Let's
face it, cooking can be intimidating. We don't all have Thomas Keller's
talent (not here), Martha Stewart's ingenuity (who does?), Gandhi's patience
(nope), and Charles Manson's free time (yeah right). But thanks to Robin
Donovan and Juliana Gallin and their book The Lazy Gourmet, you don't
need to be a classically trained chef to make creative and sophisticated meals.
With all these tips, tricks, and recipes, you're sure to please anybody.
Have
a taste:
From
the day the two of us met—as college students moving into a big drafty
Victorian in Santa Cruz, California—we bonded over food. There were seven women
living in the house, including science majors, banjo players, artists, and
athletes. We were all very different, but the one thing we agreed on was food.
We each contributed a set amount of cash to the food fund each week, and we
took turns shopping and cooking dinner. Of course, we were barely out of our
teens, and on student budgets, so the food was anything but fancy, but it was
good enough to bring the seven of us—and a nightly assortment of friends, boyfriends,
classmates, and random hangers-on—together around the dining room table most
nights. There were, of course, plenty of frozen gnocchi and burritos, but there
was also “homemade” calzone using store-bought pizza dough; a legendary rich,
cream-based corn and tomato soup adapted from a recipe in the Moosewood
cookbook; and one July evening, when turkeys were inexplicably on sale for an
irresistible price, an entire Thanksgiving feast, complete with bread stuffing,
green bean casserole, and pumpkin pie. At best, there were homemade pierogies
from someone’s grandmother’s recipe. At worst there was a terribly misguided
sauté of nopales (Mexican cactus) that, to our dismay, even half a bottle of
soy sauce couldn’t save.
While
we shared food costs and cooking duties—and a love of eating—our culinary
knowledge was anything but equal, with Robin and Juliana toting opposite ends
of the line. Robin, on the one hand, grew up in a food-obsessed family where
the primary topic of dinner table conversation was where and what the next meal
would be. Having grown up watching (and helping) her mother, a professional
restaurant critic and accomplished cook, prepare dinner each night, cooking
came naturally to her; she was simply comfortable in the kitchen, not intimidated
by complicated recipes or exotic ingredients.
While
Robin inherited her mother’s kitchen prowess, Juliana, in contrast, cruised
through childhood blissfully delighted when meals magically appeared in front
of her. While she did master the Toll House cookie at a tender young age, she
was generally more interested in eating than cooking. Pringles, candy bars, and
four-star meals were all welcomed with equal enthusiasm. Frankly, she never
gave cooking much thought until early adulthood, when she was ready to start
preparing meals for herself and others. She was beginning to develop an
appreciation for good food, but chalked the gourmet cooking abilities of others
up to innate magical powers that she simply wasn’t lucky enough to possess. She
watched with bemusement as friends like Robin took seemingly random piles of
meat and produce, mysterious powders and liquids and transformed them into
feasts that caused awestruck guests to burst into spontaneous applause. She
wanted to be able to impress friends with dinner party spreads they would still
be talking about months later, but she was resigned in the belief that she
wasn’t cut out to be a cooking whiz.
After
college, Robin worked at a series of day jobs in the book publishing industry,
and devoted the majority of her spare time to indulging her foodie urges. She
devoured food magazines and television cooking shows, took cooking classes, and
mastered complicated techniques. Both zealous and disciplined, she became known
for her willingness to spend an entire week before a dinner party infusing
oils, brining meats, and scouring markets throughout the greater San Francisco
Bay Area in search of just the right ingredients. Eventually, she justified
this devotion (read: obsession) by becoming a professional food writer, finally
getting paid to ferret out delightfully minute culinary details for magazine
and newspaper articles and develop recipes for her own cookbooks.
Juliana
became a graphic designer and continued to passively enjoy the stellar culinary
offerings of the San Francisco Bay Area. While part of her always coveted her
friends’ cooking know-how, she couldn’t imagine putting in the time, energy,
and training she thought would be required for her to learn to cook great food.
Eventually, though, it began to dawn on her that some of the most elegant,
beautiful, and memorable meals she encountered—those that made foodies swoon,
squeal, and beg for recipes—were also some of simplest. A surprising
combination of unlikely ingredients, the use of fresh herbs, or a dash of a
special vinegar or infused oil were often the things that elevated a meal from
decent to stunning. After years of befuddlement and self-doubt, Juliana had
finally discovered a startling concept that changed the way she approached the
kitchen: cooking great food can be really easy.
Over
the years, the two of us frequently crammed ourselves into one or the other of
our tiny, ill-equipped San Francisco apartment kitchens to cook and eat. As our
lives became increasingly complicated and busy, more and more we both found
ourselves looking for kitchen shortcuts that wouldn’t force us to skimp on
flavor. We’d make excited phone calls or send urgent late-night emails to share
new recipes for super delicious dishes, recipes that were “so easy!” Some of
those recipes became legendary for us, like the ridiculously simple balsamic
syrup that could transform the most mundane ingredients into culinary nirvana
on a plate, or the egg and asparagus sandwich that earned one of us such a
reputation at her workplace that we now refer to it as “THE sandwich.”
Cousineau makes us Argus-eyed…you definitely need this book.
