“'The Lost Art of Real Cooking' separates the real cooks from the food-warmers” |
| 'The Lost Art of Real Cooking' separates the real cooks from the food-warmers Posted: 04 Nov 2010 12:25 AM PDT Posted on Thu, Nov. 4, 2010 ONCE UPON a time - not so long ago really, in fact mere months ago - a quirky cookery tome was squeezed onto bookshelves hither and yon. In hushed, conspiratorial tones and a few emphatic passages, it set out to stir a few pots, but it might well cleave the cooking world into those who simmer along and those who stomp right out of the kitchen. It is not for the faint of spoon, this persimmon-covered reader titled "The Lost Art of Real Cooking" (Perigee, $18.95). Check out what it says on the title page: "An Introduction to the Antiquated Kitchen, Or Cookery Made Difficult and Inconvenient Being Foremost a Pleasant Discourse on the Nature and Execution of Arcane and Dangerous Culinary Practices . . . " You get the point. Brace yourself: "We intend to cut no corners, use no laborsaving devices or modern equipment. . . . A good, sharp knife will always be preferred to a processor, a whisk to a stand-up mixer, a brazen flame to an electric appliance." So declare pot-stirrers Ken Albala, a culinary historian and college professor, and Rosanna Nafziger, a Mennonite farm-girl-turned-writer and scratch-only cook who grew up jealous of other kids' plastic-wrapped cheese singles. This persuasive little charmer won't suffer fools who think butter comes only in sticks and bears belong in the woods or the zoo instead of stuffed in the oven (with the aid of a carpenter's saw before roasting). And while you might be inclined to gobble down every syllable (for these are two most delicious writers), the point is heartier: to lure every one of us (OK, so maybe a good few hundred of us) out of the frozen-food aisle, where dinner comes ready to zap in the microwave, served up straight outta cardboard. "We've lost the pleasure of cooking, the sociability and probably our health and the health of the environment," Albala said in a recent telephone conversation, on a morning when he'd started the day with a slice of bread he had baked, olives he had cured and cherry tomatoes he had plucked from the vine. "We want to free people from having to use convenience foods that don't taste good and aren't good for you, foods that are intentionally designed to de-skill people," he said. "What's been lost are the basic techniques and the confidence for most people that they can jump in the kitchen and start messing around and have fun." And so, for some 215 pages, the brave are invited along to learn a thing or two: say, how to churn butter, roast a lip-smackin' bear's butt or even brew up a batch of fermented hops. Maybe it boils down to an old-fashioned, no-shortcut recipe for kitchen joy. Nafziger offered this: "Sometimes, you can even work up a sweat grinding grain or crushing cabbage, and then you get that endorphin surge, but instead of just going nowhere on the treadmill, you've got some delicious food to show for it. "An evening bustling around in the kitchen is enough to get my blood moving and put some pink in my cheeks. I feel competent and truly hungry, and isn't that the best way to eat a meal?" Someone pass me a spoon. I smell a revolution bubblin' up on the stove.
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