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Title: How to Cook Revised Edition : An Easy and Imaginative Guide for the Beginner by Raymond Sokolov ISBN: 0-06-008391-3 Publisher: Perennial Currents Pub. Date: 04 May, 2004 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 5 (1 review)
Rating: 5
Summary: Great Culinary Advice, Quirky Organization, Great Read
Comment: Raymond Sokolov's simply entitled book 'How To Cook' attempts to answer to the needs of all the culinarily clueless men and women he addresses in his introduction. The simple, elegant cover design, small size, and inviting subtitle 'An Easy and Imaginative Guide for the Beginner' promises us a culinary Strunk and White's 'The Elements of Style'. Like the famous writers of this manual on English usage, the author also has serious credentials as a writer for famous journals. There is one very significant problem with this analogy.
In simplest terms, writing style and usage, like logic, can have rules that are always true. Cooking, like biology, always seems to want to color outside the lines. To take a very simple example, every written description and every TV demonstration of omelet making does things just a little different. The variations are so rampant that the great culinary writer Elizabeth David said that the right way to make an omelet is the way you want to make it. Of course, she proceeds to give you a long procedure on how to make a proper French omelet. Sokolov gives no clue to this point of view when he presents the method for making an omelet. In fact, he seems to leave out at least half of the steps many people consider essential. I truly fear that someone approaching omelet making for the first time with Sokolov's instructions will have several failures before achieving omelet perfection. And, since omelet making is all about technique, why are there no pictures? The same question applies to every other classic culinary skill Sokolov describes such as making a piecrust and breading a veal scallopine. One can argue that pictures would steal space from Sokolov's enjoyable and highly opinionated prose. And, I will agree with that argument, as long as I can treat this book more like a culinary essay by Elizabeth David than like a text by Jaques Pepin or Madeline Kamman.
Sokolov opens his book with a truly excellent guide to the modern kitchen. The discussion on how to read a recipe is the best I have seen. One is reminded of Mortimer Adler's classic 'How to Read a Book'. His precis on the oven, the range, and the refrigerator are priceless and should be reprinted in every book of culinary writing from now to kingdom come, with one small exception. In recommending a range configuration, Sokolov suggests you get one where the four burners are close together to enable a large stockpot to be heated by all four simultaneously. This suggestion fails for the simple reason that the average single or small family cook will rarely make stock in anything larger than a 12 quart stock pot. I make stock fairly regularly, and I find it is much more common for me to need two large diameter burners far apart to accommodate an 8 quart pasta pot and an 8 quart enameled casserole than I need a configuration to support a 20 quart stock pot. I do not wish to make too much of this or any other difference. My point is not that Sokolov is wrong, my point is that Sokolov does not encourage the fledgling cooks to think for themselves. This is the same lesson as we got from the description of the omelet making.
Sokolov's approach to arranging recipes is quite enjoyable and typically quirky. I think it is delightful that he starts with recipes that can be made with no heat such as guacamole, vinaigrettes, ceviche, and gravlax. His including recipes for things like gravlax, carrot cake, and gefilte fish doubly impress me. These are not things you expect in a culinary primer. He does us all a service by giving novices the confidence to make such dishes. And, almost all the recipes are reasonably simple, even if they are sometimes very long, like gravlax. But, many of my favorite recipes always seem to show up with some idiosyncrasy in Sololov's hands. The carrot cake recipe is done in a tube pan rather than in layers or as a sheet. The spaghetti Puttanesca has canned tuna fish instead of anchovies. The roasted chicken is done breast down instead of breast up or done on its side a la James Beard. These are not wrong, they are just different, and Sokolov makes a habit of doing things a little differently.
One of the strangest things about the layout of the book is that once we leave the chapter on cold preparations, the logic of recipe arrangement takes on a very 'Alice in Wonderland' feel, where dishes are arranged by how many people they serve. This puts all the vegetable recipes spread out across four different chapters. This arrangement exacerbates the fact that the book does not address my toughest culinary dilemma. This problem for an introductory book on cooking is, how can you advice people to plan their meals based on what is good at the market, if they don't know how to make anything yet. It is terrific to read Tom Colicchio say that chefs plan based on what they have in front of them, not the other way around. That's great, if you are Tom Colicchio and know every recipe worth knowing, but what do you do if you walk into a good greengrocer and don't have a clue as to what you can do with great, fresh Swiss Chard or parsnips or Napa cabbage. Like every other writer, Sokolov does not address this question.
Sokolov's culinary writings, this one included, are great fun to read. They are well written, full of interesting anecdotes, and full of opinions, not all of which you want to agree with, and they are definitely educational. I recommend you get this book together with Jaques Pepin's 'Complete Techniques', so you can get an informed second opinion and good pictorial guidance as well.
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Title: The Cook's Canon : 101 Classic Recipes Everyone Should Know (Cookbooks) by Raymond Sokolov ISBN: 0060083905 Publisher: HarperCollins Pub. Date: 21 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
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Title: Chicken on the Grill : 100 Surefire Ways to Grill Perfect Chicken Every Time by Cheryl Alters Jamison, Bill Jamison ISBN: 0060534850 Publisher: Morrow Cookbooks Pub. Date: 04 May, 2004 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: Italian Easy: Recipes from the London River Cafe by ROSE GRAY, RUTH ROGERS ISBN: 140005348X Publisher: Clarkson Potter Pub. Date: 15 June, 2004 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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Title: Chef on a Shoestring: More Than 120 Delicious, Easy-On-The-Budget Recipes from America's Best Chefs by Andrew Friedman ISBN: 0743200721 Publisher: Simon & Schuster Pub. Date: 01 January, 2001 List Price(USD): $23.00 |
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Title: The Accidental Connoisseur: An Irreverent Journey Through the Wine World by Lawrence Osborne ISBN: 0865476330 Publisher: North Point Press Pub. Date: 15 March, 2004 List Price(USD): $24.00 |
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