with hanger steaks, veal tongues, and honeycomb tripe.

He is "at home" in the same sense that the Queen of England is "at home" in Balmoral: You can take the girl out of Windsor Castle, but you can't take Windsor Castle out of the girl.

All this is by way of saying that Alice Waters's The Art of Simple Food is emphatically not a restaurant cookbook. Alice cooked in her legendary kitchen at Chez Panisse, but long ago. After the birth of her daughter, she became an apostle -- a pope -- of organic, local, sustainable food, and at home she cooked as a home cook. The Chez Panisse cookbooks bear her unmistakable stamp, and the food they present is often simple, but it's drop-dead simple, a Martin Margiela shift rather than an Old Navy undershirt. This book is Old Navy all the way.

Well, no I should modify that. Alice can still source ingredients from a network unavailable to most home cooks, though thanks in no small part to her influence it's getting easier every year for ordinary mortals to get their hands on first-rate produce, seafood, and meat.

As far as I can tell, this book contains not a single recipe that I'd never make. Figured at cost per cookable recipe, it may be the least expensive cookbook in my collection.

The book has an unusual structure, and several reviewers have complained that they can't figure it out. Part 1, Starting from Scratch, consists of cooking lessons with illustrative recipes; part 2, At the Table, is recipes without lessons -- except of course that there are lessons in every paragraph, in every ingredient list, just not called out like the lessons in part 1.

The food is French, Italian, the cooking of the old American farmland, the occasional foray into such very mild exotica as tabbouleh and blini, all of it straightforward, all -- I want to say all obvious. You look at a recipe of Alice's and you say, "Of course." Even if you've never had it before, the combination of flavors seems natural and sensible. The ingredient lists are short. You can easily taste the flavors with your mind's tongue; you can imagine how the dish will look in the serving bowl and on the plate. Avocado and grapefruit salad. Braised duck legs with wilted greens. Cranberry upside‑down cake. Sautéed cauliflower. Many recipes end with simple variations. Instead of all peaches, use a combination of peaches and raspberries. Add garlic to the marinade. Use coarse cornmeal in place of breadcrumbs.

The book contains no photographs (except for a charming author photo at the back). It's a comfortable middle size, and the binding (with some judicious cracking) allows the pages to lie flat when the book is open. There's no dust jacket, and the binding is the yellow of 50% butterfat cream and British Redcoat red. The words come in single or double columns, and the rhythm of their alternation is captivating; I wish I knew the text designer's name. Patricia Curtan's illustrations lie in the generous margins. The recipes follow the wonderful old Joy of Cooking style, with the ingredient list rolled out as the recipe moves forward.

Even before you begin to read, the book makes an impression. It promises to be sober, clear, and firm. And so it is.

Alice's prose is above all calm. Come in to the kitchen, she invites us. Come sit down. Would you like a cup of tea? We'll begin by my explaining what we're going to do. Let us consider. Then let us continue. Have faith in yourself. I'm right here by your side.

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