Holiday Books Cooking By CHRISTINE MUHLKE

The New York Times
Printer Friendly Format Sponsored By

December 6, 2009
Holiday Books Cooking By CHRISTINE MUHLKE

Summer’s homesteading how-to’s and grilling guides have given way to fall’s fearlessly bountiful lineup. It’s the time of year when big chefs send out their big books and publishers release doorstoppers that will have U.P.S. trucks listing with the weight as they leave the warehouse. It’s also the time for really useful books that will nudge you deeper into the winter kitchen to discover (or rediscover) the secret to no-brainer bread — or find out how much more your co-workers will like you if you bring in a “Naughty Senator” cake.

Let’s start with the biggest American chef with the biggest book. Thomas Keller is a pro at translating his restaurant menus into lavish cookbooks for the advanced home cook. His latest, AD HOC AT HOME: Family-Style Recipes (Artisan, $50), written with Dave Cruz, Susie Heller, Michael Ruhlman and Amy Vogler, serves up cozy dishes from his “casual” restaurant, Ad Hoc, a set-menu, elbows-on-the-table spot in Yountville, Calif., where the meatballs and fried chicken are inarguably better than your mother’s. Keller loosens up accordingly — or at least as much as the country’s most obsessive chef can — with hand-holding tips (how to extract more meat from a lobster, snip the ends of green beans with scissors or use a No. 12 Parisienne melon baller to prettily pit cherries — naturellement!) and pictures of him looking sheepishly “ad hoc” in front of kooky chalkboard illustrations. Keep in mind that in Keller-ese, “casual” doesn’t mean “effortless.” The idea for Ad Hoc may have been born from staff meals, but let’s consider the staff.

There are straightforward dishes like tomatoes with mozzarella — homemade mozzarella. And you will truly aspire to make them. Do you have a day? Chicken soup with dumplings, “a simple, satisfying” dish, requires seven pots for what is ostensibly a one-pot meal. The celery is cooked differently from the carrots. The pâte-à-choux dumplings are trimmed with scissors. The result was satisfying and elegant, but what isn’t when a soup course calls for a stick and a half of butter and you have a staff of dishwashers? Ditto the mozzarella-stuffed meatballs. I tracked down, then ground, the four required cuts of meat; made the breadcrumbs and slow-roasted the tomato sauce while my husband hand-cut pappardelle. The result? How do you say “Meh!” in Italian? But I will persevere: chocolate chip cookies and blowtorch prime rib roast beckon. And jars of Keller’s “Lifesavers,” like fennel mustard and tangerine-kumquat marmalade, will make great gifts. Hey T. K., when are you opening that burger joint? I need to start polishing sesame seeds.

Gordon Ramsay has also set out to prove he can cook like the little people, via a book of homey recipes that can actually be cooked at home. By you. Because when he’s not humiliating the BLEEP out of the BLEEPing contestants of “Hell’s Kitchen” before eight million viewers, he’s apparently eating “posh kedgeree” and fish curry with his friends and BLEEPing family. Seeing Ramsay’s jack-o’-lantern maw and reading the words Gordon Ramsay and COOKING FOR FRIENDS (Morrow/HarperCollins, $35) elicits a nervous titter. Gordon, you’ve built a career out of being a first-class . . . chef. Now you want us to believe you still have friends? To judge by the (lovely) pictures inside, he has six: they appear throughout in almost identical shots, as does Ramsay, who apparently didn’t have more than an afternoon to pose for the camera.

But the food! It’s nice! Stuff you’d like to make — and actually can in a reasonable amount of time — from an international menu of comfort foods and slightly more ambitious fare: Thai-style fish cakes with sweet chili sauce, wild mushroom tarts in a walnut-Parmesan crust, lamb shank cassoulet. The recipes, written with Mark Sargeant and Emily Quah, are clear and not scary in the least. Chef Ramsay, I stand corrected. You may step back in line.

