Lateral Cooking
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- $36.99
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- $36.99
Publisher Description
A groundbreaking handbook--the "method" companion to its critically acclaimed predecessor, The Flavor Thesaurus--with a foreword by Yotam Ottolenghi.
Niki Segnit used to follow recipes to the letter, even when she'd made a dish a dozen times. But as she tested the combinations that informed The Flavor Thesaurus, she detected the basic rubrics that underpinned most recipes. Lateral Cooking offers these formulas, which, once readers are familiar with them, will prove infinitely adaptable.
The book is divided into twelve chapters, each covering a basic culinary category, such as "Bread," "Stock, Soup & Stew," or "Sauce." The recipes in each chapter are arranged on a continuum, passing from one to another with just a tweak or two to the method or ingredients. Once you've got the hang of flatbreads, for instance, then its neighboring dishes (crackers, soda bread, scones) will involve the easiest and most intuitive adjustments. The result is greater creativity in the kitchen: Lateral Cooking encourages improvisation, resourcefulness, and, ultimately, the knowledge and confidence to cook by heart.
Lateral Cooking is a practical book, but, like The Flavor Thesaurus, it's also a highly enjoyable read, drawing widely on culinary science, history, ideas from professional kitchens, observations by renowned food writers, and Segnit's personal recollections. Entertaining, opinionated, and inspirational, with a handsome three-color design, Lateral Cooking will have you torn between donning your apron and settling back in a comfortable chair.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
U.K. food writer Segnit (The Flavor Thesaurus) brings a vast breadth of knowledge to this massive and quietly playful exploration of the art and science of cooking. In what is as much a personal culinary history as it is a reference, Segnit is as likely to recall dining on tapas along the Camino de Santiago in Spain as she is to cite one of the hundreds of cookbooks she draws on for source material or to discuss the role of clam chowder in Moby Dick. Her mission is to present intuitive cooking as a learnable skill, one that can be developed through an understanding of how certain foods relate to each other in terms of how they are prepared. Learning to master a basic flatbread is the starting point for a panoply of connected dishes along a continuum that proceeds from crackers and soda bread to buns and brioche. A dozen such culinary trails are uncovered in categories that include sauces, chocolate, roux, and nuts, where, for example, marzipan easily transforms into macaroons. Home cooks can tinker with the many "flavors & variations" provided for each dish, or experiment with ingredients by taking heed of "leeway" options that suggest, for example, doubling the molasses and halving the sugar for an extra-sticky loaf of gingerbread. This extraordinary cookbook provides a treasure map full of both straightforward satisfactions and rewarding detours.
