CULINARY TECHNIQUES
Review by Barb & Ron Kroll
In the Green Kitchen - Techniques to learn by heart
(Clarkson Potter) ISBN 978-0307336804 0307336808
Celebrity chefs, cookbook authors, cooking school teachers and home cooks provide cooking lessons for seasonal, local and natural organic foods.
Each cooking lesson is illustrated with simple healthy recipes that use the culinary technique described, be it braising or making bread.
The chefs, cooking methods and recipes were selected from The Green Kitchen, a Slow Food Nation event which Alice Waters helped organize.
Cooking lessons
Ideal for amateur home cooks, the 151-page organic cookbook is organized like a culinary arts school, with 27 cooking lessons, each teaching a specific culinary technique. Alice Waters introduces the cooking instructors below their photos.
Culinary arts instructor, Darina Allen, the founder of Ballymaloe Cookery School in Ireland, provides a recipe for Irish soda bread in the Making Bread chapter.
Celebrity chef, Lidia Bastianich, recommends removing thin pasta from water while it is undercooked, so it can finish cooking in the sauce.
Celebrity chefs
Some In the Green Kitchen recipes include variations. Fanny Singer (the daughter of Alice Waters) suggests substituting diced shallots for garlic paste in her garlic vinaigrette recipe.
Christopher Hirsheimer & Melissa Hamilton photographed the famous chefs and home cooks, in the Alice Waters cookbook, as well as their cooking techniques. Other photos depict organic ingredients and dishes prepared from In the Green Kitchen recipes.
Culinary secrets
In the Stocking an Organic Pantry chapter of In the Green Kitchen, Alice Waters explains how to make homemade wine vinegar from unfinished bottles of wine. Making vinegar with good wine results in better tasting vinegar, according to Waters.
In her chapter on Cooking Equipment, Alice Waters says that the best kitchen knives are a paring knife, a chef's knife and a bread knife. She explains how to buy quality kitchen knives and how to sharpen knives with a stone and a sharpening steel.
During their cooking lessons, famous chefs reveal their culinary secrets. For example, cookbook author, Scott Peacock, tells you how to make homemade baking powder in his recipe for buttermilk biscuits (sift together two parts cream of tartar with one part baking soda).
Sample recipes
No-knead bread. Raw tomato soup. Rainbow chard with oil and garlic. Roasted pepper salad. Sauteed jalapeno corn. Moroccan-style braised vegetables. Buttered couscous.
Contents
What is the Green Kitchen?Stocking an Organic Pantry
GREEN KITCHEN TECHNIQUES
- Washing Lettuce
- Dressing a Salad
- Flavoring a Sauce
- Pounding a Sauce
- Whisking Mayonnaise
- Making Bread
- Toasting Bread
- Poaching an Egg
- Simmering a Stock
- Peeling Tomatoes
- Boiling Pasta
- Cooking Rice
- Simmering Beans
- Wilting Greens
- Blanching Greens
- Steaming Vegetables
- Pickling Vegetables
- Skinning Peppers
- Shucking Corn
- Roasting Vegetables
- Filleting a Fish
- Roasting a Chicken
- Braising
- Roasting Meat
- Grilling a Steak
- Baking Fruit
- Seasoning for Flavor
- Cooking Equipment
Author
Alice Waters promotes sustainable, local and organic cooking.