Christine will freely admit she’s a particular eater, and that there are foods that she simply likes and food she simply does not like. Largely, it comes down to a textural issue (potatoes, not rice, never mayonnaise, soft pasta). And while it will be a lifelong journey to learn to cook an increasing variety of foods around these not-often-hard-and-fast rules, she’s also never made a fuss about it, and has never managed to leave a restaurant hungry.

But this post isn’t about her. Jason, bless him, seems to have inherited a particular picky palate (let’s call a spade a spade in his case). Even better, they aren’t picky about the same things. He’s almost never a fan of meat in original (non-ground) form. Chicken is verboten. Pasta and cheese works well. The spicier the food, the better. And, like most late-teens/early adults, if it comes in a bag with a flashy logo on the side and a monster sized soda, even better.

Which is why I’ve frankly been over the moon that, for the last five or six meals I’ve cooked for him, he’s given eager one- and two-thumbs-up reviews. Especially since I’ve been working in things he doesn’t normally like.

Take last night’s dinner, for instance. Flat iron steaks, seasoned with a lemon/garlic/pepper seasoning, macaroni and cheese, and broccolini with garlic. The mac and cheese was a gift from a friend’s holiday party the night before – we should all have such great friends. Broccolini was my nod to keeping vegetables on the table at every meal – sautéed in a too-small pan with some olive oil and garlic, and when it became clear they wouldn’t cook through in the pan without burning the garlic, add a bit of water, cover, and steam ‘em. Season the steak liberally, sear on both sides, and if it’s not done (my thermometer died on me!) put the pan in the oven to finish the steaks.

(Click to embiggen.)
What pushed this over the line, and the long-winded way to getting to the point of this post, was the sauce for the steak. Umami (oo-MAH-mee), Japanese for “savory”, is the fifth taste that doesn’t get all the press (the others being sweet, salty, bitter, and sour). It’s been intuited in food for, well, forever but has only been identified for the last 100 years or so as a distinct taste.

In this case, I knew that steak by itself wasn’t going to do much to win the kid over. So, I decided to create a thick sauce with as many umami-packed things as I could come up with quickly. Mushrooms are packed with it, so into a pot go some sliced mushrooms along with sweated onions. That all cooked down as far as time would let it (just starting to really caramelize), then a healthy dose of Worcestershire sauce – a Western cousin to Oriental fish sauce, full of umami – to cook down. Finally, some heavy cream, to give it more of a sauce consistency and because, well, why not? I let that reduce way down, since this was going to be done on flour tortillas as a soft taco, so I didn’t want too wet of a sauce.

This is part of what pushed Jason over the edge. It didn’t hide the beef flavor at all, but having that addition made it much richer and more complex, so much so that he went back for seconds. (Also seconds on the mac and cheese. And extra broccolini, as a barter for the portion size of mac and cheese…)

So – the moral is, think about flavor not just as what will taste good together, but what helps bring out or balance the five tastes in your food.

For more on umami:
Wikipedia – Umami
NPR: Sweet, Sour, Salty, Bitter … and Umami
IFT.org – Unleashing the Power of Umami

Oh, and to explain the title of this post:

And, because it’s likely my favorite Muppet musical interlude ever:
(* – the music interludes were added to non-US airings to compensate for the advertising breaks here.)

And no, I haven’t seen the movie yet. No spoilers in the comments, please.

My holiday wish for all of you is to have this feeling.

I made pancakes this morning (well…) for breakfast (lunch). I’ve made pancakes from scratch many, many times before. I know the mix of wet and dry ingredients needed. I’ve got this.

So, when I go to ladle the pancakes onto the griddle, I notice they’re dry. Like, closer to soft wet dough than batter. “Nevermind, trudge onwards”, I tell myself, but I can’t shake the feeling.

I went and added in more buttermilk.

No measuring. No weighing. No idea other than, “this should be wetter”. Throw caution to the wind. And it worked!

I’ve improvised countless times in the kitchen. I’ve screwed up royally, and my batting average for fixing it is better than 50/50. But this pancake batter had me dancing a little jig in the kitchen. I’ve moved past recipes or ratios and get, really get, what the batter should be.

So, for all of you, I hope that your food turns out spectacularly this holiday season, and that you get that little twinge of wonder when you finally get a recipe.

