Book of the Month: Simple Food

My travels through food literature and cookbooks continue.  Each month I try and see what's out there and refine my skills in the kitchen.  One thing that I am learning as I follow recipes, and read introductions and learn more and more about cooking and baking is that all cookbooks are not created equally.  Alice Waters' The Art of Simple Food: Notes, Lessons, and Recipes from a Delicious Revolution is an exceptional cookbook.  It is straightforward and doesn't ask for complexity right away.  Instead you can follow each step as if you weren't trained in cooking...because we haven't all been.  I certainly love the detail she goes into when explaining how to melt the chocolate for her Chocolate Cake, how to add the chocolate to the batter, when to mix in warm water and to have room temperature everything!  Following her recipe step by step made lovely looking and tasting cupcakes for Elliott's birthday party.  I also read her directions for Frittata and made Herb butter which she recommended rolling and storing in the freezer for a quick addition to fish coming out of the oven.  This book is going into my personal cookbook library as a reference for so many important dishes and skill sets. Waters is a Slow Food enthusiast, owner of Chez Panisse and a food activist championing the cause for clean, fresh and sustainable food systems.  If you are learning to cook or want to expand your repertoire this is a must on your kitchen's cookbook shelf.