Book Review: The Art of Simple Food - "You Had Me at Gremolata"

As you may or may not know, I am complete obsessed with Alice Water's book, The Art of Simple Food. This book has a repetoire of simple yet appealing recipes and techiniques that will ensure flavorful dishes with the use of minimum ingredients. Waters does not muddy foods with complicated sauces or overly complicated cooking methods. Instead, the standout flavors in her dishes are the actual ingredients themselves - a piece of pork simply seasoned with salt and pepper and grilled to perfection or a salad made up of seasonal vegetables, lightly tossed in a simple vinaigrette.  

Waters states that her "revolution" began when she started a restaurant and looked for good-tasting food to cook.  She searched for ingredients that she loved when she was a student in France: simple ingredients like greens, peas, breads, etc.  In her search, she found that the tastiest foods were grown by farmers closest to her. 

Waters states that "when you have the best and tastiest ingredients, you can cook very simply and the food will be extraordinary because it tastes like what it is (amen to that!)"  Waters believes that you don't need to be a professionally trained chef to make delicious food. Instead, you should rely on your five senses to experience the food fully.  

The book is written as a series of chapters that review the basics, starting with a guide on choosing the freshest ingredients and how to stock a pantry.  "To become a cook," Waters states, "you only need a few essentials:  appetite, ingredients, a kitchen to work in, a few tools, and a few ideas about what to cook."  She then lists an entire list of pantry and perishable staples.  The pantry staples include essential items like olive oil, vinegars, salt, black peppercorns, spices, pasta, polenta and cornmeal, rice, dried beans, anchovies (yes!), flours, sugar, vanilla, yeast, and the like.  For perishables, items like garlic, onions, shallots, celery, carrots, herbs, eggs, nuts, chicken broth, bread and potatoes are included.  From this, Waters lists the bevy of meals that you can make from keeping your pantry stocked with these ingredients.  For example, with pasta and polenta, you can make spaghettini with oil and garlic, pasta with anchovy and parsley, egg noodles, butter, and Parmesan, fusilli and cheese gratin, pasta with white beans, fusilli and tomato sauce, spaghettini alla puttanesca, polenta, and polenta torta.

Word.

She then lists essential kitchen tools that all home cooks should own to properly prepare a bevy of dishes.  Waters is a self-proclaimed minimalist when it comes to equipment (a little piece of Williams Sonoma just died).  She forgoes bulky, complicated equipment in favor of items like a mortart and pestle so that she may become "one with the food", if you will (and I will).  Typical items like sharp knives, cutting boards, heavy bottom pots and pans are listed alongside items like a salad spinner, pasta machine, and earthenware.  For each item, she explains why she feels that the particular piece of equipment would be helpful in the kitchen.  

Next is a section that focuses on cooking techniques that are accompanied by "model recipes" from essential sauces to salads and breads, to roasting and simmering, to savory and sweet.  The second part of the book is filled with recipes that use the techniques that were described in the first half of the book.  

The whole purpose of the book is to learn fundamental techniques by heart so that you don't have to rely on a recipe and finally do what Waters set out to do in the first place: 

To have you and I, the home cooks of the world, trust our senses.

Grilled Pork Loin with Gremolata and Polenta

      

       

Roasted Chicken

Braised Chicken Leg with White Beans and Rosemary and Garlic

Comments

[Tangled Noodle]

Thanks for a great review! I've been wanting this book but am restricting my book-buying for now. It's nice to have a synopsis from the POV of a fellow (and trusted) foodie/blogger like you - it would help me justify relaxing my budget restrictions! The dishes pictured look so delicious; that simple roast chicken is divine!

[The Duo Dishes]

This is all so true!

[Kayte]

Love this book, got it for Christmas year before last and have NOT done it justice. Must do more from it as I love her theory and her recipes are wonderful.

[Hélène]

I just bought it. Can't wait to read more reviews and also cook from it :)

[MBT Shoes]

It's so nice to have you do all of the research for us. It makes our decision making so much easier!! Thanks.

[Nike Air Max]

Love this book, got it for Christmas year before last and have NOT done it justice. Must do more from it as I love her theory and her recipes are wonderful.