Buy Adam

I love to cook, but when it comes to speed… that’s not really my thing.

I actually looked at this book in the store, and wasn’t going to get it, but we attended a demonstration lecture in which he cooked five or so of the recipes from the book, and I was impressed with the overall approach. Jacques Pepin is a man who knows food - he’s nearly legendary for his mastery of technique and his knowledge of classical cuisine. This book is a totally different beast. It’s all about what he cooks on an everyday basis… when he’s tired at the end of the day and doesn’t feel like cooking, but still needs to eat and doesn’t want to order in… when unexpected guests arrive and he doesn’t have time to prepare a full meal. Obviously, there’s a strong French base, and while I wouldn’t call it fusion, there are noticeable influences from other cultures as well (his wife is Puerto Rican). One of the dishes from the demo was sauteed asparagus with croutons, almonds, and chorizo - delicious.

Some of the recipes are simply fast and simple preparations, some use canned and frozen ingredients, some can be made quickly with a little bit of planning ahead, and some use special techniques to speed traditional methods (like braising in a pressure cooker) - the common thread is a focus on getting you out of the kitchen quickly so you can concentrate on eating. Like many of my favorite cookbooks, the focus is more about explaining what’s going on rather than specific recipes - a number of them say things like “just do this with whatever vegetables you have handy”.

I bought the book recently, so I’ve only had a chance to make a few of the recipes - the first one is an immediate favorite and I’ll definitely make it again.

Instant vegetable soup (paraphrased):

Bring a few cups of water or canned stock/broth (I like Pacific Organic Chicken Broth) to a boil. While it’s boiling, shred a few cups of assorted vegetables (carrots, mushrooms, onions, broccoli, potatoes - whatever) with a box grater. Add the vegetables to the broth with a few handfuls of leftover wilted salad greens. Boil for a few minutes, then add some diced scallions. Boil a bit more, then sprinkle in a few tablespoons of cream of wheat, farina, or grits, and simmer for a few more minutes - this will thicken the soup. Grate a generous portion of gruyere or other cheese into soup bowls, and ladle the soup on top of the cheese. Finish each bowl with a pat of butter and a splash of extra virgin olive oil and serve with some crusty bread. Very simple and unexpected, but it was delicious and hearty.

Jacques is amazing to watch - there’s a companion series on PBS in which he demonstrates many of the dishes from the book. His technique is just impressive, he’s charming and relaxing, and the camera work is very very good so you can actually see what he’s doing.

Second Opinion

Mayur says:

I bought the Pepin book in SF on a trip, and like it quite a lot. What I find the Pepin book most useful for, actually, is as a study on how an expert chef might use packaged supermarket ingredients and stuff you’d have lying around the kitchen anyway. I must confess that I don’t actually find it so useful for whipping up exceptional meals in a hurry; for that, I find that certain other books (From Simple to Spectacular, How to Cook Everything, Elements of Taste, even Think Like a Chef) have a broader range of techniques and effectively incorporate a wider array of possible recipes via adaptation of the ones included. The problem with the Pepin cookbook is that I actually think that too few of the recipes are particularly widely adaptable; the bean dip or potato salad recipes, for instance, are recipes for just that. It’s not really worth adapting them to other ingredients, and in any case, one can make bean dip or potato salad without recourse to a chef of Pepin’s talents.

Buy Fast Food My Way from Amazon.

Harold McGee knows food, and he’s been sending me to bed with dreams of long-chain amylose starches.

If you’ve ever wondered why food behaves the way it does in the kitchen, this is a great resource. It’s not a cookbook per se (and not the cookbook from Per Se - we’ll get to that later), but it is an incredibly detailed examination of why food behaves the way it does, of what kinds of common foods there are, and how this all fits together to make the art of the kitchen.

This second revised and expanded edition nearly qualifies as a “tome”. Every section has been improved and modernized over the previous cut. It is beautifully illustrated with hand-drawn diagrams. The chapters are comprehensive, organized by food category in the beginning - milk, eggs, meat, fish, fruits, vegetables, grains/seeds/legumes - and moving to techniques - breads, sauces, confections, and alcohols.

It fills a middle ground on the science. He talks freely in chemical terms (much more so than most other food writers), and it should be understandable to most intelligent readers. I found myself wanting more discussion of the actual chemistry sprinkled throughout instead of bunched up at the end into two small chapters. (and if you know of a book that covers food chemistry from the chemistry side, please send it along).

McGee is a pleasure to read. He clearly loves to cook, and he clearly loves to share.

Buy On Food and Cooking from Amazon.