Customers say
Customers find the recipes in the book clear and simple, perfect for weeknight cooking. They appreciate the guidance on cooking basics and flavoring theory. The book focuses on using fresh ingredients and natural ways to prepare delicious meals. Readers find the information useful and consider it a valuable addition to any cook’s library. The book encourages eating local and sustainable foods, with philosophy about healthy relationships with food.
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An indispensable resource for home cooks from the woman who changed the way Americans think about food.
Perhaps more responsible than anyone for the revolution in the way we eat, cook, and think about food, Alice Waters has “single-handedly chang[ed] the American palate” according to the New York Times. Her simple but inventive dishes focus on a passion for flavor and a reverence for locally produced, seasonal foods.
With an essential repertoire of timeless, approachable recipes chosen to enhance and showcase great ingredients, The Art of Simple Food isan indispensable resource for home cooks. Here you will find Alice’s philosophy on everything from stocking your kitchen, to mastering fundamentals and preparing delicious, seasonal inspired meals all year long. Always true to her philosophy that a perfect meal is one that’s balanced in texture, color, and flavor, Waters helps us embrace the seasons’ bounty and make the best choices when selecting ingredients. Fill your market basket with pristine produce, healthful grains, and responsibly raised meat, poultry, and seafood, then embark on a voyage of culinary rediscovery that reminds us that the most gratifying dish is often the least complex.
Publisher : Clarkson Potter (October 2, 2007)
Language : English
Hardcover : 405 pages
ISBN-10 : 0307336794
ISBN-13 : 978-0307336798
Item Weight : 2.5 pounds
Dimensions : 9.46 x 7.6 x 1.34 inches
by B. Marold
Superb Tutorial on Home Cooking Techniques. Buy It!
`The Art of Simple Food’ by the one and only Alice Waters is a rare treat for foodie readers, and an even rarer treat for those who wish to master the craft of cooking effortlessly. I can think of very, very few cookbooks which succeed as well as this one at teaching good, creative cooking at home. Those very few are the last two books by Jacques Pepin, `Chez Jacques’ and `Fast Food, My Way’, a few of Nigel Slater’s books, especially `The Kitchen Diaries’, and Waters’ mentor’s book, Richard Olney’s `Simple French Food’.As with Pepin’s works, my initial reaction to any important culinary figure’s producing a `fast’ or `easy’ cookbook is suspicion that they are trying to cash in on the popularity of Rachael Ray’s 30 minute meal mantra or Sandra Lee’s `semi-homemade’ fast and easy rubrics. And, like Pepin’s books, this book is the real deal, giving superb, original insights on SIMPLE cooking at home. One of the very first things to realize, as Olney stated it in his book, `simple’ is not the same as `fast’ or `easy’. The notion of `simple’ food is itself complicated enough to require seven pages in his introduction to thoroughly explain. In a nutshell, it excludes complicated menus, elaborate plating, and fancy sauces. It does include baking bread, making our own pastry, making our own homemade pasta, and making our own stocks and broths. Each of these activities can easily take several hours.We cook simply not to save time or effort, but to avoid masking the great qualities of our ingredients. So, simplicity in cooking has a symbiotic relation to Ms. Waters’ most famous doctrines, of using fresh, organically grown local ingredients, when they are in season. And, if there were anything at all with which to find fault in this book, it is the constant preaching on that topic. This is not entirely Miss Alice’s fault, as reading this book is much like reading `Hamlet’. So many lines sound like clichés, not because Shakespeare was a hack, but