(Pancakes – the first ones, I gave the better ones to the kid – with sausage, shallots, scallions, and reduced cream instead of boring old syrup.)

We hosted the Thanksgiving feast this year, which meant that I got to kick into high gear, plan the food, orchestrate what gets cooked when, and decide how to put my stamp on family traditions.

First off, and let’s get this out of the way – all holiday meals are DEEPLY steeped in family traditions. Food invokes so many memories that even though that green bean casserole is universally reviled, and you’d never think of cooking it any other time of the year, it simply MUST be on the table or else it isn’t Thanksgiving. The result is that regardless of culinary aspirations, sometimes you have to “take one for the team” and prepare food that may be emotionally filling if gastronomically devoid.

(For the record, both my parents and my in-laws are good cooks, and I have no issues with either family’s traditional holiday table. This is a challenge that has come up in every conversation I’ve had about the holidays, though, so it deserved some space.)

Enough philosophy. Let’s get to the food.

MENU:

1. Roasted butternut squash soup
2. Turkey with gravy
3. Mashed potatoes
4. Roasted sweet potatoes
5. Roasted cauliflower
6. Steamed broccoli
7. Glazed carrots
8. Bread stuffing
9. Cranberry sauce
10. Rolls / baguette
11. Apple Pie
12. Pumpkin Pie

Let’s meet the players. All photos are credit to Christine Tremoulet – thanks for holding up dinner and grabbing the camera so I could have photos for this post!

Roasted butternut squash soup
Straightforward with a bit of elegance. Take a couple of heavy butternut squash, and cut off a bit from the top and bottom. Stand up on the base, and halve vertically. Use a spoon to spoon out the inner webbing and seeds, rub down with salt, pepper, and a neutral oil (I keep canola on hand), and put cut-side down in a roasting pan. Put in a hot oven – 425F or so – until the flesh is soft to a fork and the edges have caramelized. Remove from oven, let cool, and scoop flesh away from the skin. Put the flesh in a pot, add about a pint of heavy cream (hey, it’s the holidays) and puree with a stick blender until smooth. If you want it thinner, keep adding cream or milk until it’s where you want it to be. Stir in some spices – cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, things like that – and taste for seasoning.

Turkey with gravy
This is easily one of the best turkeys I have ever eaten, if not THE best. It’s a little involved, but none of the steps are hard and the flavor is incredible.

One blessing is that we’ve never carved the turkey at the table, so none of our traditions involve a whole turkey as a showpiece. This is freeing as a cook. White meat and dark meat are fundamentally different, and need to cook to different times and temperatures. Many, many words have been written about how to manage this on a whole bird – cook it upside down for part of the time, ice the breast before cooking to chill it compared to the legs, all sorts of things to do with foil tents for the white meat to keep it from overcooking, and so on. If one of these works for you, by all means, have at it. I’ve moved on.

In hunting down info on cooking a turkey in parts, I came across this article that gave me the outline I wanted. I hadn’t thought of braising the legs, but it makes perfect sense; the long cooking time gives the added connective tissue in the dark meat time to melt out into the stock, and the breast only cooks for as long as it needs. Plus, you get an over-the-top gravy.

Here’s the outline:

• A day or so beforehand, break the turkey into parts – two leg/thighs, one big intact breast, and the back and wings. Make a stock from the back and wings. Rub the leg quarters and the breast with salt, pepper, thyme, garlic, and oil, and put in the fridge overnight.
• On the morning of, brown the legs in a roasting pan, brown some mirepoix, and braise the legs in the stock from the day before for about 3 hours. Strain and save the double stock for gravy.
• Put the breast on top of the leg quarters and roast at 375F for an hour and a half, until the breast is done (use a thermometer!)
• Let the meat rest before carving. Traditionally, slices are taken along the breast. This worked well, but if you can, take the breast off the bone and cut across it – perpendicular to the muscle fiber. This will give an even more tender breast. Shred the dark meat with two forks.
• While the meat rests, take some of that double stock, let it reduce (MORE! MORE FLAVOR!), and thicken with roux until it’s gravy.

The meat was all extremely juicy, tender, flavorful, nothing was dried out in the slightest, and it’s largely unfussy and unattended cooking.

