Sokolov, Raymond - How to Cook, rev. ed.

[oyceter]

(subtitle: An Easy and Imaginative Guide for the Beginner)

A caveat: I don't cook. I watch too much Food Network for my own good, probably eat too much for my own good, go to the Farmers Market and etc., but the extent of my cooking usually involves sweating or stir-frying vegetables once every other week or so.

So, as such, I can't really comment as to how well the recipes work, or even how well they're written, since I have very little experience following recipes, and in no way did I test these out.

Also, when I do cook, I'm one of those supremely annoying people who just goes, "Uh, throw in a pinch of salt. Yeah, that looks about right." I really suck at following recipes and tend to modify them all the time. This is not because I'm a good cook or have superior instincts or anything like that. Mostly it's because I am lazy and either don't want to break out measuring spoons, or because I found out last minute that I didn't have a certain ingredient that I should have, or something like that. And since I cook so rarely, I don't want to go out and buy a lot of ingredients, especially if they only come in big batches and I know I'll only use a cup and forget the rest only to find it moldy and rotten in the back of my pantry a year down the line.

So when I get a book titled "How to Cook" which says it's easy and imaginative for the beginner, I want really, really, incredibly basic instructions. I.e. basic kitchen equipment and techniques and the like. Alas, this book doesn't go into them. It's got a smattering of recipes, most of which don't seem particularly easy to me (this is entirely subjective, as I haven't tested them), but honestly -- lobster? I'm still trying to cook with more than three ingredients; it feels like he's going much too quickly.

Also, since I tend to do the improv thing while cooking, I like to know why something's in the recipe. I want to know how much I can tinker with the thing before I end up with an unmentionable sludge; which ingredients are essential and which are merely dressing. And I want to know why something is being poached instead of broiled, I want to know about food reactions and the like.

Eh, I got rather annoyed with this book. I feel like while Sokolov does explain a bit, he doesn't explain enough for me. I think my basic expectations are just very, very different from most people's? When I saw that the book was supposed to be about how to cook, I wanted something like... rules and tips and tricks of cooking that could be applied to a lot of recipes or something. Something that would give me a good groundwork so that I could start playing around in the kitchen without worrying about blowing something up, maybe general advice as to what went well with what. I guess that is rather a lot to ask for; I know I know bits and pieces of that in the back of my head just because I really like reading menus (hey, I like food!), but if I were just starting out with cooking, I wouldn't know that rosemary goes well with potatoes or that vinaigrettes and slightly bitter greens just seem to complement each other.

I dunno. Maybe he does go into this in the individual recipes, but I wanted a sort of primer that I could read and digest straight through. I think I've watched too many Good Eats episodes -- now I'm not satisfied until I know all the chemical reactions going on and why overmixing is evil (yay gluten!) and why the smaller the pieces of garlic are, the stronger they are (I just remember this off the top of my head because Alton Brown was demonstrating with a blowtorch. It was fun!).

Anyhow, I'm not quite sure if I'm being fair to the book or not, since I went in with thinking it was going to be one thing and then coming out with another. I seem to be one of those people who wants to know how everything works before I go do something.

Aside from that, I got a little irritated with the prose. Sokolov is very knowledgeable, I am sure, but something in his style put me off a bit. I think I was already a bit tetchy because I wasn't getting all the food science-y bits that I wanted, and he kept telling me to do things without telling me why, and it was just really frustrating!

Eh, yeah. So, this may be a quite excellent book for recipes and for a basic look at how ovens, fridges and microwaves work, but there doesn't seem to be much between those two poles.

If you are more like me and like reading cookbooks for info and not just for recipes, my favs are The Joy of Cooking and Alton Brown's books and TV show (I'm Just Here for the Food (on heat and food, aka different cooking methods), I'm Just Here for More Food (mixing+heat+food=baking!, aka how everything in baking works), and Good Eats (his show on Food Network which I adore unabashedly and probably watch way too much of).

I like Joy even though I've only used about two recipes in there because it splits up recipes by food type! Aka, if I hear about fennel on heres_luck's LJ but have no idea what it is or how to use it, I can just go to the "Vegetables" section in the book and look up "fennel," and they'll have a lovely explanation of what it is, how's it's usually cooked, what it goes well with, what all the different parts do, and several different ways to cook it. I know it's ginormous and scary, but when I got it for Christmas two years ago, I actually sat down with it and started reading the vegetable section straight through before bed.

Eh. That might just be a me thing. Veggies! Very exciting! And they have whole sections on how to chop up lobsters and serve fish and bone chicken and whatnot, and hey, maybe I will never ever have to do that, but I like that there are giant sections on how to do it, not scattered into different little recipes.

I shall refrain from singing Alton Brown's praises too much because I'm still reading I'm Just Here for More Food and plan on writing a giant, fangirly post on Good Eats and AB. ph33r me!!

Comments

[masqthephlsphr.livejournal.com]

People who actually know how to cook can't put themselves in the place of the true "beginner". I balk at more than three ingredients myself and couldn't tell you the name of any of my pots, pans, measuring spoons, or other bizarrely-shaped implements, nor could I tell from the taste of a spice or a sauce what it's name is or vice-versa. The stuff they list on most ingredients list--never heard of it, much less located it on a grocery-store shelf.

All I know is

(1) boiling water
(2) food good
(3) how to hit microwave buttons.

[oyceter]

Yeah. I'm sort of an odd duckling in that I can tell some of the ingredients stuff and what often gets stuck together just because I, eh, like reading menus, but if I didn't, would have no idea. Also, prior to watching Good Eats, you could have totally fooled me as to what type of pots or pans I should be using and why.