because `Hamlet’ is easily the most often quoted play in the English language.This book fits exactly into my perennial analogy between learning cooking and learning chess. The rules of chess are quite simple, and yet it is almost impossible to summarize the principles of good chess strategy. So, learning the deeper lessons of chess involves simply replaying the games of the great chess masters, and appreciating how they saw their moves. Similarly, almost everything written about how to cook involves simply reciting recipes. And yet, the very best writing on cooking rises above simply following recipes and reaches that way of thinking one achieves when they are finally able to cook without a book. Paradoxically, Waters begins with some of the very strictest recommendations on how to successfully follow a particular recipe, going far beyond the simple suggestions of reading through it and gathering all your ingredients together. But, like the famous little book on chess by Emanuel Lasker, `Common Sense in Chess’, one achieves independent thinking by experiencing the patterns from great games. With Olney and Waters, the great exemplar is the very best home cooking.The subtitle of the book, `Notes, Lessons, and Recipes from a Delicious Revolution’ may have been just a bit more accurate if it had emphasized the `lessons’, since these are the soul of the book. Almost half the book is filled with 17 chapters on important cooking techniques that every home cook should really know by heart. These are `Four Essential Sauces’, `Salads’, `Bread’, `Broth and Soup’, `Beans, Dried and Fresh’, `Pasta and Polenta’, `Rice’, `Into the Oven (Roasting)’, `Out of the Frying Pan’, `Slow Cooking’, `Simmering’, `Over the Coals’ (grilling), Omelets and Souffles’, `Tarts, Savory and Sweet’, `Fruit Desserts’, `Custard and Ice Cream’, and `Cookies and Cake’. In a very gentle, very motherly way, Miss Alice communicates something like `master recipes’, however, they are generally simpler than the famous `Master Recipe’ template used so successfully by Julia Child. But then, Alice and Julia are really not doing quite the same thing. The lessons in the first half of the book are so well presented, I would easily recommend this as a superb textbook for a course on home cooking. And, in spite of having read over 400 cookbooks, I still found new insights in this book.The second half of the book is comprised of recipes which emulate the model Alice creates in the first half of the book. The selection of recipes reminds me of Ted Allen’s book title, `The Food You Want to Eat’, in that we have great simple recipes for lots of everyone’s favorite dishes. The `Salads’ chapter, in its 27 recipes, includes `Hearts of Romaine with Creamy Dressing’, `Caesar Salad’, `Chicken Salad’, `Green Bean and Cherry Tomato Salad’, `Nicoise Salad’, `Coleslaw’, `Potato Salad’, `Carrot Salad’, and `Greek Salad’. Most recipes have multiple variations, except for the real `standards’ such as Caesar’s salad.The first chapter on `Getting Started’ is as good as or better than most I’ve seen on basic equipment and techniques. In this area, Ms. Waters really does well as a model for the home cook, as she describes herself as a minimalist, and prefers to work with as few tools as possible. Her lessons here on knife skills are not as complete as Pepin’s `Complete Techniques’, but that is not what this book is about. It’s about common sense cooking at home. The second chapter, `What to Cook’ is another lesson in simplicity, with some inspired suggestions on how to get the most out of novel eating venues.The writing flows so smoothly, I’m surprised at how fast I get through its impressive 405 pages. I’m even more impressed by the fact that it seems Ms. Waters probably contributed more herself to this book than many others where she is listed as the author. Thus, this is a classic foodie treasure, in that reading it gives as much pleasure as cooking from it.