Mashed Potatoes
This is one of my standby party dishes – I can put it together in under half an hour, and it always gets rave reviews.
Take yukon gold potatoes, peel them, and cut into chunks (maybe 1-1.5 in. in any direction at most – shortens the cooking time). Place in a pot of cold water, bring to a boil, and simmer until the potatoes are fork tender. Drain. Place the potatoes in the bowl of a mixer with the paddle attachment and beat on the lowest setting, adding a stick of butter, some cream, salt and pepper to taste. Finally, throw in a block of Boursin garlic/herb cheese. (Oops, the secret’s out.) It won’t taste cheesy in the potatoes, but it adds a lot of depth of flavor very quickly.

Roasted sweet potatoes
Sweet potatoes are a core part of my holiday tradition. However, having grown up in Kentucky (there’s a better family story on the origin, I think, that may have nothing to do with my home state) these were always a casserole of sweet potatoes, eggs, milk, sugar, and a LIBERAL lashing of bourbon. They’re delicious, but they’re perhaps on the strong side – not everybody’s taste. I can’t abide by marshmallows on sweet potatoes, they’re sweet enough as is. So, instead, I decided to roast them and let the natural sweetness shine.
Peel and cut the sweet potatoes into 1″ (ish) chunks. Toss with enough oil to coat, and some salt, and spread in a roasting tin on a single layer. Throw in the oven at 425F, shaking and stirring occasionally, until all sides are brown and caramelized. Take out of the oven, salt, and serve immediately.

Roasted cauliflower
Similar concept to the potatoes (minus the lore and the bourbon).
Remove the core and cut the cauliflower into chunks – remember, the cut sides are the ones that brown up and get sweet in the oven – and coat with oil, salt, herbs, and place in a single layer in a roasting pan. Roast, shaking occasionally, and serve.

Steamed broccoli
Break a head of broccoli into florets. Put in steamer basket over water. Steam until tender. ‘Nuff said.

Glazed carrots
Originally, these were to be roast with the cauliflower. However, they needed different cooking time and it was getting monotonous with the roast meat and vegetables. Plus, I frankly goofed and didn’t get them prepped in time, so I “called an audible” and went for the glace.
Cut carrots into thick sticks and place in a wide pan (bonus if it’s a single layer of carrots). Add just a bit of water – maybe 1/4 C – especially if the carrots are a little old or woody. Add a pinch of salt, a pinch of sugar, a few pats of butter, and cover. Bring to a boil, then cut the heat to low and let the carrots cook for 15-20 min, shaking occasionally. Remove the lid and let the water evaporate off, leaving the carrots in the glaze. Optional – finish with a spray of lemon juice and some fresh parsley or herbs. The goal is to get the carrots cooked tender without overcooking until they fall apart.

Bread stuffing
Gladly outsourced. This is my mother-in-law’s recipe, and despite my best efforts (and meticulous attention to instruction), it never comes out quite right. I hadn’t picked up what I needed for the stuffing, so I happily asked her if she would make and bring it. Delicious.

Cranberry sauce
Look, tart foods and I don’t normally get along. I’ve never been a fan of cranberry sauce, whether canned or fresh. This year, I ate it and enjoyed it.
Zest and juice two oranges. Add water to make 1C of liquid. Pour over 12 oz. of cranberries and 1C of sugar, stir, and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer until the berries have all split and are getting soft. Stir in a bit of salt to taste. They are a bit tart, but the orange kick and sugar definitely help balance.

Rolls and baguette
Phoned it in, and went with King’s Hawaiian rolls (family favorite) and a Slow Dough baguette that I bought spur of the moment at the market the day before. I hadn’t worked into the schedule how I was going to get bread baked anyway, so I cheated a wee bit.

Apple Pie
Pie crust and I get along. I make a pretty good crust – won’t win awards, but it works out well. However, I’ve never actually made an apple pie, let alone a double crust pie. First time for everything, I suppose. On advice of counsel and friends, I used a mix of Granny Smith and Macintosh apples in the filling, with a bit of brown sugar, corn starch, salt, and lemon juice. Putting in the bottom layer was straightforward, filling the pie wasn’t a problem, and laying the top crust over went pretty well. Trying to figure out how to tuck the ends together (wife said over from top, recipe said under from bottom, quick scan showed an even split on the internet), I managed to create something that looked vaguely pie-like. It baked fairly well, although my adventures with making a foil collar for the crust led to Christine’s declaration that I would have failed as a 1950s housewife… Tasted delicious, which is really what matters.

