Testing, Testing
Please note: This article is published as an archive copy from Philadelphia City Paper. My City Paper is not affiliated with Philadelphia City Paper. Philadelphia City Paper was an alternative weekly newspaper in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The last edition was published on October 8, 2015.
T<a href="javascript:cpStoryImagePopper('/images/articles/2008/12/04/big/books2-2.jpg');"><img style="margin: 5px; float: right;" src="/images/articles/2008/12/04/books2-2.jpg" class="imageWrap" height="325" width="250" /></a>he very last thing we did was roast the chicken. This was a conscious choice — a roast chicken is the kind of thing you try not to order at a restaurant the first time around, because any cook worth their salt should be able to turn one out. (Anthony Bourdain calls the cook that can't roast a bird "one helpless, hopeless, sorry-ass bivalve in an apron.") At the same time, a roast chicken isn't easy — Jeffrey Steingarten wrote an oft-cited essay entirely about his quest to come up with a perfect one. But roasting a chicken is something we're pretty good at. After years and years of trial and error with oven temperature and spicing and brining and cursing, through variations of dried-out breasts and soggy limp skin and more than enough burns on forearms, we've hit on a formula, in our kitchen and with our equipment, that makes a good, crisp-skinned, juicy roast bird. What's more, it does it consistently.
<div style="text-align: left; margin-right: 10px;"><p class="drop_cap">T<a href="javascript:cpStoryImagePopper('/images/articles/2008/12/04/big/books2-2.jpg');"><img style="margin: 5px; float: right;" src="/images/articles/2008/12/04/books2-2.jpg" class="imageWrap" height="325" width="250" /></a>he very last thing we did was roast the chicken. This was a conscious choice — a roast chicken is the kind of thing you try not to order at a restaurant the first time around, because any cook worth their salt should be able to turn one out. (Anthony Bourdain calls the cook that can't roast a bird "one helpless, hopeless, sorry-ass bivalve in an apron.") At the same time, a roast chicken isn't easy — Jeffrey Steingarten wrote an oft-cited essay entirely about his quest to come up with a perfect one. But roasting a chicken is something we're pretty good at. After years and years of trial and error with oven temperature and spicing and brining and cursing, through variations of dried-out breasts and soggy limp skin and more than enough burns on forearms, we've hit on a formula, in our kitchen and with our equipment, that makes a good, crisp-skinned, juicy roast bird. What's more, it does it consistently.
Which made this last roast chicken — specifically Simon Hopkinson's, from<b><b><i> The Bibendum Cookbook</i></b></b> (Conran Octopus, 224 pp., $29.95, <a href="http://conranusa.com/" target="_blank">conranusa.com</a>) — a fine final test of the holiday-season cookbook we liked best. It both made a change from the method we had perfected and provided an excellent experimental control recipe.
After all, for publishers like anyone else, December is big gift time. This season brings with it a whole pile of chef- and restaurant-driven cookbooks, with thick paper and mouth-watering photography and inventive uses of fonts and suchlike. Unfortunately, they're not all made for cooks, and some aren't even made for readers. So, with a short month of dinners and the cream of this year's cookbook crop, we set out to find out which was which.
And oh, did we. Meals ranged from rich but simple (semolina gnocchi with tallegio and pancetta) to merely simple-<i>sounding</i> (pork with grapefruit, sage, honeycomb) to not at all simple (ancho tamales with yucatan pork, charred tomatillo sauce and criolla cebolla, with an order of Dungeness crab guacamole with Belgian endive and garlic chips to start). 
Out of the stack of cookbooks we started with, and among the four we settled on as exemplary to cook through, your lavishly produced holiday-season cookbook has little to say to the harried workaday weeknight cook, other than "consider leftovers." Even with their often-demanding, sometimes-inscrutable prescriptions, the best of their recipes produced memorable, converting meals (that's right, chef Vetri, you've gained a fan); the worst engendered debate, ire, frustration and much talk of ROI.
