Today, I am honored to visit Prism Book Alliance where they also asked for a recipe. I also listed some of the books that inspired Chef’s Table in numerous ways. What are some of your favorite foodie books?
The recipe I shared, a favorite of mine, isn’t really even a recipe. It comes from a rant by Michael Ruhlman, a wonderful author on all things food and good eating, that not only made me laugh, but also sealed my opinion that we are being taught (thank you, Food Network) that America is too stupid to cook. I believe some of it is laziness as well, but that’s probably better saved for another time.
Everything is prepared for us. Rotisserie chickens sit under warmers at the grocery. For heaven’s sake, you can now get sauce packets for your crock pot. Dump in the meat, open a bag of sauce, turn on the heat and go. Letting the “grocery work for you” has become, “go pick up a bag of dinner.”
Cooking isn’t that difficult. Sometimes it’s time consuming, but it’s time consuming in that a good roast, a good stew will sit on heat for hours, so you can go do other things. Prep your ingredients and let heat and magic and science do the rest.
To prove how easy it is to roast a chicken, Ruhlman wrote this list of directions. I’m sure it won’t take much effort to figure out my favorite line. You can read his entire post here.
The World’s Most Difficult Roasted Chicken Recipe
Turn your oven on high (450 if you have ventilation, 425 if not). Coat a 3- or 4-pound chicken with coarse kosher salt so that you have an appealing crust of salt (a tablespoon or so). Put the chicken in a pan, stick a lemon or some onion or any fruit or vegetable you have on hand into the cavity. Put the chicken in the oven. Go away for an hour. Watch some TV, play with the kids, read, have a cocktail, have sex. When an hour has passed, take the chicken out of the oven and put it on the stove top or on a trivet for 15 more minutes. Finito.
Which leads me to the rest of this post—food writers. Chef’s, experts, home cooks who are amazing with word play. They all factored in, in some way, to the making of Chef’s Table. These are a few of my top recommendations:
Michael Ruhlman—He has a plethora of books out there, but my top recommendations are:
Ratio
The Making of a Chef
Ruhlman’s Twenty
Anthony Bourdain—The food lover’s rock star. Some hate him, some love him. He teaches history of food, respects all cultures he visits and helps me to do the same. The things I’ve learned from him over the years are littered throughout Chef’s Table. My top picks for him are:
Kitchen Confidential
Medium Raw
Les Halles Cookbook
See the rest of my recommendations at Prism Book Alliance where you can enter to win a $25 gift certificate.
Don’t have to ask me twice. **dashes off to enter giveaway–I mean read**