Pumpkin Pie
No shame in canned pumpkin here – from what I understand, breaking down and cooking a raw pumpkin is a fair bit of work, and the canned product doesn’t suffer in quality or taste. Again, this was a stick-to-tradition item, so you can find the recipe proudly on the side of the Libby’s can (of pumpkin, not of pumpkin pie filling – there IS a difference).

And that, my friends, was our Thanksgiving feast.

The other trick was orchestrating all of this. Planning this meant not only setting up a menu, but working out shopping lists, prep lists, and most importantly the choreography of the oven – what dishes needed to be in or on top of the oven, at what temperature, and for how long. There was no way I was going to run into the issue of needing three things in the oven at different temps at the same time.

For grins, here (PDF) are the notes I took for getting this together. I know there are a few holes in the notes as the menu evolved – I think cranberry sauce made the item list but didn’t get onto the shopping list, for example, which almost caused a small crisis. But, for a big event like this, you HAVE to do some sort of preplanning to get your head straight about what to do. The net result is that Thursday’s cooking was easy, assembling final dishes, and only really got a bit hectic right at the end, trying to get everything onto serving plates and out of the kitchen.

In brief:

• Saturday and Sunday were spent obsessing over the menu, writing the notes, researching techniques and recipes, and so on.
• Monday was grocery shopping, breaking down the turkey, and maybe roasting the squash.
• Tuesday was making the turkey stock and par-roasting the vegetables. (Great technique. Basically, like par-boiling, you roast the vegetables until they have just started to color. Pull them out, cool, and they can hang out in the fridge until day of. Let them come to room temp, then throw in a hot oven to refresh and finish cooking – while the turkey gently rests.)
• Wednesday was cranberry sauce, making sure the turkey meat was rubbed down, and baking pies.
• Thursday – the main event. Cook the turkey, finish the sides, make the gravy, and serve.

And THAT, as they say, is that. I’d like to hear about your menus and preparations in the comments. If any of you try these out, by all means, let me know how it goes (or ask for tips first, since my shorthand above may not be complete)!

I was talking a few weeks ago with a friend of mine when the idea for this post hit me. Cooking for one (or two) can sometimes seem to be a hurdle to overcome in quantity – either one makes enough bolognese sauce to keep eating pasta dishes for a week, or a recipe scales down to almost impossibly small quantities to work with effectively. The compromise, of course, is leftovers.

Leftovers have been given a bad rap. Often, the same dish is reheated and served, resulting in monotonous gastronomic repetition that feels about as heavy as saying those three words out loud. Plus, reheating is often done on a single portion, plated – which means the sauce is too hot, the meat is too cold, the vegetables turn to mush, and somewhere a Native American is crying.

There is a secret to leftovers, though – repurposing them. While the original dish may have been a roast piece of meat, or a stew, or sauteed vegetables, there’s no reason this can’t be changed and made fresh with a small bit of work.

Roast chicken is one of my favorite versatile leftovers:

• Slice the breast meat thin, make a quick seasoned mayonnaise (1 egg, 1 clove of garlic, a bit of vinegar or lemon juice, a liberal amount of cajun seasoning, some neutral oil like canola, and a stick blender. 30 seconds or less.) and put it on two slices of bread for a sandwich.
• Cut chicken meat into small pieces – 1″ cubes or smaller, say – and throw in a bowl with some chopped carrots, celery, onion. Season liberally, and mix with just enough mayonnaise (see above) to bind together. Serve on bibb lettuce leaf cups.
• Cut the meat into bigger chunks – 1-2″ cubes, ish – and briefly saute, then add a flavored gastrique (French for “sweet and sour sauce”). Serve over rice (bonus for having leftover rice).
• Chop up the chicken meat fine, add some small or finely chopped vegetables (think green peas, carrots), season well, put it in an oven-safe bowl or casserole, moisten with a bit of cream or wine – or even water, cover with a layer of biscuit or pie dough, and bake until the crust is done. Chicken pot pie.
• Chunk up the meat, and simmer with chunked vegetables in chicken broth. Add noodles. What’s better than chicken noodle soup?