One of the most talked-about restaurant books of the season is David Chang’s MOMOFUKU (Clarkson Potter, $40). In five years, this 32-year-old New York chef has built an empire on inspired, porky excess. Chang’s Virginia upbringing, upscale restaurant experience and love of certain Korean and Japanese flavors result in the kind of dishes that will jam your eyeballs into the back of your head, like brussels sprouts with bacon and kimchi puree. This fawningly produced book, written with the former New York Times “$25 and Under” reviewer Peter Meehan (who contributes the Grass Fed column to the blog of T: The New York Times Style Magazine), is fueled by Chang’s hard-core attitude and punctuated with a “Hell’s Kitchen” season’s worth of unprintable words. The dude’s intense, and he wants you to know it. The food is intense, too, especially as the recipes increase in difficulty as the chapters move up the Momofuku restaurant scale, from Noodle Bar to Ssam Bar to Ko.

It’s exciting to think that thousands of American kitchens will soon be stocked with dashi, kochukaru and fish sauce. It’s even more exciting to think that some people will confit chicken wings in five cups of pork fat and attempt the cassoulet-level marathon that is Momofuku ramen. For those just in it for the coolness (or without access to an Asian market), you don’t need to make tare or ramen broth: the easy ginger-scallion sauce and ­miso butter are keepers. In both food and tone, “Momofuku” encapsulates an exciting moment in New York dining. In 20 years, when we’re all eating McKimchi burgers and drinking cereal milk, we’ll look back fondly on the time when neurotic indie stoners and their love of Benton’s bacon changed the culinary landscape.

Heston Blumenthal, the chef of the three-Michelin-starred Fat Duck in Bray, England, is a brilliant obsessive of another school. Not afraid to geek out, he’s just as curious about how sound affects taste (diners who order a dish called Sound of the Sea listen to an iPod playing waves) as he is about 17th-century English cuisine. Last year, he oversaw the publication of “The Big Fat Duck Cookbook,” written with Pascal Cariss — 11.6 pounds and $250 worth of engagingly written personal history, scientific research and recipes from his lab. . . . I mean kitchen. Republished as the somewhat more portable and accessible FAT DUCK COOKBOOK (Bloomsbury, $50), it now weighs in at just under six pounds. A lavish extravaganza larded with cartoons and Ralph Steadman-esque illustrations by Dave McKean, the book downloads everything in Blumenthal’s head (which is a lot), including recipes for already legendary dishes like snail porridge as well as ­nitro-scrambled egg and bacon ice cream. If your dream cuisine involves liquid nitrogen and a rotary evaporator, Blumenthal’s your bloke.

Molecular gastronomy didn’t kill Gourmet magazine. The dump-and-stirrers did. Still, the timing of GOURMET TODAY: More Than 1,000 All-New Recipes for the Contemporary Kitchen (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $40), compiled by the magazine’s editor, the former New York Times food critic Ruth Reichl, is tragicomic: the book was published two weeks before the magazine was shuttered, its staffers given 48 hours to clean out their desks; a sticker on the cover offers a free subscription with purchase. But what a great final act. “Gourmet Today” offers a thoughtful, thorough portrait of the way Americans are eating, documenting a cuisine that seamlessly incorporates ethnic ingredients, farmers’ market produce, vegetarian entrées and quick-cook staples — plus plenty of cocktails. This big green book isn’t the big yellow one you bought your mom for Christmas ’04. Not with recipes like Korean bulgogi, farro risotto with cauliflower or Afghani dumplings. Your mother might not make the recipe for David Chang’s Momofuku pork belly buns, but chances are she’d try the pork chops with fennel-pomegranate salsa, and you should, too. Like many of the dishes in the book, it’s simple, satisfying and pretty au courant. Thank you, Ruth Reichl. Come back soon.

This season, the 1,000-plus recipe category also includes books of French and Italian cuisine. I KNOW HOW TO COOK (Je Sais Cuisiner) (Phaidon, $45) was written in the early 1930s by the Sorbonne home-economics teacher Ginette Mathiot, who was tapped to compile a comprehensive collection of recipes for young brides. The resulting 1,400 recettes tick through the French repertoire, from abricots à l’anglaise to zephyr veal scallops, and are written in a brisk, authoritative manner that assumes the reader does indeed know how to cook. As Mathiot wrote in the original introduction, “A good cookbook must only offer useful information.”

