This week, let’s talk cooking.  As I’ve been working toward my course launch, one of the things I’ve needed to do is find some additional resources for certain topics.  “How to cook” is one of them.  I did a little bit of research and bought several books to look over — which I’ll review over the next few days.  This book — Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat  — I didn’t buy.  I’d read a couple of Amazon reviews that led me to believe it might be rather…twee, so I skipped it.  But as it turns out, our library has it, so I was able to borrow and read it.  And I should’ve bought it.

It is different from other cooking books.  It is exuberant and laced with personal stories and not a dry “textbook”-type approach.  I think that was the point.  The author clearly believes that experiencing food is much of what creates a great chef, and she seems to be creating that sense of “experience” as much as is possible through the pages of a book.  I’m not much for fluff, but I didn’t find this fussy; I found it…descriptive.  As if the author were drawing me into her environment to see and touch and taste and smell along with her — something I think is instrumental to her method of teaching.

As the title would suggest, Samin breaks down the four major concepts of salt, fat, acid, and heat.  These are key elements experienced and professional chefs control and balance all the time, but which are rarely spelled out in such a straightforward way.  (That is, great chefs all know they do these things, but rarely does anyone say, “salt, fat, acid, and heat are the keys to good cooking.”)

The first half (roughly) of the book is devoted to these concepts, with each getting its own substantial section.  There’s plenty of description and explanation to help the reader understand how the element works and why it matters, including anecdotes of the author’s own discoveries of the element at work (or scenarios where it was flubbed and resulted in a flopped dish!).  There are also guides to help you put each one into practice, such as lists of foods that are good sources of salt, fat, or acid.

The second half (roughly) of the book is recipes.  That’s it, just recipes.  But they’re a good set of basic recipes to provide a framework for practicing the skills learned in the first half and a jumping-off point for recipe creation when you’re not quite confident enough to start completely from scratch.

I’m not sure if Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat would completely stand alone for someone with no kitchen experience.  It doesn’t major on individual kitchen skills like knife skills and that sort of thing.  But for someone who has basic kitchen skills and simply lacks the familiarity with food and how to mix and match and balance it intuitively, this is an excellent resource.  (It would be a great one for moms to work through with our older children, too!)