by Joseph Adler
“Cooking 101” from the mother of modern cooking
It’s hard to write a review of a cookbook that you’ve only had for two days– you have to actually try the recipes to know if they will work. (I have several beautiful cookbooks by famous chefs that omit important directions, or give wrong quantities of food.) However, I felt strongly enough about this book that I wanted to write an early review.For those of you who don’t know, Alice Waters’s restaurant, Chez Panisse, is probably the most important American restaurant in the past forty years. Waters pioneered the use of high quality, local ingredients. The restaurant itself is delightful; they’ve served some of the best food I’ve ever eaten. In the Bay area, where I live, farmers and artisans at local markets often proudly claim that their food is served at her restaurant.Waters begins the book by extolling her philosophy: buy local, high quality ingredients, and cook them simply. (Of course, simple for a professional chef is different than simple for a home chef. I consider 6 ingredients to be pretty complicated, especially if they are all fresh ingredients.) She then proceeds to give very explicit directions on how to cook things: roasts, vegetables, baked goods, reminiscent of the explicit directions given by Julia Child in Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume One, or by Maida Heatter in Maida Heatter’S Book Of Great Desserts. Finally, she gives lists of recipes for many dishes.What makes her recipes unique are the variations that she provides for each recipe. Here’s one simple example: for a chard frittata, she recommends substituting other greens, such as collards, rapini, or stinging nettles (I have alway wondered what to do with stinging nettles). Or, in a recipe for pancakes, she says to add one cup of whole grain flours, telling you to mix multiple grains including spelt, wheat, corn, or whatever else you feel like adding. (She does note that you need to use a minimum amount of whole wheat flour for the gluten to bind it all together.) I’ve seen other books that tried to teach you how to vary recipes (for example, Cookwise: The Secrets of Cooking Revealed), but this one does a very good job of explaining where you should improvise and where you should not. Most importantly, this book gives you a real feeling of why each dish is great, and really captures the soul of each recipe. I’ve never seen another cookbook that had this much discussion of each recipe.This is a very good book about food. It’s similar to other introductory cookbooks like The New Basics Cookbook, or The New Best Recipe: All-New Edition with 1,000 Recipes, but I think Alice Waters does a much better job explaining how to cook. (For example, I like the two pages she devotes to pan-frying pork chops. That recipe, incidentally, has four ingredients: chops, oil, salt, pepper.) She is not as good a writer as, say, Jeffrey Steingarden (author of The Man Who Ate Everything), but I don’t expect her to be. (This is more of a cookbook than a book of essays.) Honestly, I have dozens of books that cover the same set of recipes as this book, but I have no other book that makes me want to cook every recipe. I would recommend this book to anyone who cares seriously about food.[Update on 8/1/2008. I’ve now tried a number of recipes from this book, including the short ribs, apricot jam, many of the salads, pork chops, and sauerkraut. Every recipe I’ve tied has worked, and most of them have been very straightforward. This has become my “desert island” cookbook; it’s the first place I turn when I don’t know how to make something. I strongly recommend this book to anyone, experienced or not.]
by Unsatisfied
Good reading, the bible of cooking.
by Maggie D
I am an avid cook, with well over 35 years of experience of cooking every day. I have masses of cookery books, many of which are rarely looked at. But THIS one is a ‘go to’ regular, as I can never remember pie-crust proportions, and welcome inspiration on what to do with, say, duck legs (braise them, and serve with peas). It is honest, clear, in impeccable taste. Like Alice herself! A cherished memory is of eating in Chez Panisse 15 years ago, and using this book brings back some of the magic. I am so excited that she is bringing out another volume in October this year (2013). You won’t regret buying this if you want to read, dream and cook. If you want glossy pictures and lots of modern quirky recipes that are new just for the sake of it, look elsewhere. If you want reliability, great taste, and a gentle, authoritative friend in the kitchen, then go ahead and buy!
by Wei Zhao
One can learn everything about making tasty food from this book. It is not the recipes that make this book special. It is the tips, the explanation and the passion from the author that make this book very special. I had a heard copy and used it a lot. I now buy the kindel version so that I can easily having it with me wherever I travel to.
by Legally Bored
Iâm using this book as a cooking course to improve my skills as a home cook. Itâs so useful. The first several chapters take you through the basic principles and techniques to do different kinds of basic home cookery and Iâm learning a lot. Especially useful if you didnât grow up with a parent who did much home cooking (and definitely didnât teach you anything!)The recipes arenât complicated, and you learn how delicious simple food is, prepared well.
by Tim and Deb
Love this book. It teaches all the basics which I need and builds on that. Recipes are good! A little too much oil sometimes though!