With up to six recipes per page, this translation by Imogen Forster is more “Joy of Cooking” than “Mastering the Art of French Cooking.” Like “Joy,” Mathiot’s book has been updated through the years. Considerable visual charm aside, it earns its chunk of shelf space with unfamiliar vintage dishes like potage à l’aurore, sauce bâtarde and sheep’s foot rémoulade. You’ll have to make them on faith, like the chocolate cake that requires grating rather than melting chocolate. It wasn’t the chocolate cake I had envisioned (i.e., a brown one), but given the mystery factor and brisk instructions, it was a pleasant surprise nonetheless. Under Mathiot’s guidance, the vanilla soufflé did exactly as told, which is really all you can ask.

Twenty years after Mathiot’s brides entered the kitchen, members of the Italian Academy of Cuisine began gathering 2,000 recipes from nonnas, farmers and other cooks in order to document the roots of the country’s classic dishes. If you’ve traveled in Italy, you’ve probably wondered why, say, pasta with chickpeas is made differently in towns 10 kilo­meters apart, or why you never found that spice cake you loved in Terni anywhere else. That’s because Italian cooking isn’t just regional, it’s microregional, as Jay Hyams’s translation of LA CUCINA: The Regional Cooking of Italy (Rizzoli, $45) proves to fascinating effect.

The book packs in so many recipes there’s no room for bucolic back stories, photos or detailed instructions. And, this being an Italian book, organization isn’t a strength. Recipes within a section aren’t alphabetized or grouped by ingredient or region, so if you’re looking for a bean soup, it’s best to hunt through the ingredients appendix. But what delicious, oddball treasures you’ll find: Trentino-style hare braised in spiced red wine, black polenta, stuffed lasagna and five varieties of bread soup. O.K., so the donkey and cabbage stew doesn’t translate beyond Piemonte, but picking and preparing dishes at random will prove an enjoyable game for a winter’s day.

The editor Judith Jones has introduced millions of Americans to the joys of global cooking during her 50-year (and counting) tenure at Alfred A. Knopf, starting with “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” and continuing to this day. Now 85 and a widow (and writer), Jones has re-examined what making dinner means when you’re “only” cooking for yourself, and has concluded that it’s a delight: “I open up the wine and light the candles, turn on some music, and give thanks.” Her wise pep talk of a cookbook, THE PLEASURES OF COOKING FOR ONE (Knopf, $27.95), is also a manifesto: she encourages readers to experience food with all the senses and to pester supermarkets to sell individual cuts of meat rather than giant value-pack sizes that are downright discriminatory.

Jones is a dyed-in-the-ragg-wool Yankee: nothing goes to waste, and portion sizes are controlled. So each small-scale recipe is followed by pointers on what to do with that 14-ounce skirt steak in the days to come. (How about beef with sauce gribiche, followed by a gratin of beef, mushrooms and breadcrumbs?) “A potato dish for Julia” and boeuf bourguignon are things she could cook in her sleep (that’s good), and corn and salmon pancakes and “a small meatloaf with a French accent” are simple pleasures indeed. Those who’ve taken to takeout rather than gorging on recipes designed to feed four to six will find this restorative book an encouraging friend in the kitchen.

Speaking of manifestoes, Jim Lahey, the owner of New York’s Sullivan Street Bakery pizzeria, staged a baking coup with his no-knead bread recipe. Mark Bittman’s 2006 article about it in The Times probably sold more Le Creuset cast-iron casseroles than Julia Child’s coq au vin. Lahey reminds people whose recipe it was with his humbly titled MY BREAD: The Revolutionary No-Work, No-Knead Method (Norton, $29.95), written with Rick Flaste, formerly the editor of The New York Times’s Dining section. If you haven’t tried it already, it is life-­changing: Stir flour, water, yeast and salt for 30 seconds. Let rise overnight. Scrape dough into a round and let rise for another hour or two. Shape and bake in a covered pot. You’ll get a perfect loaf, even if it means smoldering holes in your oven mitts.

