Photos

Categories

• About
• Travelogue
• Dining
• Books
• Wine & Spirits
• Freakish Ramblings
• Tools
• Recipes
• Des Autres Bon Mots

Monthly Archives

• August 2010
• June 2010
• February 2010
• January 2010
• December 2009
• November 2009
• October 2009
• September 2009
• June 2009
• May 2009
• March 2009
• February 2009
• December 2008
• October 2008
• September 2008
• August 2008
• July 2008
• June 2008
• May 2008
• April 2008
• March 2008
• February 2008
• January 2008
• December 2007
• November 2007
• October 2007
• September 2007
• August 2007
• July 2007
• June 2007
• May 2007
• April 2007
• March 2007
• February 2007
• January 2007
• Complete Archives
• Category Archives

Most recent entries

• Suddenly, we’re in Paris.
• The Baltic Cruise 2010: Friday and Saturday, St. Petersburg
• The Baltic Cruise 2010: Thursday, Tallinn
• The Baltic Cruise 2010: Wednesday, Stockholm
• The Baltic Cruise 2010: Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday at Sea
• Minor Calamities
• The Summer of Us
• Valentine’s Day
• If You’re Ever in Cedar Rapids, Iowa …
• The Cowboy Star Restaurant and Butcher Shop
• Beginning the New Year With a New Kitchen
• Favorites from 2009
• On My Not Getting Lucky Last Night
• And I’ve Decided That Close Enough, Is Enough
• A Little Closer

Syndicate

• Atom
• RSS 2.0

Wednesday, December 30, 2009

On My Not Getting Lucky Last Night

I finished reading through Madeleine Kamman’s “The New Making of a Cook: The Art, Techniques, And Science Of Good Cooking” yesterday, all 1,155 pages of it. And I’m a better cook for it.
Michael had given me this book as a gift almost 10 years ago. When I first received the book, I flipped through it, immediately found some recipes to try, and then put it on the shelf for safe keeping. I simply wasn’t ready yet for all of the background of food chemistry and explanation of technique that Madeleine provided. Until now ...

I didn’t consciously decide to read the whole thing--at least, not this time. I’d made that resolution earlier this year, and the book sat on the coffee table, ignored, for several months until I gave up on the idea. Then, one day roughly two weeks ago, I pulled the book off the shelf again to read up on bread. I wandered back to the introduction and found myself 100 pages in by the end of the night. I was hooked.

One realizes the full value of this work, I think, by progressing through it in the most linear way--page by page from the dedication and table of contents to its glossary. Each chapter provides a wealth of scientific and historical information on its topic, notes on technique, warnings about what not to do, tips on repairing what may go awry, and then specific recipes that become the proving ground for mastering the approach just explained. All, with an understated, decidedly French, wit, and the occasional, inconsequential typo. The result: understanding not only the what and how, but also the underlying why behind what one should do.

Last night, I made chicken provencal with 40 cloves of garlic, one of the recipes shared to illustrate the French approach to semi-moist cooking. Imagine a whole chicken, first browned and then pot-roasted in a cup of olive oil, some fresh herbs, and a wealth of garlic. It didn’t come out perfectly by any means--I made a number of adjustments on the fly and produced what Honey P. pronounced to be a very good meal. Being able to do that made me feel more confident of my general skills in the kitchen. More importantly, however, I realized what I needed to do differently, in the future, to properly and confidently prepare a pot roast the French way.

Thomas Keller says in the introduction of “Ad Hoc at Home” that, if a recipe comes out perfectly the first time you make it, you’ve probably just gotten lucky. No luck last night, but a whole lot of learning going on.