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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] 'Cook Food': A Manualfesto for Everything You Need to Know About Healthy Eating
  • Date: Fri, 22 Jan 2010 12:42:33 -0700


Bitch Magazine Founder's 'Cook Food': A Manualfesto for Everything You Need
to Know About Healthy Eating
By Vanessa Barrington, EcoSalon. Posted January 22, 2010.
http://www.alternet.org/healthwellness/144351/bitch_magazine_founder%27s_%27cook_food%27%3A_a_manualfesto_for_everything_you_need_to_know_about_healthy_eating?page=entire

If you know someone who cares about the environment, their body, animals, and
taste, yet nobody has ever taught them to cook, give them this book.

An obstacle people often face when trying to eat a healthy, green, reasonably
priced diet is a lack of cooking skills. Cookbooks don't always help. Most
food authors attempt to teach people how to cook real food (as opposed to
opening packages, dumping and stirring) and assume the reader already knows
something about cooking.

Other cookbooks are written as if people who don't already know how to cook
must not really want to know how to cook. These cookbooks seem to think that
people should just be happy to combine processed foods in innumerable ways to
create "quick and easy meals".

That's where this new book comes in. Cook Food -- which is earning rave
reviews -- can teach people how to cook simple, tasty, nourishing, whole
foods quickly, cheaply, and above all, intelligently. If you know someone who
cares about the environment, their body, animals, and taste, yet nobody has
ever taught them to cook, give them this book.

Lisa Jervis, who is perhaps best known for being the Founding Editor and
Publisher of the magazine Bitch: A Feminist Response to Pop Culture, has
written a slim, no nonsense book with a can-do attitude. Don't expect glossy
photos. This isn't aspirational food porn. This is a manualfesto!

Vegan Approach to Sensitive Cooking and Eating

Jervis's book is entirely vegan, with very occasional suggestions for adding
dairy products if desired, but that's not really the point, so don't stop
reading just because you don't happen to be vegan. The book's main message is
that cooking for oneself shouldn't be challenging, expensive, or
time-consuming.

Jervis stresses cooking and eating consciously for your health and the
planet. Whether we are meat eaters or not, we all need to eat our vegetables.
And most of us could lower our meat consumption for the sake of both our
bodies and the planet. Knowing how to prepare tasty veg-centric meals and
getting in the habit of eating more of them is a great skill to have.

A Look at Our Food System

By way of introduction as to why the recipes in the book are vegan and almost
always seasonal and unprocessed, the author gives a succinct primer on what's
wrong with our food system with many nods to authors like Michael Pollan and
Raj Patel.

She touches on complex issues such as why processed soy products aren't as
good for the environment as some people think, and how affordability is
relative, and why we shouldn't worry too much about micronutrients, or
(gasp!) salt -- all of which serve to getthe reader thinking deeply about
food.

But Jervis doesn't want us to think so deeply that we become paralyzed about
our food choices, so she ends with a very smart bit of advice: "In the end,
we can all only do the best we can, which actually means a lot."

A Well Stocked Kitchen

Before getting down to cooking, Jervis wants you to have the right supplies.
The entire first section of the book talks about what tools, spices and
pantry items you absolutely need and which ones you can actually do without.
There are different tiers from "must haves" to "nice to haves" to "splurges,"
and as a cook, I can say the advice is solid.

Just as solid are her explanations of cooking techniques. Using a friendly,
approachable style, Jervis sets out to teach you howto cook. I mean really
cook. She defines and describes sautéing, blanching, roasting. She tells why
to salt early in the process, how caramelization builds flavor, and how dried
herbs behave more like spices and therefore should be added at the beginning,
while fresh herbs lose flavor if cooked to long.

The tone is matter-of-fact rather than pedantic, and none of the techniques
are dumbed down in the least. Simplified, not stupid. Rather than just
imparting recipes, she teaches how to build flavor in a dish, merrily
dispensing variation suggestions throughout in order to coax cooks into
trusting their own instincts.

Roasting Veggies

My favorite part of the book is the section on roasting vegetables. People
are always shocked by how good roasted vegetables done properly with olive
oil, salt, and high heat can taste. It's such a simple thing, yet there is a
lot of technique involved that most experienced cooks just do unconsciously,
and most cookbooks don't even attempt to explain.

Jervis' mini-treatise tells why not to crowd the vegetables (they steam) why
you should use a dark pan (they brown better), how to cut (so as to have lots
of surfaces to brown) and why to toss them in olive oil with your hands (so
the oil penetrates into all the cracks and crevices), and more. Next time
someone asks me how I get my roasted vegetables to taste so good, I'm just
going to hand them that section of Cook Food.

What You Will Learn From the Book

In the end, the reader gets simple food prepared with solid techniques that
can be used for a lifetime of cooking.

Even experienced cooks might learn something from Cook Food. In the recipe
for Ginger-Garlic-Sesame Tofu with Spinach, I learned why my tofu doesn't
ever taste all that great when I marinate it and sauté it -- because I've
never pressed it. Turns out that removing all the excess liquid lets the tofu
absorb the marinade better and leads to more efficient caramelizing.

I also love the three recipes for Beans n' Greens (Italian style, Indian
style, and Chili style) because such recipes are a great way to eat. Filling,
healthy, streamlined, green, efficient. You can feed a lot of people or just
yourself all week long with one dish.

My only quibble: I think both the flavor and texture of dried beans from
scratch are so superior to canned that it would be a service to readers to
tell them that it's mostly the planning that hangs people up, not the
actually process. You don't have to do anything to the beans while they are
cooking, other than to stir and check them occasionally, and you can use a
crockpot, making it even easier. And then you have the beans around to use
for quick meals. But then, as the author of a cookbook devoted entirely to
dried beans, I would say that!

I'd like people to cook more dried beans so they can experience how good they
are, but at the risk of making the perfect the enemy of the good, I'll agree
with Jervis. If the best you can do on any given night is open a can of
beans, that's okay, "because it actually means a lot."





  • [Livingontheland] 'Cook Food': A Manualfesto for Everything You Need to Know About Healthy Eating, Tradingpost, 01/22/2010

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