The most conspicuous piece of investment in the bunch is Grant Achatz's<b><b><i> Alinea</i></b></b> (Ten Speed Press, 416 pp., $50, <a href="http://alinea-book.com/" target="_blank">alinea-book.com</a>), which comes complete with that Chicago restaurant's reputation as America's most daring, a heroic chef battling back from tongue cancer, and impressive prefatory essays from Michael Ruhlman and the aforementioned Steingarten.
<i>Alinea</i> features glowing photography of preciously arranged art food and recipes that showcase high-tech ingredients and exquisite technique. The photography really only reinforces the fleshy actuality that this food is mainly just porn. That is, you can look long and hard, but you aren't meant to touch it. And it doesn't help that the recipes just don't work. Quantities of component ingredients impressively fail to line up; information is unclear or withheld; and the cook at home is left with suspicions of Achatz's editors but no doubts as to the health of his ego.
In <i><b>Latin Evolution</b></i> (Lake Isle Press, 304 pp., $38, <a href="http://amadarestaurant.com/" target="_blank">amadarestaurant.com</a>), Philly restaurateur Jose Garces (of Amada, Tinto, Distrito and <i>Iron Chef</i> fame) cautions the home chef: "If you are making all of the component recipes, be sure to read each one carefully to plan and organize the ingredients and their preparation." He ain't kidding, but at least he's got the courtesy to warn you. Do yourself a favor: Make your<i> Latin Evolution</i> meals Sunday dinners. You'll need Saturday to figure out your prep order and shopping lists, not to mention the time to drop by at least four Mexican grocery stores to scrounge for the right dried peppers and assorted leaves; visit three butchers to find the correct cut of meat, and another two grocery stores for lard and whatever else you've missed; and then you'll need to prepare a half-dozen pastes, oils, sauces, roasted vegetables and marinades. Sunday, you'll cook. And eat until it hurts. The return is magnificent, but the investment is steep.It's a gorgeous if not entirely functional book. Fortunately, we knew that tamales steam for 45 to 55 minutes; otherwise we'd have been out of luck, as Garces neglects to tell the cook how to actually<i> cook</i> his pillowy sofrito-laden wonders. Be prepared to subject his quantities to interpretation, and make sure you know how many you're cooking for — you'll want to have a calculator handy — we made a 10th of a batch of lemon oil for our crab guacamole and still have a good tablespoon or two to spare.
Marc Vetri's aims, in his<b><b><i> Il Viaggio di Vetri</i></b></b> (Ten Speed Press, 289 pp., $40, <a href="http://vetriristorante.com/" target="_blank">vetriristorante.com</a>), differ clearly from Garces' or Achatz's. This local chef frames his book as travelogue and memoir — but he draws his inspiration for the recipes in the book from Italian family-style meals rather than the white tablecloths of his restaurants. The difference in focus shows in recipes that are less demanding than Garces' multistep monsters, but that produce full-flavored and satisfying dishes. Surprisingly, Vetri's book taught the most useful lessons — workarounds for fresh pasta, easier rice pudding — and contains a truly excellent classic chocolate pudding that easily replaces one winter dessert standby.
But within the criteria of return on investment, <i>The Bibendum Cookbook,</i> inspired by the iconic London restaurant, was clearly the winner. After emptying the weekly food allowance on <i>Alinea</i>'s gorgeous-but-bland pork dish, the deeply satisfying act of soaking super-stale challah in milk and squishing it between your fingers along with farm-fresh eggs and spinach leaves — left over from Garces' middle-neck-clams mixto with salsa verde and toasted corn nuts — was unparalleled. Even though we were about two weeks too late with the farm-fresh tomatoes (from now until the beginning of August, we recommend forgoing the blanching and peeling and opening a can of San Marzano's instead), this sagey, crispy, gnocchi-like delight is becoming a weeknight Vandermeer-Bauer special.
Oh, and the chicken? Pretty close to divine. Can't wait to try it a second time. And a third.
