Eating - Jason Epstein [1]
I began cooking as a child as other children of my generation toyed with chemistry sets or electric trains. I remember reading Irma Rombauer when I was ten or so with the same curiosity that I read Kipling and Jules Verne. My mother had little interest in cooking, and my father none at all, so I was free to amuse myself in the kitchen without getting in their way. Later, I worked a bit in restaurants, where I picked up fragments of technique and jargon and began to think of myself as a cook long before anyone else might have agreed. As readers of this book will see, I prefer plain cooking. I don’t bother with foams, complex emulsions, or exotic ingredients, but let each ingredient speak for itself, often with the help of herbs, spices, and wine. I am a serviceable cook. Friends like what I serve them and come back for more. This gives me pleasure.
Recipes are approximations, starting points. I learn usually by failing the first time, then discovering where I went wrong, then trying again, and so on, until the basic preparation becomes second nature. Then I vary it, as I plan to do tonight with swordfish in a spicy marinara, an easy dish to make for ten or twelve people. I make the marinara early in the day, and sear the fish quickly at dinnertime in olive oil, and top it with the sauce just before it goes to the table. For the marinara tonight—actually a kind of puttanesca—I’m thinking of mashing in some fresh sardines if I can find them, a Sicilian touch, along with the pine nuts and raisins that are already in the sauce. I won’t risk the whole pot of marinara, but try a cupful with only a bit of sardine. It may not work—the sardine may be too strong, may squelch the lively marinara—but it’s worth a try. When I made this the first time, I let the sautéed swordfish sit for a while in the marinara, with the result that the sauce, which had been fairly tight, became watery and the swordfish dry.
The value of writers like Michael Pollan, whom every cook should read, is that they suggest limits which we may respect or ignore as we choose—but at the extreme they define the reality by whose rules we succeed or fail, live or die. I look forward to next year’s blueberry season, and now that apple season is here I may bake a tarte tatin now and then; otherwise, except for special occasions, I’ll skip dessert.
In this book, when I recommend olive oil I mean extra-virgin unless otherwise indicated. There are many types of extra-virgin oil, and many shops let you taste before you buy. Take advantage of this opportunity. Fine-quality oils come in many flavors and textures, from subtle to aromatic, from gentle to powerful. As with wine, let your taste be your guide.
My thanks to:
An incomplete list of my instructors, in no particular order, includes Michael Field, Elizabeth David, Julia Child, Alice Waters, Daniel Boulud, Irma Rombauer, Maida Heatter, Frankie Pellegrino, Patrick O’Connell, Fernand Point, Rick Moonen, Julia Reed, Mario Batali, Wolfgang Puck (whose original Spago, with its bare pine walls and Milton Berle always in the corner, is dear to my memory), Joël Robuchon, Mike Anthony, Buwei Chao, Lou, Marie, and Sal “Di Palo,” Mark Russ Federman, Alice Toklas, Richard Olney, Paula Wolfert, Diana Kennedy, Martin and Adela Garcia, Sheila Lukins, Pierre Franey, Charlie Palmer, Eddie Schoenfeld, and that centuries-long procession of unknown cooks and bakers from whom my teachers and their teachers learned their craft.
I thank Billy Norwich for suggesting that I write a recipe column for the Style section of The New York Times, from which much of this book derives. I thank, too, my dear and second-oldest friend on earth, the incomparable Judith Jones, for urging me to use these recipes as the basis for a book. Thanks to Terry Zaroff-Evans for her superb