The Flavor Bible

There are some books in your kitchen that sit there because they were presents, or the cover enticed with possible bites that would fill your life. Maybe you liked the photographs, or you were on a brief kick to eat more healthfully. Any reason could be true. But still, you know the books — the ones you never open. Maybe you made one recipe, once, and you knew you'd never be able to stomach that book again. It still sits there, but you'll never use it.

The Flavor Bible is not that book.

Since we bought this book, back in October, I'm pretty sure it has been opened every single day. I tried to take a beautiful photograph of it, but there's no taking away the smudged fingerprints and dented corners. We are often holding this book in our hands.

Years ago, this book would have intimidated me. There are no recipes. Every food is in alphabetical order, rather than being organized by type or style of cuisine. Before I met Danny, I would have looked at this book and put it away.

But he has taught me how to cook from feel, from experience, rather than from recipes alone. (I still use recipes, most of the time, but now they are only starting points, a gun going off toward the sky. I'm not nearly so straight-backed examining them, as I was before.) For that reason, this book is invaluable.

It's pretty funny, actually, watching Danny try to follow a recipe. A few months ago, when we were finishing up the first draft of our book, I asked him to make dinner with a recipe that looked good, to see how recipes are written, to judge what he wanted. He tried. He did. When I came into the kitchen after putting Little Bean down to sleep, I saw him hunched over the dishwasher, peering at the paper, scratching his head. He turned toward me. "I can't do it. I can see what she wants. But I want to do it differently."

He's the jazz musician. I'm the grammar teacher. I laughed and told him to go on his own.

That's why this book works for him, and more and more, for me now too.

Say you bought some ramps at the farmers' market (they're coming here soon), in your eagerness to celebrate spring. But when you are home, you realize — you have no idea what to do with them. Look up ramps in this book. What you'll find is a list of other foods that go particularly well with ramps: asparagus, bacon, butter, carrots, chicken, chives, cream, cured meats, etc. Some of the foods are in bold, meaning they go particularly well with ramps: Parmesan cheese, pasta, new potatoes. Hm. What to make?

Well, Danny has taught me to think creatively. It's April, so we want something light, not like the pot roasts and meatloaf nights of February. What's for dinner? What about rice pasta with roasted asparagus, sauteed ramps, prosciutto, and Parmesan cheese? Or, grilled halibut with black pepper-ramp puree? Or warm polenta with morel mushrooms and a creamy ramp sauce?

Actually, I'm hungry again. Those are all just ideas from looking at the ramp section of this book.

As well as listing ingredients that blend well with the food you have chosen, the book also offers suggestions of the season each food grows in and techniques that work well with it. Really, there's no way to go wrong.

If you are, unlike Danny, only able to cook with a recipe in front of you, this book may feel overwhelming. However, spend a little time with it, and you might just put those recipe books away. (Or at least at the other end of the kitchen.)


Would you like a copy of this book? We'd like you to have it. Leave a comment here, telling us about cooking in your kitchen, and how this book might help. By Friday, we'll pick a winner, randomly. The wonderful authors, Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg, have agreed to send along a copy to whoever wins.

In addition to the book, we're having a giveaway on knives. The good folks at Messermeister read this post I wrote on their knives, and they would like to give some to you. In fact, they're giving away a chef's knife and kitchen scissors set. Leave a comment about that here as well. We'll have two winners this week!

The School of Essential Ingredients

Before last week, I had not finished a single book since Little Bean was born.

This is, for me, an utterly astounding sentence. I used to read the way I breathed air: continuously, sometimes quickly, sometimes slow and consciously, always. I used to read while walking down the street, brushing my teeth, and sitting at red lights in the car. I grew so attached to the world within the covers of books that I deliberately slowed down when I loved one, for fear that it would end soon. When I finally finished Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides, I actually flung it against the wall and shouted, "F_ you for being done!" (Truly, I loved that book.)

So, to go almost a year without reading a book all the way through? Goodness, who is this?

Hi, I'm a mama. And a writer.

There are no more languid hours, the way I had when I was a kid, bending my back over the arm of the couch, the book over my head, to catch the dying light in the sky by which I was reading. Now, I have half-open books perched on surfaces around the house. I've been waiting for some time without writing a book to get back to them.

Now that I have done this twice, I know: I can't read books when I'm in the middle of writing one. Words bleed into my sentences, ones I had never considered before. Phrases I read on white paper make it onto my screen before I notice fully, and then I have to erase. Magazine articles, the newspaper cover to cover, essays in books, and an endless array of oddities online? I haven't stopped those. But entire books? Nope.

Not until last week, when I sat down while Little Bean was napping, and read The School of Essential Ingredients in a day and a half. And when I closed the last page, slowly, I grew a little teary that I had finished it so soon.

