In the Green Kitchen in the Green Kitchen: Techniques to Learn by Heart Techniques to Learn by Heart [Hardcover]

While I agree with the other reviewer that the recipes aren't especially inspired, nor is it as helpful as the Art of Simple Food, it IS great for what I think is its target audience - those who are new to local cooking (and cooking in general), and need a place to start. There are a growing number of 20 and 30 somethings who grew up on boxed, processed meals, and are stepping into the kitchen. We focus on organic, locally sourced products and need to know the simple ways to prepare them. That's where this book comes in handy. As it states in the introduction, if one can commit some of these principles to memory, it will be easy to cook based on what ingredients one has on hand. While some of it may seem pretty basic, I frequent a number of cooking forums and several times a week people ask what the best way to roast a chicken is. And I love how she has tips sprinkled throughout - such as how to make your own baking powder and vinegar. This is the Betty Crocker book for those who wish to focus on clean, green eating. The Art of Simple Food would be the Joy of Cooking, following that analogy.

If you are experienced in the kitchen, you'll probably want to pass. But if you're new to cooking from scratch, it's a great way to get started.

Buying a book called "In the Green Kitchen - Techniques to learn by heart" one would assume that this book is about technique. That it would be full of pictures showing how truss and carve a chicken, with step by step instructions, or that it would explain how to choose a melon by look and smell, or explain how to pick lettuce and cucumbers that aren't bitter. It doesn't. Instead we get a book filled with portraits and details about Alice Water's Slow Food chef buddies from across the country and a manifesto that tells us to eat organic, local and seasonal...options that aren't available to everyone. There are a fair amount of recipes, but that wasn't really what I bought the book for.

I bought the book hoping to learn things my Grandmother and mother knew about choosing food and cooking. I grew up in a household where we ate very good. We always had fresh veggies, lean meats and whole grain breads. My mom knew how to pair foods to make lovely meals. That is a lost art, and as much as I was exposed to it, I don't recall much of how she did it. But if you didn't grow up with that kind of exposure, I think this book probably will frustrate you and leave you feeling that good food is something that only wealthy people with a lot of time on their hands can have. Even the portraits of her friends, in their chef's jackets, give the book a "this is for professionals" type of vibe.

Just last week I got Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution and I would say that's a much better book for helping people get back into the kitchen and start cooking healthy food. He doesn't harp on the organic/seasonal/local thing. He just wants people to start cooking from scratch again. He covers the tools you will need and the items to stock your pantry with. We've made one recipe of his and it was quick, easy and delicious. And the book is chock full of photos - some of the people he's targeting to cook better, and many of food being made. I wouldn't describe them as showing step by step, but it's a step in the right direction.

I love Alice Waters and her desire to see people eating better. I have even enjoyed a lovely meal at Chez Panisse. But I much prefer her "Art of Simple Food" to this.

"At home in their own kitchens, even the most renowned chefs do not consider themselves to be chefs; there, they are simply cooks, preparing the simple, uncomplicated food they like best. Preparing food like that does not have to be hard work," writes acclaimed chef and local-food pioneer Alice Waters in the introduction to In the Green Kitchen. That philosophy--preparing great food does not have to be hard work--is a major theme of this book, which is as much instruction in the art--and heart--of cooking as it is a compilation of recipes and technique, though it is the latter as well.

The inspiration and material for this course in cooking simple, delicious, local and seasonally appropriate food came from Slow Food Nation, a gathering in San Francisco in 2009 of "thousands of cooks and eaters, farmers and ranchers, cheese makers and winemakers, bakers and beekeepers, fisherman and foragers" with a passion for food and for a sustainable future. Waters and the other organizers included a demonstration kitchen as part of the gathering to offer "a set of basic techniques that are universal to all cuisines."

Those techniques, introduced by the chefs who demonstrated them, and elaborated with Waters' own commentary and recipes, comprise this book. "Once learned by heart," Waters writes, "these are the techniques that free cooks from an overdependence on recipes and a fear of improvisation."

This is a simple book in the sense that it can be used by any cook, from the rawest of beginners to those with years of experience and culinary training, and it is written in a straightforward, accessible way. Browsing it is like listening to an articulate and passionate cook teach her craft. It begins with a look at what spices, herbs, oils and other basics Waters considers essential to the "green" pantry--and she's not a snob here, just a friendly and knowledgeable guide. The first technique presented, which might seem obvious until you read the explanation, is washing lettuce. I've been cooking improvisationally and locally for decades, inspired by my mother's California childhood of eating fresh and local food, and by Waters' work at her Berkeley, California, restaurant, Chez Panisse. So I wasn't expecting to learn much. I've washed a lot of lettuce, from markets and my own gardens, and didn't think I had a lot to learn on the topic. Until I read Fanny Singer's take on this most basic of cooking techniques: wrapping lettuce in cloth dish towels, preventing each leaf from getting crushed and preserving its crisp flavor. That hooked me as soon as I tried it!

From there, this approachable course in cooking by heart, with love, progresses logically to how to dress a salad, flavor a sauce, make bread, poach an egg, boil pasta, cook rice, steam vegetables, shuck corn, fillet a fish, and so on, ending with baking fruit, plus a section on seasonings and essential kitchen tools (a very sensible assortment, by the way, which will not break your budget).

Waters is a pioneer: Chez Panisse was probably the first restaurant in America to grow its own kitchen garden (back in the 1970s!) and to work with local farmers to develop sources of local, seasonal food. I've followed her work with schoolyard gardens as well, where she was one of the first to show teachers and parents how gardens can improve kids' learning and their health. (Profits from In the Green Kitchen go to the Chez Panisse Foundation in support of Waters' schoolyard garden initiative, and the book is dedicated to the students at Martin Luther Middle School in Berkeley, where she pioneered the Edible Schoolyard curriculum.) So I'm biased.

But who isn't, after reading passages like this: "Cooking creates a sense of well-being for yourself and the people you love and brings beauty and meaning to everyday life. And all it requires is common sense--the common sense to eat seasonally, to know where your food comes from, to support and buy from local farmers and producers who are good stewards of our natural resources, and to apply the same principles of conservation to your own home kitchen."

The book is lovely to look at, with clean, readable design, great photography, and a wonderfully diverse assemblage of chefs demonstrating the techniques, many well-known, some not yet. The prose invites you in, takes your hand and welcomes you to the kitchen. My only quibble: the binding doesn't open flat. For a book intended to lie open on the kitchen counter while you use it, that's a flaw. But not enough of one to keep me from recommending it to every cook I know, and more.

Thanks, Alice! I'm inspired all over again, and in fact, I'm heading to the garden to pick some fresh lettuce for this evening's salad...

by Susan J. Tweit

for Story Circle Book Reviews

reviewing books by, for, and about women

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