Grilled fish on rice from the Northwest.
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Books about food are no more immune from the gusts of the zeitgeist than books about politics or the stock market. While 2002 was the year of Comfort Food, of curling up and turning our backs on the cold cruel world outside, 2003 is turning out to be the year of Back to Basics: not just how-to-boil-water basics but basics in the Casablanca sensethe fundamental things that apply no matter how fickle the flow of fashion as time goes by. We think every book covered here is, in its individual way, a keeper: a reliable, permanent source of culinary inspiration for days dark or sunny.
Roger Downey
Northwest Best Places Cookbook by Cynthia Nims (Sasquatch Books, $19.95 paperback)
In 2001, Cynthia C. Nims and Kathy Casey compiled a Best Places Seattle Cookbook with recipes from the city's outstanding restaurants and barsa nifty addition to Sasquatch Books' Best Places guidebook series. Now the resourceful Nims stalks the perfect recipe among the inns and restau- rants of Washington, Oregon, and British Columbia. It's a lovely collection, and not just for the recipes, which are stellar. Even more than the recipes, one is impressed with the lightness, variety, and inventiveness of Northwest chefs blessed with an abundance of fresh seafood, game, and produce. Fabulous vegetarian wild mushroom, leek, and wild rice cakes from Port Townsend's Silverwater Cafe (although the accompanying Dijon sauce makes hollandaise look spartan); spinach soup with cilantro from Whitehouse-Crawford in Walla Walla; Northwest seafood pepper pot from Christine's in Eastsound; Andalusian flank steak from Langley Cafe. If you don't have time for a road trip, this is the next best thing. LUCILLA
Cooking by Hand by Paul Bertolli (
Clarkson Potter, $40 hardcover)
Less a cookbook than a series of philosophical essays on food supplemented by illustrative examples, Paul Bertolli lays out a new way of looking at food and its handling in the kitchen; a new way based on ways that were old when European pioneers first arrived on this continent. In the first paragraph of his first chapter, Bertolli describes an encounter in Florence with a plate of ribollita, a humble bean-and-cabbage soup enlivened with a spritz of virgin olive oil. Bertolli had tasted the dish before, "but never with such a clear sense of the original intention of the dish." Every recipe in Cooking by Hand is inspired by a search for origins and intentions, by the desire to clear our perceptions of the classic dishes as an art historian cleans a painting or a statue to reveal the original textures and colors beneath the grime of centuries. For Bertolli, the "grime" is, as often as not, the restless itch of chefs seeking novelty and, thereby, acclaim. Bertolli proposes, in his colorful phrase, to "clean the fresco," to rediscover the ultimate essence of a ripe tomato, of freshly ground corn meal for polenta, of hand-rolled pasta and hand-stuffed sausage. Cooking by Hand is not a book to be absorbed in one sitting or a dozen sittings. It's a book to be sampled, savored, experimented with, set aside and challenged, then returned to in humility. R.D.
Zingerman's Guide to Good Eating by Ari Weinzweig (
Houghton Mifflin, $19.95 paperback)
Zingerman's Delicatessen has lines out the door in winter. Michigan winter. If you want your home (or, perhaps better yet, your friends' homes) to resemble Ari Weinzweig's legendary Ann Arbor deli, you might consider plunking down 20 bucks for his 480-page cookbook/kitchen guide/gastronomic almanac/food-appreciation treatise.
Weinzweig is certainly a man who knows what "good eating" means; he keeps his little culinary empire (the deli, the creamery, and the bake house) stocked with the very best imported, domestic, and local foods. A Reuben I had at the deli years ago still haunts me, so ne plus ultra were the sauerkraut, corned beef, cheese, and bread. In the Midwest, Zingerman's is a holy temple for true-blue foodies, the Scarecrow Video of cuisine.
In addition to simply disclosing dozens of Zingerman's recipes, the Guide investigates broader issues surrounding the food in question. Compared to the pragmatism of a paella recipe, an inquiry titled "Why Spanish Rice Is Special" may seem excessively academic. Fortunately, the personal touch Weinzweig applies while discussing foods he adores, like Spanish Cabrales cheeseor outlining his culinary pet causes, such as an ardent campaign for darker-crusted breadrecalls a certain Mr. Douglas in our neck of the woods.
But unlike the Dahlia big- wig's recent Big Dinners book, Weinzweig's text gets into the nuts and bolts of buying, keeping, and using excellent food. Instead of assuming the reader knows what jamón serrano is and how it's used, Weinzweig provides an informative (but never patronizing) lesson in how to employ it creatively while still respecting the cultural heft of the ham.
Regional differences in salami, comparative vinegar shopping, and figuring out what to do with varietal honey are other topics that get the scholarly treatment from Weinzweig, with offbeat illustrations increasing the levity factor and making the Guide accessible as well as highly edifyingand therefore a perfect gift for anyone who enjoys a side of know-how with their chow. NEAL SCHINDLER
The Slow Mediterranean Kitchen by
Paula Wolfert (
John Wiley, $34.95 hardcover)
