I spent all of last whole week at home - for the fourth time out of nineteen weeks so far this year, which really isn't all that bad. So instead of eating fake Mexican food in airport restaurants, I've been cooking. Or "cooking" might be a more appropriate way to put it, as any new parent probably knows. After a day in the basement office, with a dog to walk and a daughter to play with, there is rarely time for a three-course meal. On top of that, I'm a vegetarian, and we think our daughter may be allergic to eggs and may have celiac (an intolerance for gluten, which is part of wheat among other things), which severely limits the available options.
The sad thing is that I actually love to cook. I started cooking one summer during college when I lived at home but my mother was away, but I really learned when I lived in Berkeley. When people ask me why Berkeley graduate students in the humanities take so long to get their Ph.D.'s, I always say, "Because the food is so good." You are short on money but long on time, the fresh produce is the best I have ever seen (including in France), and you are surrounded by the inspiration of countless good restaurants. Perhaps most importantly, cooking and throwing dinner parties is one way of declaring that there are more important things in life than getting a real job and making lots of money, and thereby pushing back the dark thoughts telling you that you should have gotten a real job to make lots of money.
When I'm in a cooking rut, sometimes I buy a new cookbook. Now, cookbooks have gotten all out of control in the last fifteen years, with every celebrity chef pumping out beautiful volumes with lusciously photographed food porn and touching anecdotes accompanying every recipe. I'm a comparative minimalist when it comes to cookbooks; I only own about fifteen, and in my lifetime I've bought fewer than ten myself, typically of the "classic" variety, like Marcella Hazan's Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking or The Professional Chef from the Culinary Institute of America. But sometimes a new cookbook is the way to find some new ideas, and more importantly to remind yourself of the little things that make cooking such a pleasure.
So my new purchase is The Art of Simple Food by Alice Waters, the founder of Chez Panisse and, according to many, of California cuisine. I loved Chez Panisse when I lived in Berkeley, although the last two times I went recently I was disappointed. And although her books tend to be overly precious, they are surprisingly useful for a home kitchen chef within limited time and limited access to fancy ingredients. The Art of Simple Food is organized a bit as a how-to book, with chapters on many foundational techniques and components (sauces, salads, sautéing, simmering, grilling, etc.), and it appealed with knowing precision to my culinary aesthetic (shared by many yuppies today, I know): I would rather do something small and simple, perfectly, than something big and ambitious, imperfectly. It's an ideal that I sacrifice every day - I know how to substitute canned beans for dried and frozen vegetables for fresh, I usually do my prep work on a just-in-time basis, and I can cook perfectly good dinners without measuring a thing. But I still wish for the time to quietly prepare everything just the right way.
Since getting the cookbook, I've made broccoli with lemon and garlic butter, a rice pilaf with tomatoes, green beans with a vinaigrette, sweet potatoes with lime juice, and a Greek salad, and everything was good. More importantly, the book reminded me to take the time to do everything carefully and to enjoy the simple process of peeling, washing, slicing, salting, and so on. Because enjoying the things you have to do anyway is another step further on the path to happiness.
Greek salad, in progress
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