Realize that this is about using leftovers as pre-cooked ingredients, and think about when you add them to the pan so they don’t overcook in the process. Having that initial cooking of the main ingredient out of the way means that all that remains to be cooked are the secondary components (vegetables, aromatics, sauces) which usually take much less time.

Nearly any leftover vegetable can be turned into a cream soup. Make a thin-to-medium bechamel (1 Tbsp butter, 1 Tbsp flour, 3 C milk. Melt butter, add flour and stir to combine, whisk in milk, bring to a boil. Season. Recipe scales as you need it, keep about that butter/flour to milk ratio.), and simmer leftover vegetables in the sauce. Puree the whole mess in a blender, maybe strain for a smoother texture, and enjoy.

Practice what you preach: Tonight’s dinner plans is all about this principle. I have leftover cooked carrots, leftover beef and stout stew, and leftover roast cauliflower in the fridge. The cauliflower will go into a cream soup, with shredded cheddar cheese melted in at the end. Then, I’ll chop up the carrots and add to the stew. I’ll make a pie crust, line the cups of a muffin tin with the crust, fill the mini-pies with the stew filling, top with crust, and bake at 400F until the crust is brown and done.

Oh, and I have leftover lemon vinaigrette (pro tip – xanthan gum is your friend, dressing hasn’t broken a bit) and romaine lettuce in the fridge. Soup, salad, and a beef pie. Not bad for some leftovers, eh?

PS – You can even use leftover Popeye’s chicken nuggets to make a passable General Tso chicken at home (that’s on my list to try). Or even more elaborate reincarnations (those aren’t).

1. I want to make macarons, and prove that I can get the meringe dry enough to not spread out all over the cookie sheet. (Thrice bitten, fourth shy.)
2. How much can the meringue for macarons be toyed with? I imagine a basil meringue cookie – chiffonade of basil leaf, not basil oil – with a black pepper lemon curd in the middle.
3. This requires egg whites at least a day old, that will have dried out somewhat. Can I dry them uncovered in the fridge, or will they pick up the scents of whatever else is there?
(4. Aside – can’t wait for the pork belly to finish curing into bacon. Tomorrow, maybe.)
(5. On the same tangent – never smoked a bacon, maybe roast half and smoke the other half over lapsong souchong, a smoked black tea? —Focus.)
6. Where am I going to come up with that many egg whites? What can I do with the yolks?
6a. Pastry cream – vanilla custard thickened with cornstarch.
6a-1. Ooh, cream puffs and eclairs….
6b. Lemon curd uses yolks, doesn’t it? Maybe that’s my answer.
6c. Wonder what effect egg yolks would have on chocolate ganache.
6d. Hey, I’ve got pancetta from Greatful Bread in the fridge. Maybe I can make a nearly-authentic spaghetti carbonara.
6d-1. Yeah, and I biked a bunch today – maybe that offsets the carbonara.
7. Oops, almond flour. Need to get more from the store.
8. Why am I baking all of this, mainly just to prove to myself that I can (and to have it ready to go when I decide I need it down the line)? I may just have to eat this all myself. Hm, not the best idea.
9. Why didn’t I stop to get the awesome local flat iron steaks I saw earlier today at Revival Market? 45 minutes until they close, but we may be going out to eat for dinner tonight instead.
10. I wish I knew how to make buttercream. I mean, I can read and follow recipes, but that’s different from *understanding* buttercream.
11. Why do I care about buttercream? What am I going to do, eat a bowl of chocolate buttercream?
11a. Yes.
12. Flat iron steak, green beans and shallots, and … and … and what? Noodles? Rice? some kind of starch?

This is the constant noise in my brain. This is why I obsess about food.

My passport expires today, two days after 9/11. I could write a whole retrospective on where I was on the day (in a meeting in London) or how it impacted me (Mom had come to visit, stayed a couple of extra weeks), but I decided that there was enough rehashing already on the internet. As I wasn’t nearly as traumatically affected by that day, I thought it best to write about what my passport and I had seen together.

Ten years and four months ago, I had left my first passport in my jeans and put it through the wash. The front cover separated from the picture page, and amazingly I managed to fly internationally four more times on it with only some stern looks from ticketing agents. Then 9/11 happened, and I decided it high time to renew my passport at the US embassy.

So. Ten years ago…

… I was living, however temporarily, in London, England.

