In the Green Kitchen by Alice Waters Book Review 2010

Alice Waters' latest cookbook seeks to teach basic, 'learn by heart' cooking techniques to encourage us to approach the kitchen instinctively and to find pleasure in cooking good food. Does she succeed? Read on for my review.

Title & Publisher: In the Green Kitchen: Techniques to Learn by Heart, by Alice Waters. Published by Clarkson Potter, 2010.

First impressions: Hardcover, with a cheerful green cloth spine and a lovely, welcoming picture of the author on the cover. There are dozens of high-quality photos throughout the book, including several portraits of famous cooks and chefs.

Number of recipes: Over 50, including basics such as buttermilk biscuits, guacamole and a simple tomato sauce.

The angle: The premise of this book is to teach essential cooking techniques in support of sustainable, local food. To do this, Ms. Waters asked prominent chefs and cooks at the 2008 Slow Food Nation to offer their recipes and sit for a portrait by photographers Christopher Hircheimer and Melissa Hamilton. Included are Deborah Madison, Thomas Keller, Bryant Terry, David Chang and others, doing everything from shucking corn to making bread and whisking mayonnaise.

Sales from this book support Ms. Waters' Edible Schoolyard, a foundation that offers schoolchildren the opportunity to learn how to grow, harvest and cook organic food in order to foster appreciation for the natural world and promote environmental and social well-being.

The other stuff: There's a table of contents and index, with additional sections on how to stock an organic pantry and season dishes, what cooking equipment to have on hand, and how to purchase and use a kitchen knife, as well as a Green Kitchen Manifesto.

Recipes for right now: Hearts of Romaine & Green Goddess Dressing; Thomas Keller's One-Pot Roast Chicken; Roast Leg of Lamb; Chicken Noodle Soup with Dill; WHole Wheat Spaghetti with Kale

Recommended? Yes, but with reservations. This would be a good book for supporters of Ms. Waters' Edible Foundation and other folks who share her organic vision. But like Ms. Waters herself, this book is strong on inspiration and vision but lacks practicality and seems to turn a blind eye to the problems of affordability and privilege. How many of us can plop a whole organic chicken in a pot just for making stock? While the stock recipe doesn't ask us to discard the solids, it doesn't tell us to save them either.

I'm a little confused, too, about who would actually use this book. It opens with a very basic lesson in how to clean and dress lettuce for a salad but then goes on to offer a recipe for fish soup that involves filleting a fish and making a stock from the bones before going on to poach the fish, all which would be rather intimating for a new cook. So a little too basic for experienced cooks, yet not consistently basic enough for beginners.

That said, there are many of my culinary heroes represented here, including Ms. Waters herself, and I support the spirit in which this book was written and its underlying intention: to educate the American public, including children, on how to cook and appreciate good food and the pleasures of the table. I would give this book to someone who has some experience in the kitchen but is looking for guidance and inspiration to be more sustainable.

• Buy the book: In the Green Kitchen by Alice Waters, $18.48 (Amazon)

More 2009 Book Reviews
• Heirloom Beans by Steve Sando
• The Edible Schoolyard by Alice Waters
• Jamie at Home by Jamie Oliver

(Image: Amazon)

Comments (8)

I hate it when I come across an otherwise-inspiring cook whose chicken stock calls for A WHOLE CHICKEN (!!). This is crazy. The idea that using a whole bird is somehow more "gourmet" is a thoroughly modern one, and it's so wasteful. I doubt that even Ms Waters would make her own stock like that, at least not in her professional kitchen. I guess at home she can be as wasteful as she likes because she can afford it. But to be so righteous about the environmental impact of our consumption at the same time, seems rather hypocritical. Ugh.

I'm so disappointed to hear this, I had really high hopes for this book! I think it's so easy for those who are already deeply invested in this movement to forget that in order for the demand for organic food to be high enough to make a difference environmentally, it has to appeal to the average consumer, who is likely to be strapped for both time and money. I was talking to someone recently who used the term "Alice Waters-ization" in reference to the high brow aspect of the organic movement...it made me laugh, but it's true!

I've been blogging about the topic of making organic cooking affordable and easy (www.organic-antics.com), and I've been really surprised at the quality and availability of many pre-made organic products. I don't think there's anything wrong with buying a box of free-range, organic chicken stock for $3.49 (the last brand I tried was delicious!) rather than poaching a whole bird for upwards of $20! I'll probably still check out the book, though; it was figures like Ms. Waters who inspired me to start cooking with quality ingredients in the first place.

I like to poach chicken for chicken salad or tossing in pasta or soup - I just save the poaching water when I'm done for stock!

That being said, as much as I admire Ms. Waters for her efforts in support of sustainable and local agriculture, I often find it hard to use her recipes. They are either overly simplistic or use unusual or difficult to find ingredients - usually ones that are only availably locally to southern California.

I think the multiple-chefs contributing also created the multiple levels of "basic." I've got a couple of cookbooks that have multiple chef contributions and I've found that I rarely use them. They usually source unusual ingredients or have complicated instructions.

I think her "Art of Simple Food" is a better set of lessons for learning to cook well than this book is. It's all Alice Waters, and it's not really for complete beginners, but it's handy and consistent.

I love Art of Simple Food, but it sounds like this one won't be worth picking up. Your review reminds me of the disappointment I had with the meal I ate at Chez Panisse's upstairs cafe. It was full of grand notions, but completely out of touch with reality.

If she's teaching things to learn 'by heart', then wouldn't it make more sense to teach common sense recipes, like roasting a chicken with a follow-up piece on how to make a delicious stock with the leftover carcass.

"While the stock recipe doesn't ask us to discard the solids, it doesn't tell us to save them either."

Does she tell you not to put beans up your nose either? You can use the chicken meat however you like.

Alice Waters isn't writing cookbooks for people living on food stamps, and she's never tried to fill the "low-budget gourmet" niche. I'm surprised that anyone's shocked.

Palmetto, making stock out of left-over bones/marrow is not "low-budget gourmet", it's just how any moderately-intelligent cook makes it, because it's about being aware of your resources and making good use of every aspect of what you have. Just because someone takes this approach to food (any good chef worth his/her salt would) doesn't mean they're "living on food stamps" as you so sneeringly put it.

Alice Waters paints herself as an advocate for environmentally friendly/sustainable consumption, as well as a gourmet. The fact that she advises such a wasteful use of an animal product just makes all that environmental stuff look like hot air. Frankly it looks hypocritical to me.

(Your point about not putting beans up one's nose is silly. If Waters were going to put the meat to use she would do so before turning the bird into stock, because raw chicken cuts are far more versatile than a whole boiled chicken.)

Oh, and Ladidi, making your own stock is infinitely better than that boxed crap. I use it too sometimes in a pinch, but really all it is is chicken-flavoured water with a bit of salt added. When you make your own stock and reduce it, the marrow and bone juices make it set into a beautiful firm jelly, and you can just freeze it and use just two or three ice-cubes of it to flavour a big pot of soup. It doesn't cost anything at all, as long as you make good use of the bird first (roast or section and do whatever), whereas the bought stuff costs you $3.49 each time!

This is a link to a blog post that's really inspiring when it comes to homemade stock.