An Everlasting Meal: Cooking with Economy and Grace

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Ms. Adler waits for a rapid boil and adds surprisingly large handfuls of salt, tasting until it’s reminiscent of ocean water. (People concerned about sodium can use less.) From that simple starting point, several p.118 anodyne: Adjective--Not likely to provoke dissent or offense; uncontentious or inoffensive, often deliberately Noun--A pain-killing drug or medicine. "It will do for you what you believe food should, no matter who you are. Gourmets are satisfied: the seductions of rice are whispered of; it can be topped with buttered spinach and Parmesan or shaved with white truffles, and to the palates of children who still think eating a beastly reality of life rice remains agreeably anodyne." I've heard a number of people saying they love this book and I see the appeal. But it wasn't for me. The writing was too precious and prescriptive for my taste and, having a lot of experience with using up every last bit of food by necessity, I didn't learn a lot from the content. (I also am wary of her advice. She made a number of claims that suggest that we have very different tastes- for example, that broccoli stems are delicious if you cook them long enough. Broccoli stems are in fact delicious if peeled, but she didn't mention that step.)

An Everlasting Meal : Cooking with Economy and Gra An Everlasting Meal : Cooking with Economy and Gra

In an age when every recipe seems to come with a list of ingredients as long as my arm, Tamar Adler's approach to food is disarmingly simple, refreshingly intuitive, and utterly sensible. I found her suggestions for what to do with the odds and ends of dishes particularly helpful. (I'll never stare at a giant bunch of parsley or a rind of Parmesan with bewilderment again!) The night I finished the book, I found myself confronted with rather bare cupboards and, armed with Adler's injunctions and encouragement, managed to whip up a delicious soup of old potatoes, wilted green onions, and bacon bits that quite literally may have changed my entire outlook on cooking. A chapter called “How to Have Balance” focuses on bread; “How to Live Well” is devoted to beans. Her message is that cooking does not have to be complicated, and all anyone needs are a few Tamar Adler loves food and loves words. I love her writing. Two chapters in, and she's already quoted Robert Farrar Capon and C.S. Lewis. I surrendered. A martini dirtied with the last of the caper juice. Egg salad sizzled into fried rice. Sauce for noodles born inside a scraped-out nut-butter jar. Sad greens sorted with a “bullish, unwavering practicality.” The encyclopedic array that Tamar Adler presents in The Everlasting Meal Cookbook: Leftovers A–Z , a follow-up to her poetically instructive 2012 book, spells an off-roading adventure in the kitchen. (“Or, or, or” is a common sentence-ender, signaling untold paths forward.) “Listen to your inner voice and follow its lead,” she writes, a mystical voice on a rather prosaic matter: what to do about moldy jam. How I love this book - it is such a joy to read, and full of suggestions, tips and recipes. There are more recipes shared in-line than described formally - I have cooked more of those than of the listed ones. I head for this book whenever I need some inspiration in the kitchen. It is also great to delve into with an afternoon cuppa - a half an hour's random dive into the book will not only have you designing next week's menu, it will put a big smile on your face.

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I've done this many times since reading this book. I do prefer cauliflower roasted if I have the time, but the boiled broccoli is excellent, better than steamed.

The Everlasting Meal Cookbook by Tamar Adler | Cookbook

Skins of 3–4 bananas (if you peel them in the morning and are cooking later, soak them in acidulate water, with lemon, vinegar, or a piece of turmeric) She explains how to smarten up simple food and gives advice for fixing dishes gone awry. She recommends turning to neglected onions, celery and potatoes for inexpensive meals that taste full of fresh vegetables, and cooking meat and fish resourcefully. Waste not. Want not. Influenced by the first chapters, while I was making one meal I piled the vegetable scraps and skins I would generally toss into the compost into a big pot and covered them with water and the bit of beer I had leftover from the main dish...threw in a few peppercorns & a bay leaf...and simmered until the scraps were very soft and had given up their flavor. I strained the broth through fine mesh. The result was a beautiful brown delicately earth flavored broth. I pulled leftover mashed potatoes and the quarter cup of leftover cream I had in the refrigerator. Sauteed the quarter onion in the vegetable drawer. We had two huge bowls of delectable potato soup for dinner that night...sprinkled with a last small bit of gruyere grated...with a glass of hearty rustic red wine. It was a spectacularly simple feast made from bits & pieces. So satisfying. but today as i was making broth in my kitchen for the next couple of weeks, i realized it was because of this book, and that the change it had brought about in my life, tho small in some ways, is probably one of the more significant forms of impact a book has ever had on me. i used to buy broth in bulk every month or so, and now, instead, i always make my own. i make it every other week or so, enough to last a week or two or three. and i do it without thinking about it much, and without spending anything on it (other than i now buy fancy bay leaves in bulk). i make it out of bits of things that i've saved over the week for that purpose-- also without thinking about it much. and, truly, i do it because (1) it makes everything i make taste so much better, (2) i enjoy it, and (3) because this lady explained to me in detailed, practical terms, what it looks like to be a person who regularly makes her own broth. for years now i've done it. "with economy and grace" might be overstating my achievement, but it's certainly been without much thought or effort. i'm transformed!There's something so startling about the encounter with passion. A true, full-bodied passion that's been embraced and integrated into every aspect of life. Most days my choices extend only so far as hammer and nail, and I forget the force of joy. I forget the way bliss can trip into meaning, into vibrancy, into a stunningly pigmented existential composition. I forget. Tamar Adler reminds, in prose both crisp and seductive, that passion persists as an option; that there is a world beyond the factory floor. I still have plans to make so many — so many different — curries that it would make your head explode. If I told you how many I’m afraid the information would hurt you. Adler begins by stating that "we don't need to shop like chefs or cook like chefs; we need to shop and cook like people learning to cook, like what we are - people who are hungry." She takes all the angst out of the performance of cooking. Instead, she presents it as an enjoyable and inclusive activity for everyone. And always a few bunches of dark, leafy greens. This will seem very pious. Once greens are cooked as they should be, though: hot and lustily, with garlic, in a good amount of olive oil, they lose their sense of moral urgency and become one of the most likable ingredients in your kitchen.” Finally, I loved how Adler ends her book as the ending of a meal. There is "an old British tradition of serving something savory at the end of a meal. It is designed as a shield against dessert's taunt. What if, a savory bite asks, the wisp of sadness at a meal's close were swept away with a riddle?"