… I lived off of restaurant food and could make a mean risotto. I was only just a year or so into my soon-to-be-obsession with cooking.

… chicken stock was an exotic preparation.

… I collected comic books. Every Wednesday, when the new books came in, my comic store would pull my subscription aside, and I would buy the stack and have a binge reading night at a coffee shop. Most times, I’d forget to eat dinner.

… I discovered Japanese cuisine meant more than sushi, and that ramen doesn’t have to be cheap from a packet.

… I sang (however awkwardly) with a semi-professional a cappella troupe.

… I had never been to SXSW. Hadn’t really heard of it, actually.

… had really no damn clue how to dress myself. I was aiming for the thickest goatee I could grow, let my hair grow as long as it would (almost to my shoulder!), and – being in London and all – wore a black trench coat that made me look as if Crosby, Stills, or Nash had joined the X-files.

Since then…

… I’ve learned to cook more. Competently, if not always well. My challenge now is finding enough time and willing subjects to really practice what’s rattling around in my head.

… I moved back to Houston.

… I got married.

… I discovered, to my surprise, that I’m more of a cat person than a dog person.

… I don’t collect comics anymore, although I do miss it and try to keep up from afar.

… I became a homeowner.

… twice. (Temporarily, we hope.)

… I’ve managed to help shepherd a kid through middle school, high school, and into college. I’ll take a victory lap wherever I can.

… I still work for the same company.

… I’ve seen friends come and go. Thankfully, more came than went, and those that went really didn’t leave, they just went somewhere else for now.

… I don’t introduce myself by my website anymore (“Don’t worry. You’ve never heard of it.”) but instead by my twitter name.

… I’ve stopped blogging twice officially (three times, if you count this hiatus – so much to say, so little time to organize it into linear thought).

… and I’ve eaten well.

Saturday was the blog’s 11th birthday. In the middle of trying to move out of our old house into our new one. I spent the day painting. Haven’t cooked a meal in a month.

So, yeah. Content is a bit light. Lots of ideas, all of them just around the corner. Keep your feed readers handy.

Well, that was an unplanned hiatus. Irregular blogging will recommence, as I find myself having more and more to say. In the intervening time, I’ve gotten to know many more excellent people in Houston’s food scene, had more than my share of excellent meals, cooked some exciting stuff, and am even more excited about trying to get people into the kitchen to cook.

But that’s not what prompted me to come back now. I’ve been a friend of Fave for some time now, and was privileged to have met and spent some quality time with the late pug Fender. Fender was one hell of a cool lil’ dog, who passed away suddenly and has been memorialized in the outstanding web comic A Pug Named Fender. Add it to your feed readers.

As a COMPLETE surprise, Fave included me in today’s strip! I’m floored and honored to be included in the comic alongside this hip pup. That was the birthday surprise that made my week, y’all.

So, a BIG THANK YOU to Fave for the awesome artwork, to Fender for being cool, and to all my friends for showing some love on my birthday week!

The other request I had was from a friend who is trying to eat healthier, eat more fresh and local foods, and learn to cook. Oh, and is a big fan of the Pioneer Woman. And Jamie Oliver. Kind of a mashup of the two.

I had to phone a friend on this one, since I was aware of the Pioneer Woman but not familiar. The description I got back was:

A summary of the Pioneer Woman? Hmm, where to start! She’s girly, down-to-earth, with a very, very full life.  She wears a lot of hats
(sometimes simultaneously) and has a deep enjoyment of the simple pleasures of life (a sleeping dog, silly, dirty kids, a truly
delicious meal, the pond at sunrise).  I think her hobbies really reflect that, too–capturing precious moments in time, and sharing
them with the world.  She cooks because she has to, really, but she hasn’t let that stop her from doing the exact same thing with cooking
- capturing her deep enjoyment of creating good food–not fancy food, but good home cooked meals that warm the soul–that other people will enjoy too. AND teaching them how to do it.  I identify with that a lot.  She’s the genuine article, too, not afraid to admit her flaws and with the enviable ability to laugh at them.

