I read a recent post on Michael Ruhlman’s blog called The Fallacy of the Quick-and-Easy Cookbook that hit home with me on several levels. In it Ruhlman talks about something that is all too prevalent these days: marketers’ desire–and if they are to be believed, ours as well–to make everything quicker and easier no matter how much of a disconnect there is between what we are trying to accomplish and the real level of effort required to get us there. We’re all about “30-minute” this and “quick-and-easy” that.
The cookbook in question purports to enable home cooks to easily re-create the world-class cuisine of Chef Alain Ducasse. Now, I don’t know a thing about Ducasse other than that he owned three three-star Michelin restaurants in three different cities (I don’t even know how I know that, it’s just in there), but I do know that if I were to attempt to recreate the cuisine of any chef it certainly wouldn’t be quick or easy.
Ruhlman writes:
“There’s nothing wrong with easiness—a poached egg with a little shallot-lemon butter and a good piece of toast can truly excellent. But to try to combine the two ideas, Ducasse and “made effortless” or the “four-star cooking at home” premise—this idea is harmful to home cooks. It encourages them to believe that every kind of cuisine can and should be made easy for them. This is simply not true. Some recipes are easy. But many recipes are excellent in direct proportion to the labor that goes into them.”
That’s what makes it challenging and that’s what makes it fun. To me cooking is a craft, not a task. It requires technique, nuance, subtlety, knowledge. The only way you get those things is through time and practice. It’s part of why I love to cook. Every time I do it I learn something that I can use the next time.
I aspire to have the skills to pull off many a complex dish and have a somewhat respectable library of cookbooks and books about cooking. One of them is a 1941 edition of The Escoffier Cook Book, A Guide to the FIne art of Cookery, published in France as the Guide Culinaire. It is regarded throughout the world as the bible of culinary art and contains 2,973 recipes, many of which are no more lengthy than this:
1620–Valois Chicken Breasts–Suprêmes de Volaille Valois
Treat the suprêmes à l’anglaise, and cook them in clarified butter (175). Serve them with a garnish of small, pitted olives, stuffed and poached at the last moment. Serve a Valois sauce (63) separately.
Now with a recipe like that, you either know what you’re doing or you don’t and it happens to be one of the things I like about the Escoffier book. It forces you to reference other elements of the recipe that are defined elsewhere in the book. It requires that you have knowledge and technique of separate components that you can combine to produce a more complex dish. This, to me, is the essence of learning any craft, and it cannot be gained through short cuts.
A jacket note from the Escoffier book sums it up:
“The Escoffier Cook Book is not for the beginning amateur in cookery. It is for the discriminating, for the artists in cookery who want the special satisfaction of achieving dinners that are unique and notable for their excellence.”
So, should cooking be hard? No, but doing anything well usually means it will be hard at some point. It’s something to strive for and I’d rather put in the time and effort to get there than take the quick and easy shortcut. That’s what journeymen do!
