by Michelle Auerbach Brode
remember when I first discovered Simple Cooking and its authors, John Thorne and Matt Lewis Thorne. I was in Kitchen Arts and Letters bookstore in Manhattan. (They are not online, but if you are ever in Manhattan go visit them--Kitchen Arts & Letters 1435 Lexington AvenueNew York, NY 10128Phone: (212) 876-5550Fax: (212) 876-3584). This is the best cookbook bookstore you will ever see. It is the size of a kitchen or the large bathroom of a very fancy house. They only sell cookbooks. Shelves and shelves of cookbooks. The proprietor, Nach Waxman, is a genius. Famous cookbook authors consult him and then thank him profusely in their acknowledgements. I have always been too frightened to talk to him. Somehow he would know that after cooking school, years of restaurant work, more years of reading cookbooks and cooking I am still a novice. Of course we all are novices so maybe next time I go in I will introduce myself.
Anyhow, there was a stack of these food newsletters called Simple Cooking. I bought some of them on a whim. I carried them out and started to read them while walking down the street. I sat on a stoop and read all of them. Every word. I went back and bought the rest. Then I subscribed. Now I cheer every time one shows up in the mailbox.
To call them articles is a disservice. They are essays of the most clear and complete thoughts. Little forays into different worlds. Every scholarly text is consulted, every avenue perused and then you are brought the results by someone with a sense of humor and a decided lack of snobbery.Also there are the recipes. In the most recent issue John Thorne reviews The Oxford Companion to Food. He faults it for not having recipes. Cooks think in recipes, he explains. I am glad Thorne feels this way because I do too.
His recipes are always perfect. Thorne picks the best topics and uses the recipes to really make you crave the kitchen. Even when giving recipes for rice or toast. Never is the writing purely academic. Even in his most historical or anthropological essays the writing is always grounded in the food. "No matter how many books a particular culinary chase may take me through, there is usually something I plan to eat waiting at the end of the hunt."
Once you have run out of back issues of Simple Cooking to read there are books. So far three and one due out soon. The Outlaw Cook, Simple Cooking and Serious Pig. Many of the essays in these books are reprints from "Simple Cooking." Enough is new and different to make them worth while.
I just read the newest book, due out in the fall, A Pot on the Fire: Further Confessions of a Renegade Cook. Now, I am sure I have read every one of those essays before but I was just as engaged as the first time.
And relieved. Through some flaw in my organizational skills I have misplaced exactly two issues of Simple Cooking, the one with my favorite recipe of all times for mujadara (a Middle Eastern rice and lentil dish with these crispy caramelized onions) and the one with the recipe for bahn mi, Vietnamese sandwiches with all sorts of stuff in them. To my great joy both recipes were in "A Pot on the Fire."
Well, John Thorne is not cooking either, it is something more complete and engaging, though I can't put a finger on what. You do end up with food. So in that way you are cooking. Cooking with John Thorne, though, is an adventure.Thorne is iconoclastic. He is erudite. He is arcane. And he is a lot of fun. He is also the best informed food writer out there. If you want to read great writing he is your guy. If all you care about is great food I would still consult his books or newsletter. I have never had anything but glorious success with his recipes. May he live long and keep writing.
Michelle Auerbach Brode was a professional chef. Now she is much happier cooking at home for her family and talking about food incessantly. If you need to talk to her about food or anything else she can be reached at Michelle.Brode@pobox.com.
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