Immediately I think of Alice Waters. She started the whole fresh local foods movement at Chez Panisse in California. I got her book Simple Foods back at my birthday, but have held off from diving in yet. (There’s a stack of books I haven’t read yet waiting, and history shows that if I start too many cookbooks at once, I tend to stop reading all of them. So, one at a time.) The thing about Waters is that she’s really invested in the idea of local and organic. While I have almost exclusively found farmer’s market fare to be better tasting than the supermarkets, keeping a pantry stocked on local and organic alone isn’t always feasible. Go with what you’ve got, cook it yourself, and you’ll be better off than you were.

Same as last post, anything by Mark Bittman should be good to have on hand. There’s a reason he’s known as The Minimalist at the NY Times. Plus, he’s got a great podcast to watch – I’ve gotten more than a few inspirations from it in the past.

Finally, look at Appetite by Nigel Slater. Nigel is a food writer in the UK, and his writing style is very approachable and easy to read. (Side note – same goes for Michael Ruhlman.) The main reason I bought Appetite (almost ten years ago, wow!) is that his measurements are natural and imprecise. Think “a handful of chopped onion” rather than “3/4 cup of diced onion”. That takes the focus away from doing things just right, fretting over exact measurements, and more on what’s actually happening in the pan or pot.

Oh – and an honorable mention to pretty much anything by the Cook’s Illustrated folks. The magazine is excellent, and they have a number of collected “Best Of XYZ” volumes. This falls very much in the “go here and do this” camp – they’ve taken a fairly scientific approach to their recipes and can describe in pretty exact detail what to do and when. It’s not always the simplest of cooking (although sometimes it is), but it’s a good way to get comfortable in the kitchen.

Okay, that was fun, but it feels good to be back to a more modern look and feel with all the bells and whistles.

One question I get when people find out I’m obsessive about food, after “What do you like to cook?”, is “What’s your favorite cookbook?”. I always have trouble with this. There isn’t one magical book that just does everything for me. It’s my obsessive nature – I read cookbooks like novels.

However, I find I’m much more interested in helping people find the right cookbooks for them. This is a personal thing, since the right books for you will change as you grow, become more skilled, and find your flavors. It also opens up a much bigger conversation about tastes, influences, and goals, rather than me trying to sum up everything I believe about food in a sentence or two.

I’ve had two open questions to me about finding the “right” cookbook, which have been waiting for me to answer for an embarrassingly long time. I’d like to answer them here and encourage the readers to chime in with comments about what I got right or wrong, or with questions of their own.

Some general background, first: I tend to categorize cookbooks into three main categories. The first kind are the massive recipe tomes, big books that remind me of the Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary that we used growing up. These books tend to focus almost exclusively on recipes, giving enough background information to be functional but really serving a need to be a reference point. The second kind are technique books, ones that focus on how and why cooking works instead of what to cook. For convenience, I put the true cooking theory books in this category. Finally, there are the niche books. These may be everything you wanted to know about Italian, Occitane, or Southeast Uzbekistan cooking, or they might be the end-all-be-all book on cooking kumquats or sea anemone (side note – what’s the plural of anemone?), but they universally go in depth into a single facet of cooking. All of these types of cookbooks are valuable as reference or jumping-off points, one is not better than the other, but that system helps me give a foundation to making recommendations.

On with the show. First up are a newlywed couple – VERY cool people – who enjoy food and are wanting to learn more about cooking. Oh, and they like to eat Italian.

Starting out, everybody needs at least one recipe tome to be a catch-all reference, the one book likely to have what you need, no matter what. I grew up on Joy of Cooking, although now that I’ve browsed the book (and downloaded the iPhone app) I’m a fan of How To Cook Everything by Mark Bittman. Either will get you going towards being comfortable in the kitchen.

Ask about Italian food, and I immediately go to Marcella Hazan, the doyenne of Italian food in America. She is for Italian cooking what Julia Child was to French cooking in this country, and her books couldn’t be more useful or exciting. This will get you out of the rut of thinking of Italian food as spaghetti with meat sauce, lasagna, and pizza, and open your eyes to a whole different range of flavors and a different approach to cooking. In a nutshell, Italian cooking is about choosing great ingredients and really not doing anything to screw them up. Marcella makes this instantly accessible to read and follow along at home.

I haven’t recommended a technique cookbook yet, since these two are great books to get started with and get a good feel for being in the kitchen. I’m not sure what technique book I would recommend yet, as I want to see what’s interesting from these two at first.

The other question… Well, that’ll be for another blog post.