I don't want to tell you too much, because you might want to read it yourself. Just know that the story circles through a cooking school, run by a woman named Lillian who has a calm demeanor, capable hands, and an understanding for people that comes from her past. Stories emerge with each class, from homemade pasta and chocolate cake. Not that much happens, in the Hollywood sense, but everything rumbles under the surface, in the glacial way that human relations actually happen.

And the way that Erica Bauermeister describes food — slow and sensuous, filled with poignancy and a sense of presence — made me lift up my eyes and take them in. And they made me hungry.

I read this book as I slipped under the hot waters of a bath. I picked it up as Little Bean napped, my hands curved around a hot cup of coffee. And I devoured the last pages in the warm lamplight of the living room, on the end of the couch where I fed Little Bean just a few hours before.

I finally read an entire book. This one was such a wonderful warmth and loveliness to begin it all again.

p.s. I believe in sharing, especially because plenty of us cannot afford new hardback books these days. So I'm giving away my copy, now that I have finished it. Leave a comment here, and make sure I have some way of reaching you. The Chef and I will randomly select a number at the end of the week and choose one of you! We'll put the book in the mail, with a little present for you from us.

Super Natural Cooking

If you still have the idea that grains other than wheat are "weird," that healthful food has to be boring, and that only out-of-fashion old hippies eat wild rice and millet, then you need to change your mind.

Luckily, Heidi Swanson will change your mind.

You may already know Heidi from 101 Cookbooks, or Mighty Foods, two of my favorite food websites. I've beeen an enormous fan of Heidi's gorgeous photographs for years. In fact, she was one of my inspirations for pointing my camera toward my meals in the first place.

Heidi's second book, Super Natural Cooking, has hit the stores. I feel lucky; I already have my own copy. Heidi sent it to me in the mail, as a thank you for testing the recipes. You see, I had to keep this quiet when the book was in production, and I certainly couldn't take photographs, but I had the honor of testing a few recipes for Heidi, and giving her feedback. (You can even find my name in the page of acknowledgments!)

I can say, therefore, with no qualifications, that you should own this book. The photographs are stunning, the header notes are filled with interesting stories, and the recipes yield bright, alive food. This food is good for you, true. But you will want to eat it, and then eat some more.

And for those of us who are gluten-free? This book is a godsend. Heidi has an entire chapter on grains beyond wheat, with fascinating capsule descriptions of grains such as amaranth and teff, and even mesquite flour, available to us. Even the few recipes that involve whole wheat can fairly easily be adapted to be gluten-free.

Don't believe me yet? Listen to these recipes:

Millet Fried Rice
Red Indian Carrot Soup
Winter Rainbow Gratin
Quinoa and Corn Flour Crepes

Those are just some of the ones I tested. Oh, yum.

Add to that Heidi's sexy, attentive photographs, filled with color and a sense of play, and you will quickly be drawn in to reading, more and more.

In the mornings, the Chef likes to read the entire newspaper. Me? After a few minutes, I usually switch to a cookbook, perusing recipes and figuring out what to cook for him that night, my mind enticed by all the ideas inside the pages. I can promise you this — for the next few days, I'll have Super Natural Cooking by my bed. Grilled teff wedges, here I come.

cookbook: Splendid Grains

During my brief jaunt to Port Townsend (more on this later), I found a copy of The Splendid Grain. Splendid it is. Written by Rebecca Field, an obviously thoughtful writer on whole foods, it's bursting with brilliant ideas on how to cook with the unusual grains. Translation: the gluten-free grains. Yes, there is one section of the book that will remain pristine and stain free in my kitchen: wheat, barley, rye, and oats. But everything else is safe. And everything sounds delicious.

Can you taste these?

Strawberry and Blue Corn Waffles
Southwestern Cheese Sandwiches with Sweet and Hot Pepper Sauce
Quinoa Tarts with Kiwi Sauce
Jicama and Buckwheat Salad

Yum.

This is one of the parts I love best about this diagnosis and the gluten-free life I'm living now: the constant discovery. I can't eat gluten, but I'm gobbling up knowledge. Ravenously. I can't stop trying new recipes, far more daring concoctions than my old standbys. I've always been a good cook, but before my diagnosis, I was eating the same, plodding meals, over and over. Not anymore.

And there's something deeply satisfying about exploring grains and foods from around the world, learning about the history of tef in Ethiopia. (Fascinating.) Somehow, this feels like honoring the experience of people other than Americans. And I'm happy to do that, protesting narrow-mindedness by eating. My favorite form of social protest, actually.

Given how much I adore food, I love that my new life means that I'll soon be eating popped amaranth for breakfast or making tef flour in my coffee grinder. Never could you have told me that this would be my life.