Lahey offers a few spins on his flawless boule: carrot bread, coconut-chocolate bread, olive bread, fennel-raisin bread. And there are recipes for things to make with said bread, fresh and stale. But the second-best thing about this book is that Lahey demystifies the pizzas that made his name when he opened his first bakery in SoHo. The crisp, Roman-style slices — topped with every­thing from cauliflower and red pepper flakes to potatoes and rosemary (my former breakfast staple) — now sell at Dean & DeLuca for $5 a slice. But guess what? Lahey gives away the store, telling you how to make a whole, identical pizza for less. Novices will find the dough-shaping instructions on the minimalist side. But keep on stretching: perfection awaits. If you’re coming to my house for drinks in the next year, you know what you’ll be eating.

And now, dessert. Karen DeMasco won a James Beard Award as the pastry chef overseeing Tom Colicchio’s Craft-pire until jumping ship to Locanda Verde last spring. Like Claudia Fleming, her mentor at Gramercy Tavern, who wrote the near-perfect “Last Course,” DeMasco has (along with her co-author, Mindy Fox) written a book of sweets to savor, the title of which — THE CRAFT OF BAKING: Cakes, Cookies and Other Sweets, With Ideas for Inventing Your Own (Clarkson Potter, $35) — underlines the way in which book publishing works (i.e., very slowly).

DeMasco layers the homey foundation of her childhood favorites with the spontaneity she honed working in seasonal-­ingredient-driven kitchens and a love of modern touches. And so her grandmother’s cashew brittle becomes cacao nib brittle, which gets sprinkled onto a chocolate hazelnut panna cotta. She encourages readers to build and vary their craft, suggesting tips, twists and jumping-off points. That brioche pain perdu would, for example, be great with a scoop of caramel ice cream or a dollop of lemon curd. Recipes vary from adult comfort foods like butterscotch cream pie with gingersnap crust, brown-butter ice cream and chocolate custard tart to kid-friendly doughnuts, raspberry granola bars and s’mores (with homemade grahams, natch). This is the woman who brought the ’Wichcraft peanut-butter sandwich cookie into the world. I will do whatever she tells me.

Don’t look for any restaurant credentials or fancy farmers’ market ingredients in ALL CAKES CONSIDERED (Chronicle, $24.95). Melissa Gray’s sassy-pants prose will inspire even food snobs to shamelessly lube a tube pan with Pam before pouring in Crisco-filled batter. Proof that a good idea and a catchy title will still get you somewhere — as will knowing your audience — Gray, a producer for the National Public Radio program “All Things Considered,” parlayed her status as the office Cake Lady into a book deal.

A taste of Martha Washington’s “great cake” at Mount Vernon gave rise to Gray’s cake project, in which she perfected a sweet a week for her colleagues. The book’s retro-kitsch design sets the mood for recipes like sweet-potato pound cake, Stephen Pyles’s heaven and hell cake, and Spanish meringue cake. A year’s worth of favorite recipes are here, in order of difficulty.

Gray’s snappy Southern story­telling drives every recipe, whether it’s the “collective cake-gasm” caused by a coffee cake, or the political shenanigans that led to the Naughty Senator cake (thank you, Larry Craig). Her chattiness runs from the titles — Dark-Chocolate Red Velvet Cake: For Those for Whom Plain Red Velvet Cake Is Too Jejune — to the instructions: the Procrastinatin’ Drunken Monkey Banana Bread features a “new technique alert!” for plumping dried fruit with rum. She unapologetically worships Dorie Greenspan and Paula Deen in equal measure, takes recipes from old church cookbooks, “To Kill a Mockingbird” and Southern Living magazine, and has a ball throughout. May a thousand Cake Ladies arise from this project. Who knows? Media-related cookbooks could save the industry. Here’s looking forward to The New York Review of Cookies.

Christine Muhlke is the food editor of The New York Times Magazine.

Home

* World
* U.S.
* N.Y. / Region
* Business
* Technology
* Science
* Health
* Sports
* Opinion
* Arts
* Style
* Travel
* Jobs
* Real Estate
* Automobiles
* Back to Top

Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

* Privacy Policy
* Terms of Service
* Search
* Corrections
* RSS
* First Look
* Help
* Contact Us
* Work for Us
* Site Map