CleverRoot

1 4 | t h e c l e v e r r o o t COOKBOOK CORNER w Reading is fundamental to expanding your culinary repertoire. Here's a cheat sheet with some educational favorites. by Jesse Hom-Dawson Scraps, Wilt and Weeds: Turning Wasted Food into Plenty by Mads Refslund and Tama Matsuoka Wong When a coworker told me 40 percent of food goes uneaten every year in the United States, I forced myself to stop and reflect: How many bruised apples, moldy pieces of cheese or overripe tomatoes had I thrown away in my lifetime? I was determined to rethink my food habits, and Scraps, Wilt and Weeds is the book to help accomplish just that. Danish chef Mads Refslund shows you how to use food products that wouldn't pass muster in the supermarket, as well as food scraps that are typically tossed out: apple cores, fish heads or cheese rinds make their way into recipes like fish head curry sauce. But this isn't a freegan dumpster-diving manual; it's a guide for refined, thoughtfully-prepared cuisine using all that nature offers. So, the next time I roasted some carrots from the farmer's mar- ket, I stopped before throwing away the green tops. By adding some gruyére, a clove of garlic and a few other ingredients, I had Refslund's carrot top pesto to spoon over my dish. After all, as Refslund says, "We have enough food in the world, just we don't actually use it." (Grand Central, $35) Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking by Samin Nosrat Master Chef or not, there's always room to improve your tech- niques in the kitchen. While most of us know the five funda- mental tastes—sweetness, sourness, saltiness, bitterness and umami—Samin Nosrat breaks down taste and flavor into four less conventional categories: "salt, which enhances flavor; fat, which amplifies flavor and makes appealing textures possible; acid, which brightens and balances; and heat, which ultimately determines the texture of food." While I have praised the more rigidly calculated cooking in J. Kenji López-Alt's The Food Lab, Nosrat approaches cooking based on intuition and freedom from recipes. Both use scientific theory to explain the how's and why's of cooking, but while López-Alt's end goal is uniform, tasty dishes, Nosrat uses theory to inform readers how to combine ingredients to create their own meals. Nosrat's recipe for her Caesar salad dressing, for example, contains no measurements other than for the mayo base. In their place, there's playful illustrations and instructions to combine the ingredients together "to taste," adding and adjusting until a fully-formed dressing appears. While the measured recipes in the back half are useful, the focus of the book is how to take techniques—making stock from scratch, perfecting grain to water ratios and properly balanc- ing a multi-course meal—and use them to create your own dishes from whatever ingredients are readily available. Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat is a must-read for anyone looking to expand their cooking repertoire. (Simon & Schuster, $35) Mexican Ice Cream: Beloved Recipes and Stories by Fany Gerson I recently moved into a neighbor- hood that has the most wonderful Mexican supermarket I've ever encountered. There's an agua fresca bar, a ceviche counter and colorful displays of fresh fruits and vegetables. I consider it a good omen that I received a copy of this cookbook right when I discovered this market. The nopales piled high in the produce section are perfect for the cactus paddle sorbet with pineapple and lime, and Mexican chocolate provides the chunks in the coffee-cajeta ice cream. How- ever, you don't need to live near a specialty market to enjoy the vari- ous ice cream flavors, divided into categories of Classic Mexican, Mod- ern Mexican and Spicy and Boozy. Horchata is one of my favorite bev- erages, and the horchata ice cream is a wonderful rendition of the rice- and cinnamon-based drink. And fall may have just begun, but the spice in the mole ice cream will be sure to keep you toasty as the weather cools down. (Ten Speed Press, $22) ■cr

• Cover